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Why Teach With Technology? Technology, when used appropriately, can help make the history and social studies classroom a site of active learning and critical thinking and further student connections with the past. Teachers can use technology to enable students to meet people of different cultures, explore ancient and modern worlds, do authentic primary-source research, problem-solve Technology can be used to enable students to explore fundamental curriculum issues and answer core questions. Students can use the Internet, electronic databases and other online sources to gather information. They can use spreadsheets, timelines, and other programs to store, organize, and analyze information. Students can also integrate multimedia desktop publishing, web publishing, video and audio editing, and graphics programs to create and present information in innovative and engaging ways. Historical sources are increasingly online Consider for a moment the amount of historical sources that are already digitized and available online. Google, university libraries, and online book repositories are making millions of books and other print materials publicly accessible online. Now think ahead 40 years. What percentage of all historical source material will be available online by mid-century? Many feel it will approach or surpass 90%. If the heart of historical activity is to research and analyze historical sources then technology will play an increasingly important role in historical activity. Future historians are likely to be accessing and analyzing digitized historical materials as part of their daily professional activities. (Many are already doing so.) Moreover, they will be communicating and collaborating with other historians online and presenting their findings via online publications and media and via multimedia presentations. As video becomes ubiquitous 21st century media, an increasing number of historical primary sources will be video-based. Modern society's "digital age" transition from print-based, conventional text to screen-based, multimedia communication will have a profound effect on historians of the 21st century.
-Tom Daccord discussing "digital equivalency" in 21st century. Technology and essential skills for the 21st Century There are scores of educators and researchers deeply concerned with how our schools, largely the product of 19th century industrial society, are going to prepare students for the 21st century. Researchers like Howard Gardner (2006), Tony Wagner (2008), Henry Jenkins (2007), Frank Levy and Richard Murnane (2004), and others have produced a lists of the skills and competencies for our students in the future. The framework produced by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is playing an important role in affecting how many think about a 21st Century Education. While the lists and frameworks are diverse, they all tend to recognize three major competencies: Creativity, critical thinking, cross-cultural communication and collaboration, and digital age literacy. To develop these skills, we need classrooms where students are working in teams and using technology to build creative, meaningful content that reflects their understanding and learning. In these environments, teachers act often as facilitators and mentors rather than always fonts of authoritative knowledge. (For those teachers accustomed to being the front-and-center speaker and "expert" in the classroom such a transition can be uncomfortable.) These classrooms are dramatically different from the ones where our most current teachers grew up, apprenticed, and taught. As a result, helping teachers effectively use new technology to support innovative, student-centered learning will involve immersing teachers in new collaborative learning environments supported by emerging technologies. Technology and academic performance Moreover, there are several prominent studies that demonstrate a strong relationship between technology use and higher academic performance and technology-using teachers supply much anecdotal evidence to show that technology helps educators teach better and students learn more effectively. Finally, teachers can adopt technology resources to develop and tailor instructional materials to better meet individual student needs. In all, technology use can further higher-order thinking "by engaging students in authentic, complex tasks within collaborative learning contexts.". There are many fundamental reasons for incorporating technology in the classroom:
The Collect-Relate-Create-Donate Framework Technology has the potential to change our students' relationship to history and can facilitate engaging activities and research that would be difficult or impossible to create in a tech-free environment. But by themselves computers in the classroom do not necessarily heighten student engagement or increase academic performance. The crucial element is how technology is incorporated into instruction. In Leonardo’s Laptop, Professor Ben Schneiderman lays out a simple but powerful framework for designing user-centered, student-centered technology- integration projects. The framework consists of four parts: Collect, Relate, Create, and Donate. In Schneiderman’s framework, projects begin with a chance to “Collect” knowledge, and students research the factual building blocks of their learning project. From there students “Relate” with one another—since collaboration and cross-cultural communication skills play essential roles in our economic and civic spheres—in an effort to “Create” some kind of tangible demonstration of their understanding. The final part of an activity is to find a forum to “Donate” the student work so that students can enjoy the opportunity to publish their work and be of service to others. We’ve found this approach helpful in designing and evaluating Social Studies activities that take advantage of emerging technologies. The best technology integration projects use computers to empower students to take responsibility for their own learning and give them the tools to succeed in that endeavor. The Collect-Relate-Create-Donate (CRCD)framework is a great way to get started in creating these kinds of student-centered learning experiences. THWT & Professional Development If technology is integrated in such a way as to foster engaged learning and higher-order thinking than it is being used effectively. Unfortunately, professional development in educational technology in the United States is largely underfunded and many teachers simply don't get the help they need to integrate technology into their courses. Many are intimidated by technology or just doubt its usefulness. The Center for Teaching History with Technology believes that educators need to be shown that technology can help teachers teach and students learn and also be provided with models and examples of exemplary technology use.With that goal in mind,we here offers a multitude of free online resources presented in the form of a broad tutorial -- full of articles, tips, strategies, and annotated links -- to help history and social studies teachers integrate technology in their classes. EdTechTeacher, our parent organization, is an educational technology professional development provider dedicated to helping teachers use technology to create active, student-centered learning communities. The EdTechTeacher "Teaching for the 21st Century" Professional Development Program (T21) provides cohorts of teachers the opportunity to develop their technology integration skills over a one-year period with the coaching and support of educators who have extensive experience teaching with technology. EdTechTeacher also offers technology integration workshops each summer in the Greater Boston area and we travel to schools around the country, and abroad, to deliver keynote presentations and lead workshops. Basic Tips for Getting Started
Studies, Sources and Suggested Readings: Cantu, Antonio. "An Internet Based Multiple Intelligences Model for Teaching High School History", from the Journal of the Association for History and Computing at http://mcel.pacificu.edu/jahc/jahcII3/K12II3/Cantuindex.html Daccord, Thomas. (2007) The Best of History Web Sites. Neal-Schuman Press. Daccord, Thomas & Reich, Justin. (2008) Best Ideas for Teaching with Technology: A Practical Guide for Teachers by Teachers. M.E. Sharpe. Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2008). Disrupting class : How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. New York: McGraw-Hill. Diamond, J. B. (October 2007). "Where the rubber meets the road: Rethinking the connection between high-stakes testing policy and classroom instruction." Sociology of Education, 80, 285-313(29). Gardner, H. (2006). Five minds for the future. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press. Jenkins, H. (2007). In Clinton K., Purushotma R., Robison A. and Weigel M.(Eds.), Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. Chicago, Il.: MacArthur Foundation. Retrieved from www.digitallearning.macfound.org Levy, F., & Murnane, R. J. (2004). The new division of labor: How computers are creating the next job market. Princeton, N.J.; New York: Princeton University Press; Russell Sage Foundation. Freidman, Thomas. (2005) The World is Flat. New Yorl: Farrar. National Council for the Social Studies. “Powering Social Studies with Technology,” Social Education, Volume 69 Number 3, April 2005. Pink, Daniel. (2006). A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Riverhead Trade. Shneiderman, Ben. (2003). Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies. The MIT Press. The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL). "Critical Issue: Using Technology to Improve Student Achievement" from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/methods/technology/te800.htm TLT Group. " Why Bother to Make the Effort to Improve Teaching and Learning With Technology?" from http://www.tltgroup.org/WhyBother.htm TeleLearning Network, Inc. "The emerging contribution of online resources and tools to classroom learning and teaching" from http://www.tact.fse.ulaval.ca/ang/html/review98.html#anchor440994 Wagner, Tony. (2008). The Global Achievement Gap : Why even our best schools don't teach the new survival skills our children need--and what we can do about it. Basic Books. |
Summer 2010 Teaching with Technology Workshops Organized by Tom Daccord and Justin Reich of Best of History Web Sites, Center for Teaching History with Technology, & National Council of Social Studies Technology Committee Join educators from around the world who come to Boston each summer for a memorable educational experience: 8th annual Teaching History with Technology Geography & Maps 2.0 Primary Sources 2.0 Connecting Classrooms with Web 2.0 4th annual Teaching English and Language Arts with Technology Creative Teaching with Interactive Whiteboards 21st Century Skills- Frameworks and Teaching Strategies Follow Best of History |
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through inquiry-based activities, and much more.