Thomas Hammond

Teachers' Instructional Choices with Student-Created Digital Documentaries: Case Studies

Abstract This article describes qualitative case studies of two teachers who integrated student-created digital documentaries into their social studies classrooms. Thornton’s (2001a) concept of the teacher as curricular gatekeeper and Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framed the study. The teachers worked within the constraints of a very detailed mandatory curriculum, taught very similar content, and used the same online digital documentary tool. Despite these similarities, they planned and executed their projects in divergent ways. We found that the teachers’ pedagogical aims, rather than the technology or content, dominated both their planned and enacted curriculum.

Developing Web 2.0 Tools for Support of Historical Inquiry in Social Studies

ABSTRACT Web 2.0 tools offer new possibilities for teaching and learning. PrimaryAccess is a Web 2.0 tool designed for K-12 history education. PrimaryAccess shares many of the characteristics of other Web 2.0 applications, but its educational focus makes it different from generic Web applications. Our work developing and researching PrimaryAccess has helped identify the tensions and opportunities for integrating Web 2.0 tools into K–12 instruction. Web 2.0 tool development and use are best explored in a disciplinary context. Mishra and Koehlers construct of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) provides a useful framework for this research and development process.

“You know you can do this, right?”: developing geospatial technological pedagogical content knowledge and enhancing teachers’ cartographic practices with socio-environmental science investigations

ABSTRACT Many barriers exist to K–12 classroom teachers’ adoption and implementation of geospatial technologies with their students. To address this circumstance, we have developed and implemented a geospatial curriculum approach to promote teachers’ professional growth with curriculum-linked professional development (PD) to support the adoption of socio-environmental science investigations (SESI) in an urban school environment that includes reluctant learners. SESI focus on social issues related to environmental science. The pedagogy is inquiry-driven, with students engaged in map-based mobile data collection and subsequent analysis with Web-based dynamic mapping software to answer open-ended questions. Working with four science and social studies teachers, we designed and implemented a sequence of three locally oriented, geospatial inquiry projects that were implemented with 140 9th grade students. We investigated how the geospatial curriculum approach impacted the teachers’ geospatial pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), their cartographic practices, and promoted geospatial thinking and analysis skills with their students. Findings revealed strong growth in teachers’ geospatial PCK, increased map use by teachers, use of maps as media for inquiry and not didactic instruction, and modeling to guide students’ geospatial analysis using GIS. Implications for PD to promote teachers’ geospatial PCK and in-class cartographic practices are discussed.

Redefining the Longitude/Latitude Experience with a Scaffolded Geocache

Latitude and longitude are foundational concepts for geography education, yet they are typically poorly understood by students and receive indifferent attention from instructors and publishers’ materials. Social studies teachers can take advantage of increasingly ubiquitous geolocating devices such as Global Positions Systems (GPS) to provide students with a hands-on experience of latitude and longitude to promote spatial thinking skills. We present one such approach, a simplified, scaffolded version of a geocache designed to fit within a single class period: working in pairs, students will use a GPS (or other geolocating device, such as a smartphone) to navigate among several targets set up by the teacher. Students’ conceptions and opportunities for extension and application are discussed.