ICT in education: Social studies and Technology

Teachers must not simply acquire skills that make them proficient at using technology, but also learn how to use technology to make their teaching better than it would be without it. Therefore, preservice instruction enabling teachers to integrate technology seamlessly into lessons is more productive than technology instruction that merely teaches preservice teachers how to use specific computer skills. For example, teachers should not learn how to create PowerPoint presentations or Excel spreadsheets merely with the goal of mastering the technology. Rather, preservice teachers should create PowerPoint presentations that aid in direct instruction of a particular social studies lesson or spreadsheets that help illustrate statistical data significant to the social studies student

To further illustrate this distinction, it is useful to consider an actual example of a preservice teacher who learned technological skills that enhanced her classroom instruction. Nicole Tucker, a preservice elementary teacher in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, helped develop a digital history archive, Race and Place: African American Community Histories , as an undergraduate student in one of her history classes. Race and Place contains primary source material on slavery and emancipation, Reconstruction, and the era of Jim Crow segregation in the South. Tucker specifically contributed a rich segment of the archive that details the politics of disenfranchisement . Although Tucker took an instructional technology course

This is just one example of preparing social studies teachers to use technology appropriately. I offer the following five principles as guides for the appropriate infusion of technology in social studies teacher preparation programs.

Extend learning beyond what could be done without technology.

Introduce technology in context.

Include opportunities for students to study relationships among science, technology, and society.

Foster the development of the skills, knowledge, and participation as good citizens in a democratic society.

Contribute to the research and evaluation of social studies and technology.