Blog 8 -C- History and Technology

Guidelines for using Technology to prepare social studies teachers is the name of the article that was graciously given to me by one of my classmates/collaborators. She noticed that i was planning to be a social studies teacher and so when she came across this article she left me a comment with the URL. This is the whole reason why we are conducting this blogging exercise and that is to learn how to efficiently collaborate and share with other fellow learners.

This article was a preparation guide for social studies teachers when using technology in their curriculum. It raised some very great aspects on how and why we should use them and what are the most effective ways we can implement them. One of the main points it was trying to get across to the reader is that teachers need to use technology to advance beyond what can be done with only traditional ways of learning. I think this is a great point. Many people use technology to enhance their traditional methods of lectures (hint power point), however we need to start implementing the technology's that are going to take us beyond that point. Like with many other subject and areas in education, technology opens the door to learning history in ways that were never thought possible before (for example, virtual tours and images of cities, battles, and etc.) The article gives a great example of implementing technology in a history classroom beyond the setting of a classroom and that was the Virgina center for digital history. In this center there are digital cities and digital texts which student can explore and research on there own the time setting of the civil war and culture of those days. The center has primary sources, artifacts, and digital images and videos of Virgina and many other places involved in civil war battles.

The article stresses the fact that technology can help the classroom and as teachers we need to show the students that using technology in your work will greatly enhance your learning ability. We need to challenge students to utilize the tools that are out there, such as Internet databases of historical texts, and implement them in their research and study of the certain subject they are studying. If social studies teacher would start to use more technology in the classroom then maybe many students would enjoy the subject of history more than the occasional nap class they make it out to me. I have never found a student who wouldn't enjoy history if there were some excitement to it, and technology provides that exact solution in history. But it is up to us as history teacher to use them and how to use when engaging our students.

To me this article was a eye opener to many social studies teacher and it encourages us to use technology and how and when to use it. The goal of the text that i felt it was telling me was that we need to fall behind in the history department and start showing technology in our classrooms to our students in hope that they will use them for their historical studies. History is one of those rare classes that technology can enhance the curriculum dramatically, but it is hardly ever used to that extent. There is so many aspects of technology that can be used and i plan on harnessing them and utilizing them in my classroom. Students will respond and learn more from a subject that is interesting and engaging to their interest and needs. Overall i enjoyed reading this article and i feel more enriched and prepared for teaching social studies in the future. I also want to thank my classmate/collaborator who kindly passed this article on to me, i sincerely thank you.

To view this article please click here.