Reading Selection #1

Shriner, Daniel A Clark, Melissa Nail, Bethanne M Schlee, and Rebecca Libler. "Social Studies Instruction:     Changing Teacher Confidence in Classrooms Enhanced by Technology." The Social Studies 101 (2010):  37-45. 

Being that my discipline is social studies this article was a perfect read for me. It was a study based on enhancing technology use by social study teachers, but it really gave me a lot of ideas and insight on technology as it relates to social studies in a classroom. I had some ideas on ways to use technology in classrooms but this opened up my eyes to a few new things.

The main points of the study was to discuss how social studies teachers tend not to use as much technology based instruction in their social studies classroom. The study was then conducted as a workshop to also help show the teachers new and exciting ways technology can be a part of a social studies classroom. The people hosting the workshop went through several examples of technology based lessons that apply for social studies.

The aspect of the study I like the most was the introduction of different techniques of how to use technology for social studies. Social Studies and history in general is a subject that involves a lot of imagination to really try and get a good feeling for the topic that you are covering. It is often hard to really see and understand what things were like for the people or places you are studying. One technique I liked was the Virtual Field Trips. The workshop discussed how teachers can go about finding virtual field trips online, and also how they can create their own using PowerPoint's or similar tools. They also discussed how they can have their students put together virtual field trips by taking their own pictures, uploading them to the computer and sharing them with their classmates.

This article did not necessarily teach me specifics of how to make my class room more efficient, effective, and engaging, but it gave ideas on how I can do that. the article discusses the workshops and the topics and ideas discussed. These discussion have given me ideas, but the article is not nearly as effective as it would have been for me to actually have attended the workshop itself. I have and idea on the strategies but not the complete now how as to go ahead and proceed with them right now.