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Question:How Should We Engage Students with Technology and Media in our Social Studies Classroom 

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Question:How Should We Engage Students with Technology and Media in our Social Studies Classroom 

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Answer 1: Students can Engage with Technology making sure it allows them to Construct, Collaborate, and Create

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Answer 1: Students can Engage with Technology making sure it allows them to Construct, Collaborate, and Create

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To ensure students are engaged with technology, especially in a social studies classroom, ensure that students have the opportunity to construct, collaborate, and create. For example, the term construct when it comes to technology and students, means to "allow students to construct their own ideas in order to create personal meaning" (Sharma Para. 7). This can be seen in a social studies classroom through the action of allowing students to look through different online primary sources or articles on historical topics, and by letting the students decide which was more effective and why. This simple activity with technology can promote critical thinking skills for a student and allow them to feel more involved in the learning process. In terms of collaboration and creation, technology can allow students to work together in untapped ways and allow them methods to design and make new products to display their learning. By doing this, students will be more interested in hearing what other classmates have to say and feel like they can showcase their learning in an intriguing way, which in turn will engage the students. For example, in a social studies classroom, heightening students' skills of collaboration and creation through technology such as through creating a personalized product detailing a historical event, or through interactive ways to communicate amongst classmates more powerfully, can truly help students engage with the topic, all in due part to technology. Overall, to engage students with technology and media in a social studies classroom, you have to ensure them that technology offers the opportunity to construct their own personally crafted meaning, the chance to collaborate in new powerful ways on topics, and new opportunities to showcase their learning in creative ways.

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Students engage deeply in class when tech tools encourage them to construct ideas, collaborate with peers, and create unique work.

Over my years as a secondary school teacher, I've attended professional development opportunities that introduced me to new classroom technology that piqued my interest. I enjoyed playing and interacting with the new technology, and I assumed that my students would too. I'd go home and redo my lesson plan for the next day so that I could incorporate the new technology.

The next day, my anticipation couldn't be contained as my students walked into the classroom because I was excited to see them engage with the classroom technology that would guide their learning. On a number of occasions, the result was unanticipated disengagement. At times, they would outright refuse to participate in the activity.

Finding the Right Tech for Your Class Is a Process

Engagement is crucial. I want my students to participate in class discussions, ask questions, comment on their peers' ideas, take notes, read out loud, post in online classroom discussion threads, and probe deeply into what they're reading. These are all visible indicators of student engagement, and research supports the idea that student engagement leads to academic achievement.

I've seen digital technology capture my students' attention; it seemed natural that it would be a valuable educational tool. However, I've also seen students disengage from technology. Therefore, I sought to understand how I could leverage it to support their learning. When I was standing in front of my disengaged students and needing to spontaneously come up with a new lesson plan, I learned the hard way that I can't assume that digital technology inherently engages students.
"I like being able to come up with different types of ideas... things we didn't discuss in class."
By intertwining my own PhD research with my experiences as a classroom teacher before and after the pandemic, I've found that technology engages students when it allows for students to do what I call the 3Cs: construct, collaborate, create.

When technology is used as a tool to transmit information to students to read and memorize, students will disengage by opting out of the task. Instead, we can use technology to allow students to construct their own ideas in order to create personal meaning. Technology is effective when used as a tool for knowledge construction, not knowledge consumption.

In the classroom, this looks like having students read two news articles on the same topic and then letting them decide which article was more persuasive. This allows students to access recent texts through technology, but it also allows them to sort through their own thoughts to decide which article was more effective. Students are able to use technology to construct their own ideas.
"I don't want to quietly sit at a computer and work by myself. I can do that at home. I want to be able to work with other people."
Collaborate

When technology is used as a tool to foster collaboration with others within and beyond the classroom, it will engage students. As educators, we need to position technology to facilitate activities that foster social interaction.

Sometimes, we imagine classroom technology to be isolating-students quietly sitting at their desks working on a computer. Instead, we can use it as a tool for communication. For example, I've had groups of students gather around a single device to watch a short video. Yes, they could all watch it at their own desk on their own device, but positioning technology this way allows students to pause the video, talk to their peers, and rewind and rewatch as necessary.
"I know that I could create without the technology, but the technology means that I can create something better, something I couldn't create without the technology."
This huddled viewing makes the activity interactive and collaborative. Students continue to process their own ideas and engage with their peers to help refine them further.

Technology leads to student engagement when it's a tool that allows students to design, build, and perform tasks that would otherwise be difficult for them to do without access to the technological tools. Students feel accomplished when they create a product that's different from everyone else's. If we can design an evaluation task that allows them to choose how they'll design their final product and provide them with the technological tools to do so, the technology will engage them.

For example, I've had students redesign the cover of a book they've read in their secondary English classroom so that the book can be marketed to preschoolers. This enables them to consider colors, shapes, and images that would appeal to preschoolers and subsequently design, build, and create something that's new and doesn't exist.

Uniting the 3Cs

Despite the amount of learning that happened through and with technology during the pandemic, I've noticed that students still find it engaging. However, I've found that rather than tasks that allow for one of the 3Cs, tasks that unite all of the 3Cs foster greater engagement that can be sustained over several classes. The 3Cs allow students to inquire, connect, and design-three facets of education that emergency remote pandemic learning eroded. To rebuild these important skills, I implemented a task that unites the 3Cs.

This activity gave students voice and choice, and the result was that they created work that they were proud to submit for evaluation. Some products included a radio ad, a TikTok video, an Instagram post, a city bus advertising wrap, an infomercial, a television commercial, a rap with a music video, and a magazine ad. What my students created was beyond what I could have suggested because they had creative skills and media knowledge that I hadn't been aware of until this project.

I learned that when we design an activity that unites the 3Cs, it's a gateway to invite student engagement.

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Supporting Student Engagement With Technology

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Students engage deeply in class when tech tools encourage them to construct ideas, collaborate with peers, and create unique work.

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Answer 2: Use Technology to Foster Critical Thinking and Authentic Learning for Students in a Social Studies Classroom

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Answer 2: Use Technology to Foster Critical Thinking and Authentic Learning for Students in a Social Studies Classroom

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Students use technology every day with smartphones, computers, etc... However, they aren't always challenged mentally when using these devices. To challenge students and help develop important learning skills, teachers in a social studies classroom need to develop technologically involved activities that push students to build inquiry, think critically, and understand different perspectives. This can be done in a multitude of ways. For example, by analyzing the bias that AI may have in responding to historical questions, students can begin to inquire into why the answers are inaccurate and discover why there are missing perspectives. By uncovering this, students will be able to discuss, use critical thinking skills, and do perspective analysis, which in turn leads to students having more focused research on the subject and learning more about historical topics while enhancing their learning skills.

Besides using technology to enhance critical thinking skills by finding biases in AI, teachers in social studies classrooms can use technology to promote students' civic nature and engage students in the world around them. For example, social studies teachers can use technology to showcase to students new perspectives, issues, and community challenges in unique ways that have been shown to students before. By doing this, students will uncover the unique challenges that befall their generation and will be intrigued to understand more about them. However, not only will they learn more about these issues, but they will find potential solutions to these issues using their devices. By doing this, they are learning about the history of the world around them but also discovering ways that they can be civically active as well. This is all possible by using engaging technology in the classroom to promote better civic energy among students. This, in turn, not only makes them future civic leaders but also hone their technological skills and critical thinking skills, which in a social studies classroom is pivotal.

These two examples showcase key ways to engage students with technology and media in the social studies classroom by finding unique and creative ways for students to showcase their foundational critical thinking skills. Overall, by challenging students to uncover more information using technological devices, they are developing their learning skills and becoming more engaged with the technology that positively surrounds them.

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With these different methods, teachers in social studies classrooms can engage students in a variety of ways with technology and media. As previously mentioned, activities such as allowing students to be creative and constructive when using technology to understand historical topics better, or even looking at AI and understanding the missing information that comes with new technology. These different examples showcase a variety of ways that technology and media can play a crucial role in the social studies classroom as a gateway for deeper understanding of historical topics, as a way for students to showcase their understandings in new ways, and as a tool that can help promote critical thinking skills as students use technology to truly find more information. In conclusion, by doing a variety of thought-provoking activities and tapping into students' technological skills, teachers in social studies classrooms can create a stronger learning environment and more engaged classroom through the use of technology and media.