learningconnections
Social Studies 26 • Visual Arts 28 • Science 30 • Multidisciplinary 32, 34
By Mark Hofer and Judi Harris
Tech Integration in Social Studies
Web-based archives of pri- mary source documents, student-produced podcasts
and documentaries, content review
games, and more provide social
studies teachers with opportunities
to integrate educational technologies into their teaching in student-centered ways. Yet, despite increasing
access in schools, technology is often
an add-on or enhancement to a lesson
rather than something that is truly
integrated into teaching and learning. How can technology integration
efforts focus on the curriculum-based
learning needs of students while
exploiting the educational benefits
of tools and resources?
One way to help teachers integrate
technology effectively is to focus on
instructional planning. We suggest
matching technology integration strategies to how teachers plan, rather than
asking teachers to plan instruction
around technologies. (See Grounded
Tech Integration on page 22.)
istockphoto.com/stereohype
Because research demonstrates
that teachers organize their lessons
according to content-based learning
activities, we think what is needed
is a way to think about planning for
technology integration that focuses
primarily on learning activities and
secondarily on technology tools and
resources. To assist teachers in their
instructional planning, we offer a
comprehensive set of learning activity
types for each curriculum area, with
specific educational technologies that
best support the types of learning for
each activity. Because we have identified many learning activity types for
each curriculum area, we have
organized them into
subcategories so that each
content-based collection forms an
informal taxonomy. Once teachers
have determined the learning goals
for a particular lesson, project, or unit,
they can review the activity types in
the taxonomy for that content area,
selecting and combining the learning
activities that will best help students
achieve the selected learning goals. By
first selecting the learning activities
and then considering the suggested
educational technologies for each
of the learning activities in the taxonomy, teachers may be more likely
to select technologies to support the
plan in sensible, practical, and usable
ways. We think of this as “grounded”
technology integration, because it is
based in content, pedagogy, and how
teachers plan instruction.
Social Studies Learning Activity Types
To date, we’ve identified 42 activity
types for social studies teaching and
learning.
Complete tax-
onomies for each
content area are available
on the Activity Types Wiki (http://
activitytypes.wmwikis.net). In the
tables that follow, we’ve provided brief
descriptions of sample activity types,
along with technologies that may be
used to support each.
Fifteen of the 42 social studies activity
types focus on helping students build
their knowledge of social studies content,
concepts, and processes. (See Knowledge-Building Activities.)
Twenty-seven of the 42 social
studies learning activity types provide
students with opportunities to express
their understanding of curriculum
topics developed through knowledge-building activities, both formatively and summatively. Six of these
knowledge-expression activity types
encourage convergent understandings
of a topic or an idea. (See Convergent
Knowledge-Expression Activities.)
