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practice (Goodson & Mangan, 1995), and are typically shaped by the subject content, subject pedagogy, and subject assessment (Selwyn, 1999). Teachers are reluctant to adopt a technology that seems incompatible with the norms of a subject culture (Hennessy, Ruthven, & Brindley, 2005). For example, Selwyn (1999) found an art teacher who justified her avoidance of using computers by saying that when painting, one would be more in tune with it if one did it physically with one‘s own hand; the art teacher believed that using a mouse makes one‘s mind and hand disjointed. Another art teacher argued that from an aesthetic point of view, accessing art galleries through a computer can never equal experiencing an actual painting in person.
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this reason that simulation has been a popular resource in social studies since early days of microcomputers in schools. Some simulations allow students to take an active part in historical situations that they would not otherwise even be able to observe due to historical or physical distance. Most such products are designed to immerse students in problem-solving scenarios where they must make decisions and apply information they have learnt. By placing students in the role of decision makers in these simulations, students not only see the relevance of social studies in their daily lives, they also develop better problem-solving skills.
2.5.2 Graphic Representations: Students often have problems visualizing abstract concepts such as timelines and maps. Teachers can use various technologies to represent theses concepts graphically, which can let even novices understand and apply them. Products such as graphing softwares and spreadsheets put data into a concrete form for easier analysis and representation of concepts and allow geographic concepts to be depicted visually.
2.5.3 Digital Storytelling: This is the process of using images and audio to tell the stories of lives, events or eras. With this technique, students use personal narrative to explore community-based history, politics, economics, and geography. This projects offer students the opportunity to make their own lives a part of their scholarly research. The use digital images in the social studies can accomplish many purposes (Berson, 2004;
Berson & Berson, 2003):
1. Assist students in comparing the past and the present.
2. Sensitize students to diverse perspectives and biases.
3. Provide visual cues that reinforce geographic concepts.
4. Represent abstract and concrete social studies concepts (e.g., democracy, liberty, needs and wants).
5. Foster skills in analysis and critical thinking.
6. Facilitate greater connection to the community
7. Personalize association with the study of geography, history, economics, government, and other related disciplines.
One type of digital storytelling requires students to create their own images with camcorders or digital cameras. By sending students into their world with digital camera in hand, teachers provide opportunities for them to bring their lives into the classroom, creating a rich, authentic authoring space. Writing and arranging pictures as artifacts within a digital space allows students to explore events from multiple perspectives. As an extension or adaptation, students might create digital movies about an event, place, or
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individual using the camera to capture scenes and artifacts that would be woven together to tell a particular story. Students can also collect audio available on websites and by interviewing people in their communities. These can be in the form of oral histories or music that helps tell the history of a period or place.
2.5.4 Virtual Trips: These are visits that students make to Internet sites to see places they could not easily go in real life or that can help them get more out of the visit they are able to take. Virtual trips do not have the interactive qualities of the simulated environments, but they have some of the same instructional benefits. Visiting these foreign locations gives students a richer, more comprehensive perspective on the world around them and makes the world a living part of their classroom. For students who may travel little, the wealth of images and information from virtual trips help them understand the variety of cultures, sights, and events outside their own communities. To best explain methods of using virtual trips in the classroom, Beal and Mason, (1999) described four different objectives of virtual field trips and these are:
1. To help students synthesize what they learnt on a class field trip.
2. To prepare students for an upcoming class field trip.
3. To provide students with information about areas they are unable to visit as a class.
4. To provide students with information about areas their teachers visited.
2.5.5 Digital Information Critiques: History is replete with examples of using manipulated images to control people‘s impressions and opinions. Part of developing skills as citizens in a digital age is to learn how to critically evaluate digital information. Students have to learn how to analyze images and tell facts from fiction. Social studies activities provide a context for simultaneously exploring the social impact of images while developing media literary skills (Van Hover, Swan, & Berson, 2004)
2.5.6 Electronic Research: As students study areas such as politics, economics, and current events, information is likely to change quickly and frequently. Internet sources give student and teachers up-to-date information they could not obtain easily from any other sources. Also, access to information summaries and examples of data pictures on the Internet help students learn to analyze information in both graphic and text forms. Since we are relying more and more on Internet sources for reliable, up-to-date information, students must learn where they can look for various types of data and facts they need to complete research in schools and, later, at work.
2.5.7 GIS and GPS Lessons: Since Geographic Information Systems (GISs)house a wealth of information about the surface of the earth and provides tools for viewing, manipulating,
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and analyzing the information, the result is a highly graphic way of looking at numerical information, such as population information overlaid on an area map. GIS is a very powerful tool that can allow exploration of relationship between people and their environment. This technology is becoming a very popular way to help students visualize data distributed over geographical areas.
Another tool that helps students to look at geography from many different perspectives is a Global Positioning System (GPS). Larry (2004) describes a popular GPS activity in the classroom called geocaching. She calls a ―high-tech, worldwide treasure hunt…where a person hides a cache for others to find‖. Students look at a database of caches at the geocachig website, decide on cache to hunt for, and use GPS to help them locate it.
2.5.8 Practice of Factual Information: A more traditional but still useful integration strategy is having students use drill-and-practice, instructional game softwares, or pay-to-view Internet sites to help them learn and remember important facts such as states and capitals and dates of important events.
2.5.9 Student Tele-collaborations: Email and Internet-based projects offer a way for students in distance locations to work together to share perspectives and gain insights that would not be possible if they worked by themselves. Such projects are often called telecollaborations. As students collaborate to study a topic or create a product, these projects promote communication, encourage reflection, and provide a wealth of information to support students‘ research.