Brave New World

Technology makes social studies come alive

By Maggie Hill

Maggie Hill is a writer in New York City.

In the days when classroom technology meant filmstrips and record players, social studies teachers gave students oral reviews for final exams; had only one version of a test; relied on sparse book collections and yellowed, rolled-up charts with static data; scanned the day's newspaper for topics for "current events"; and perhaps organized a unit in which students sent letters to pen pals in another country. Today, some teachers have their students review lessons on a computer, gather primary source material from a CD-ROM, view animated 3-D atlases, create multimedia presentations on what they've learned, and talk about it on-line with students around the world in real time.

Few classrooms enjoy all the new bells and whistles, but social studies teachers in growing numbers are finding that technology helps them approach learning from new directions. And though technology by itself won't resolve the debates over which of the social studies--history, geography, and the social sciences--are most important, it can link those multiple perspectives in a richer, more content-specific way.

"Many teachers who don't use technology are reduced to being a technician tied to a curriculum," says Charles White, a member of the technology committee of the National Council for the Social Studies. "But using technology adds a powerful dimension to learning information skills more quickly and more deeply. Teachers are absolutely renewed and refreshed as they find [learning] becomes a much more active activity beyond the classroom."

Part of White's role at Boston University's School of Education is to show future teachers how technology can help students learn--and extend teachers' own learning. "Teaching is an information-based profession. Teachers must avoid teaching inert knowledge," he says. "They must actively engage students in constructing understanding. Technology provides a new set of intellectual construction tools that all social studies teachers need in their repertoire."

Take history, for example. Technology gives teachers a way to make history personally immediate to students. Archives available on laser disc or CD-ROM bring back the newsreels, the voices, and the faces of people who made history happen. "It's a kind of intellectual interactivity, whereby the student gleans and interprets meaning from an original speaker or document," White says. "It's not a replacement for teaching history, it's an enrichment."

Fountains of information

The chief goal of the social studies--to prepare responsible citizens of the world--has not changed. But now students have more tools to pursue it--by grappling with primary sources, developing inquiry skills, devising conceptual structures, and accessing materials beyond the scope of a textbook. "Social studies teachers have had to change the paradigm from teacher-centered to student-learner," says Jack Porter, teacher trainer and high school social studies teacher at Lanier High School in Austin, Texas. "Information doubles every eight months now, so the social studies teacher is not the fountain of information anymore. We have to give kids the framework, then let them get involved in critical thinking and problem solving. Kids can't change historical facts, but they can bring their own interpretations to the particular event under study."

A social studies teacher's classic complaint is that he or she never has enough time to forge beyond the superficial confines of the textbook. "How can you write a book about world history?" asks Porter. "It's always been a matter of prioritizing. Textbook publishers have always taken broad themes and run them through history books."

A project that Porter developed for his 12th-grade American government class is now used by other teachers at Lanier High: Students identify the present phase and predict the future direction of the economy based on leading indicators. Working in teams, the students gather information--going on-line for the current economic indicators--and learn to read graphs and analyze the data. Each team builds a spreadsheet model of their accumulated research. Back on-line, they call up related news stories and import pertinent information into their model. Finally they present the data and justify their predictions to the whole class. "The kids are so motivated by dealing with real-time information," Porter says. "They are designing their own activity, creating models, and making sense of it all. That's powerful learning."

History on a silver platter

History teacher Dick Rattan, in Gaithersburg, Md., says giving students the opportunity to create, research, and cull facts from a variety of sources is "so much better for them than just memorizing the Sugar Act." At Watkins Mill High School, Rattan uses a multimedia teaching station to structure discussions in his U.S. history classes. Whether it's a lesson on protest movements and the American Revolution or outlining Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Alphabet Soup" proposals, Rattan uses HyperCard--a multimedia authoring program--to make his lessons broader and more dynamic.

Rattan is especially keen on incorporating primary source material, such as letters from Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson and journal entries made at the time of the Boston Tea Party. "I don't have to refer students to five different books that they may or may not go look at," he says. "I can create the [HyperCard] stack and add the material I need. Kids can then ask more divergent questions, and I can access my information randomly--the way kids ask questions randomly," Rattan says.

Six years ago, Rattan received some technology training as part of his district's plan to put technology in the classrooms. Since then, he and other teachers have developed lesson plans and designed a HyperCard stack on the American Revolution. He also started a private publishing venture for social studies software; his latest release is a CD-ROM called Powers of Persuasion, which brings together posters, videos, and radio clips about propaganda during World War II. "It's not edutainment," Rattan says, adding that "something like [the computer game] Carmen Sandiego is brutally hard to do in the classroom and make connections according to what you have to teach."

Using CD-ROM, however rich and exhilarating its content, is not a cure-all. "The thing about CD-ROM is it's for presentation or single study," says Bill Everdell, a history teacher at the private St. Ann's School in Brooklyn, N.Y. "You want the student to investigate on his own all the different pathways to information available on CD-ROM."

In Bill Russo's U.S. history and government classes at DaVinci High School, in Buffalo, N.Y., students use multimedia encyclopedias, 3-D atlases, and CD-ROMs to produce their final projects. "We use a lot of CD-ROM," Russo says. "I love it, but I worry that when we overuse technology we lose the cognitive process of learning. Are students understanding the material or merely accessing it? It's the teacher's job to make sure that cognition is not being crushed under gigabytes of information."

Russo started using technology five years ago by happenstance, when a computer that was being removed from a lab ended up in his classroom. "There's a mystique to using computers," he says, "but I started simply and found [them] easy to use." He also has seen that when his students use word processing and a global studies software program, they become more eager to participate in class. "Before, I was Mr. Russo, Information Bank and Encyclopedia and Almanac. Now, I more or less navigate the different directions my students take."

His students use the school's computer lab to produce their final projects, incorporating data from encyclopedias, scanning images, creating charts, and making HyperCard stacks on related topics. Russo believes his students are integrating other skills into social studies: "They're becoming literate across other spectrums," he says. That, in turn, has raised his expectations of students--including those who are not top scholars. "Maybe your basic students can express themselves better through this medium," he says. "We can open up more pathways to knowledge to the lower-achieving student."

But using the computer lab with a class of students isn't always easy. Russo says he sometimes feels like a fireman. "Technology is definitely a help," he says, "but it takes a lot of time. You have to learn it, you have to schedule it, you have to run like a madman while you're in the lab. You have to fight a lot of fires."

Discount archives

The easiest route to using technology in class is to use a videodisc player and select one of the thousands of laser discs available. Laser discs let teachers create customized presentations that meld images, sound, and text to their class lessons. Jam-packed with resources ordinarily dispersed across numerous volumes and recordings, laser discs are preferred by many social studies and history teachers over all other forms of technology.

"[Laser disc] has lots and lots of visual material, the learning time is five minutes, and, it's the cheapest technology out there," says St. Ann's Bill Everdell.

At Skyline High School, in Longmont, Colo., Ginny Jones uses laser discs in her Street Law class to help students visualize how lawyers present theory and evidence to a jury. The class holds a mock trial after they view opening and closing statements from such films as Philadelphia and The Verdict. They also research Supreme Court decisions using a CD-ROM. "I prefer using laser disc with my class," she says. "It's so simple to present a segment to illustrate a point, or to find practical applications from the media on the rights and responsibilities of citizens. It really helps to plug the kids in."

Usually, a laser disc is not a movie to be watched from end to end. Jones uses the laser disc to bring together various images from the past and present. For instance, in discussing whether violence was part of the legacy of Malcolm X, Jones lets the class discussion percolate, as students' voice their opinions--both informed and uninformed. Then she selects segments from news reports on Malcolm X, plus clips from the disc of Spike Lee's recent film.

"My students then see for themselves whether violence played a part in this particular man's history," she says. "They can interpret and make their own connections. It's all right in front of them."

Global classroom

Map archives and global communications are two other ways to shine light into the murky causes of world events. Carla Schutte, a fifth-grade teacher in Arlington, Va., uses a computer atlas to ground her students in the landscape of the world.

Then she and her students use the Internet to climb right inside geography. Long Branch takes part in a project called The Global Schoolhouse: With a computer, a camcorder, and conferencing software (called CU-SeeMe) developed by Cornell University, students and teachers see and talk to their counterparts in other states, as well as in Ireland, France, Germany, and Australia. Schools in the National Science Foundation-funded project work with scientists and others around the world on real environmental issues--such as watershed pollution--using the latest data and publishing their findings electronically.

"Kids have a hard time understanding geography," Schutte explains. "They can learn longitude and latitude and spit it back at us, but unless they have a real experience to relate to it, you have not communicated to them why this is important."

With the new technologies, students and teachers become the architects of what they will learn together, Schutte says. A believer of teaching "process" over content, she adds that "there is no set of facts that [kids must] know when they leave 12th grade. . . . The kinds of understanding that I've seen kids start to develop and the things they start thinking about could not possibly be more sophisticated."

Teachers can consider mastering the new tools a professional challenge. Schutte says she launched herself into technology use by exploring how technology could help her do a better job--and persisted up the learning curve by telling herself, "I can, I can."

She adds: "Even before teachers start using technology, they could try to develop some techniques and strategies--start using cooperative learning, do some team teaching, or just get yourself an e-mail account."

Your efforts will pay off, Schutte tells teachers. "I directly attribute the use of technology for enabling kids to see the reason for doing what they are asked to do--and then wanting to do it better."