The Role of Collaboration
These middle-school students are growing up in an era where it has become commonplace to use technology for constant communication with peers (Lenhart, Madden, Macgill, & Smith, 2007). According to these teachers, students respond well to projects that ask them to work together and share their ideas or products with an audience, either in-school or online. Collaboration, however, is important not only for the students but also for the teachers. Many of these teachers found inspiration and ideas for their projects with other teachers or with the library media specialist. One veteran teacher, when asked if his project was an original idea, responded with the following statement:
I don’t know that I’ve had an original idea. I survived in 38 years with stealing from all my good colleagues. And I’m very much a 19th century guy, so coming here was really–I’m really relatively new to technology, so all these ideas I’ve been writing down notes, this is great, fantastic. But I think a lot of the stuff is working with colleagues, so which is the same–the librarian comes in with this good thing. We had a chance to go to a Holocaust project, deal with that, and you look at what’s there and you say oh, I think we can use that, and you talk with someone and it comes out.
Another teacher also said
I mean I like to think all my ideas are original, but they’re pulled from everybody else. I mean it’s sort of a little bit here, a little bit there, and then I make it my own, and go to the library and say ‘I really want something with primary and secondary sources,’ and so it’s just sort of a joint effort.
The school media specialist emerged to play an important role. One participant commented, “They all go to the media specialist who then turns them on to the stuff.”
What was surprising about this focus group of social studies teachers was that a clear majority was actively using technology to enhance social studies. The second most striking outcome was that although they were utilizing some content-based websites, they were most often using technologies to have students create technology products that incorporated the content. While there is often a call for content-based technology products to be available, it was the active creation of digital products that was most often cited as the engaging activity.
While at some level, the request for this particular information was posed as the central goal of the focus group, within the social discourse setting–teachers from area schools together in one room, hearing one another for the first time, and perhaps wanting to “fit in” as they presented themselves publicly–were encouraged to speak more about their uses of technology than of other media. The enthusiasm for using these technologies was however highly evident.
As the teachers listened to one another and represented their own middle school practice, their stories became more animated. In many ways, this focus group’s reporting may indicate a greater latitude for integrating technology in middle school social studies settings as compared to other grade levels. This may be due to greater interdisciplinary collaboration amongst middle school teams. The proclivities of middle school students to use these media also contribute to their implementation.
Another surprising finding was the new focus on skills; it was refreshing to hear teachers articulating their commitment to developing skills and using these media as the method and pedagogy by which content was learned. This is particularly significant given the climate and demands of content-based testing. Do these teachers see more content being better learned through the application of these technologies? This is apparent in one 8th grade teacher’s statement
I’ll explain it to you. I think we get too content conscious. I’ve heard this from a lot of my colleagues and I heard it a couple times in this room, that they’re worried about the timing. They’re worried about okay, how much time should I spend on this? I’ve become a skills-driven teacher. I teach skills. I use social studies or American history to teach the skills. So I’m not caught up on whether I teach every single battle of the Civil War. I use three battles to teach the Civil War. But I teach the kids skills to critically think, to write, to analyze in the midst of that, to research. That’s what I’m there for because these kids are going to get the same content in high school, and I think my job as an eighth grade teacher is to prepare the kids for the next level, and be able to do the things they need to succeed on that level, and that’s the type of teacher I’ve become, and it’s working.
Another teacher commented on teaching information literacy skills to students:
Social studies and ITL, Information Technology Literacy, they sort of blend very well together. And with an assignment like that, if you’re looking at ITL skills, finding information, figuring out what piece of information is the correct information and then figuring out how am I going to synthesize the information together and make a presentation. It sort of blends together.
Teachers mentioned their training with these technologies and the cultural milieu of students being versed in them, acting as technology “cultural agents” of innovations such as digital imagery, podcasting, and digital videography.
Conditions for Successful Classroom Integration
Having access to technology, as most of these schools do, is not enough. It takes equipment and quite a bit of time to learn, for both the teachers and students. This time should, according to many of the teachers, be class time: “Give the kids class time to do it, so you’re there to help them. Don’t let them walk out of class and expect them to do it.” One teacher who has been doing an iMovie project for six years felt that it has taken six years for it to “hit its plateau.”
Without providing class time to actually teach the technology tool, the students will struggle with both new content and new technology at the same time. The library media specialist or other technical staff will often have to bear the burden from a teacher who has not adequately prepared the class:
I can’t tell you how many times kids have said, ‘Oh, let me make a video!’ And their teacher says, ‘Fine, you go make a video.’ And then they land on my doorstep and they don’t understand the complexity of the project they have just undertaken. They don’t understand that they need a storyboard, that – all those things that you guys do, that you just go to it and then it sometimes just flops because they weren’t prepared to make the effort to make something that’s quality, unless they have a lot of guidance with that. You get standup comedy that’s not so good so far.
According to the focus group, there are other preconditions for successful integration of technology: curriculum, audience, and visual learning.
Curriculum:
I think another big piece is you have to let the curriculum piece drive the technology … to have standards, central questions, and that’s–the technology is the piece that enhances the curriculum. And that’s the way it has to be designed in order for it to be truly meaningful.
Audience:
You have to know your audience as well. You have to know what the kids are going to be excited about. You can’t try and force them to be excited about a subject that you’re not getting that feedback. But if you see that there’s a spark there, run with it. You can’t try and force it onto them, I don’t think at least.
Visual learning:
There’s one fundamental thing which I think–I’m finding eighth graders have a very difficult time dealing with, when they go to a visual medium. It’s understanding that they have to structure it very differently as a visual than an auditory medium. Oftentimes it’s a picture of them doing auditory things. And to get them to talk, you’re speaking to the right half of the brain, you’re speaking to the visual side, the spatial side, that’s a very difficult thing for them to get. Once they get it, the technology itself, they can handle it beautifully. But I find that a lot of kids will do a video, and technologically they’ll put in all this stuff, they get the background sound, do all this great stuff, but a lot of it is not doing–attesting to the audience on the visual side.
Conclusions and Implications
Several of the teachers in the focus group mentioned the shifting roles of students taking initiative in creating digital stories and products. Some of teachers’ inhibitions about the change in the locus of control were being bridged in these classrooms. There is often an assumption that youths who are adept at using technology tools understand the complexities of using technology to demonstrate their knowledge of content. Even though many middle school students can fire off rapid text messages on a cell phone, have multiple instant messaging chat windows open, and easily post content to a website, they still need the teacher to provide scaffolding to use technology in the context of learning.
Factors that became evident to the research team were the “digital divide” issues among the teachers. While number of years in the classroom did not affect curricular innovation, (in this focus group the self-admitted non-technology user was a proven and published innovator), the demographic of the school communities was a definite factor that teachers identified as significantly affecting their classroom technology integration. In particular, the level of professional development and support of library media specialists is key. The school media specialist discussed her ability to support the teachers in her school:
I spend a lot of time showing people great stuff. I have multimedia pages, but nobody has any time. And professional development is the key, and the way that you–I think the best way to deliver it is, like Teaching Books [http://www.teachingbooks.net/] now has. You can watch a 15 minute little video broadcast when you’re ready to learn how to use something. So you need point of need instruction that those teachers … Just-in-time training, and it has to be 15 minutes a pop. So organize it in such a nice little way, here’s what I need, 15 minutes, I can find 15 minutes.
Therefore, while studies on student demographics point to digital equity issues, so also would the district-level demographics affect what teachers had accessible, as well as the district’s provision (or non-provision) and commitment to professional development (Freesmeyer, Nelson & Greer, 2003). These issues could not be further investigated in the initial focus group, but ensuing focus groups will be composed of teachers from different districts to balance these findings.
The research team drew from the focus group findings that curriculum to be developed for the project might more closely resemble the types of sources teachers were currently using. Applying Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations theory, this process is known as “matching” (Rogers, 2003), during which the producers of the innovation negotiate with the potential users or market for the innovation (see http://nnlm.gov/evaluation/pub/bowes/Image3.gif ). By operationalizing the “matching” process, the video producers are trying to minimize the distance, or overcome the barriers to use or adoption of the innovation by its intended users or markets. For example, here the focus group explains to the facilitator their needs to have materials that are flexible and adaptable to their own classrooms:
| Facilitator: |
What are the sites, and how many people–how many people actually think of and go to sites to find teaching materials that they modify and–but use with some regularity, a couple times a year. Are there sites that you refer–that you go to, to find good teaching materials? |
| Teacher 1: |
I have a comment. That’s a very loaded question. |
| Facilitator: |
Oh, how so? |
| Teacher 1: |
Because I don’t think any of us can actually go to a website, print out a lesson and do it tit for tat. |
| Facilitator: |
We are not saying that. We’re saying sources for you. Sources that are not Google–I mean look, before Google, the Web was a place that was–institutions had websites and you would go to them |
| Teacher 1: |
In that case I think there’s too much out there. It’s impossible to go through all this stuff. |
| Facilitator: |
No, I don’t mean all through. Are there ones that you like that you go to with some regularity? National Geographic, you’re a geography teacher. Do you go to National Geographic? |
| Teacher 1: |
Once in a while. |
| Facilitator: |
So this is what I’m asking. Are there sites that you go to find stuff? |
| Teacher 2: |
United Streaming. Fantastic for video clips. But not so heavy on lesson plans. |
Teacher 3: |
No, not at all. |
| Teacher 4: |
Library of Congress, I mean this idea of the American experience. There’s lessons up there but you don’t need to use them. They group the images–say I’m teaching Civil War. You can click on reconstruction, and they will have images grouped. I’m not–you can’t print out a lesson plan, that’s ridiculous. They don’t have your kids. So this idea that there are things grouped together that can be easily inserted into an idea that you already have. |
| Facilitator: |
How many people understand what he just said? |
| Teacher 5: |
I do. |
| Teacher 6: |
That’s what I do. |
The fact that teachers were willing to enter into this type of a process was not only encouraging and exciting for the researchers and developers but for the teachers, as well. Although this research and development model is one that has not been sufficiently used to include teachers in the process of designing innovations, it may prove to bridge some of the gaps between research and practice. Determining cultural and developmental factors in student learning and technology use, and collaboratively constructing technology-enhanced learning environments may provide useful insights and directions. As developers seek to create technology-driven content for use in the classroom, it is essential to elicit feedback from the audience that will be using the technology.
Finally, if teaching social studies combines the standards of teaching history as presented by the National Center for History in the Schools (NCHS, 2005) and those promoted by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2007), a broader application of social studies learning is facilitated. These standards include the following: Information literacy, Media literacy and ICT (Information, communication and technology) literacy, and Creativity and innovation. For students to be able to apply (or conduct) social studies, the combining of these standards that guide the Young American Heroes project moves beyond traditional content goals to applied learning.
