The following is a report of my sabbatical study granted by the College of Education for the 1997 spring semester.
PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES
As stated in the original proposal for this sabbatical leave:
"the purpose of this sabbatical leave will be to study the rapidly changing ways that teachers can deliver curriculum with the interactive technology of the WWW and how this impacts instructional practices. The proposed project will result in changes incorporated into the courses I teach that reflect curriculum delivery with interactive technology. Thus, the teacher preparation work that I do as a result of this project will model the changes in conceptions of teaching and learning described above. In addition, the project can serve as a model of teacher preparation using interactive technology for other faculty in the College of Education."
From this purpose statement, five possible activities were identified in the original proposal. I would now like to restate these "proposed" activities as objectives and describe (or where appropriate, link the reader to) the actual activity that took place. The objectives of this sabbatical leave were to:
2. Observe and interview elementary teachers and students regarding their perceptions of how the Internet/WWW is changing the way they work and learn; a variety of schools representing rural, urban, and suburban communities will be included.
3. Develop a rubric for evaluating World Wide Web Sites related to elementary social studies and prepare a link of World Wide Web social studies resources.
4. Review elementary social studies course materials and where appropriate post materials to the world wide web.
5. Author and submit to professional journals two articles related to technology and elementary social studies.
In addition to the benefits obtained from meeting the above five objectives, there were additional outcomes from this sabbatical study. These unanticipated outcomes will be provided as a concluding section to the report of activities that follows.
OBJECTIVE ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW
The following books were used for background readings on technology:
· Turkle, Sherry (1995). Life on the screen: identity in the age of the Internet. New York : Simon & Schuster.
For background reading on assessment, the following books (or book sections) were sources:
Herman, Joan L.; Aschbacher, Pamela R. and Lynn Winters. (1992). Practical Guide to Alternative Assessment. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Articles related to the impact of technology on either social studies or teacher education, as well as articles on assessment, were selected from the following past two years' issues of the following professional journals:
Additionally, the past two years of the "Power Tools" column from Phi Delta Kappan was also a source of reading.
The Internet itself provided some of the most important reading Accomplished during the spring. Subscriptions to three professional listservs yielded messages daily that were relevant to the focus of my study. The most important of these messages are archived on disk for future reference; similarly, I bookmarker WWW sites that were often the subject of listserv messages.
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OBJECTIVE TWO: DATA COLLECTION
The collection of data from elementary teachers and students regarding the use of the Internet as an instructional tool in social studies proceeded in the following fashion.
Before the end of January, faculty from around campus with expertise in using the Internet for instructional purposes were asked to serve as a focus group. Ten such faculty participated and their responses to probes were used as the basis for constructing both teacher-interview probes and survey items. Instruments used in a study conducted by the Center for Applied Special Technology were modified for the purpose of this study (Follansbees, 1996). It was fortunate that this related study came on-line at the beginning of my sabbatical and was available.
Once the items were constructed and reviewed by a panel of experts (again faculty from campus with relevant expertise in either technology or social studies served as item reviewers) and permission granted from the Institutional Review Board to use human subjects for this research, potential sites for collecting data we reconfirmed.
As originally planned, a variety of schools representing rural (n=3), urban=1), and suburban (n=2) communities were included in this study. Subjects included forth sample used in the study included sixth (n = 10) or fifth (n = 5) grade social studies teachers (total n = 15) and students in their classes (n =336). Subject-selection was limited to teachers using the Internet as part of their social studies curriculum. Schools were identified through professional organizations, the State Department of Education, or articles in local newspapers.
Beginning in February parents of students were contacted and permission sought for their child's participation. By the beginning of March, surveys we redistributed to all participating schools and a schedule of interviews for teachers arranged.
Data collection began in mid-March but was extended past the endow the sabbatical semester for a month to provide optimal time for observations of student use of the Internet. During the summer months the data sets we reorganized and encoded for computerized analysis which will be completed within the next two weeks. A follow-up letter was mailed tall administrators and teachers involved in this study which contains timeline for the final report of the data analysis and findings.
While the analysis of the survey data is still on-going, a preliminary analysis of the interviews with teachers revealed some common concerns and issues regarding the use of the Internet as an instructional tool. There was a set of questions that guided each interview and teacher comments were tape-recorded. In summary, here are some of the key findings from the interviews:
· Teachers all expressed a lack of time to search the Internet for resourcestheymight use in their classrooms. "There simply aren't enough hours in the day to look through all that is available" was a typical comment.
· The vast amount of information and the speed with which it could beaccessedwere the top reasons that teachers use the Internet in their classrooms for instruction.
· Most teachers restricted student searches of the Internet to predetermined sites or permission for an "open" search were conducted under the direct supervision of the teacher or an aide.
· A surprising revelation was the fact that while the Internet was used extensively as a resource for both students and teachers, there was little thought given to assess how much students learned as a result. Whatever assessment was taking place regarding student learning and the Internet wasvery informal when existent.
· Most surprisingly, only two teachers were actually involved in theproduction of homepages; "others with the expertise in HTML coding," wererelied upon for the production of a class or school homepage. Again, time wasthe reason given as to why teachers had not learned HTML for constructing theirown homepages. One of the two teachers whose class was involved in producing ahomepage indicated a rather low-level of confidence and skill in using HTML,proclaiming that students assisted her a great deal regarding the coding ofHTML. She also indicated that when things "didn't work" the class soughtassistance by posting their questions on the Internet. Despite the teacher'sexpressed naivete, this represents a very appropriate use of the Internet: as tool forcommunicatingideas and sharing information.
One of the teachers involved in the data collection, Ms. Linda Ash, is thechair of the Elementary Technology Network -- a special interest group of theAssociation of Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). She has asked me to present my findingsat the next ASCD meeting to be held in San Antonio in March.
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OBJECTIVE THREE: DEVELOPING A RUBRIC AND IDENTIFYING SOCIAL STUDIES RESOURCES
While a good number of rubrics for evaluating WWW sites are availableon-line, none focus on the goals of social studies instruction. The goal ofthis project was met and a rubric focusing on social studies goals wasdeveloped. This rubric is being used as an assignment in C&I 258 which is the course I primarily teach.
K-12 social studies curriculum resources found on the WWW were reviewed,bookmarked, and a Web Page of the best links wascompiled and is posted on the COE server. A key element of these resources isthe Illinois Goals for Academic Progress (IGAP)alternativeassessment rubric. I served as a consultant on the development of this WWWsite during my sabbatical. I also posted this link's location to severallistservs and responded to e-mail I received. I will be making a presentationon the IGAPrubric at the Illinois Council for the Social Studies this fall (see additional outcomes).
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OBJECTIVE FOUR: INTEGRATING INTERNET TECHNOLOGY AS A RESOURCE INTO COURSESTAUGHT
In addition to incorporating the rubricassignment in C&I 258 - ElementarySocial Studies Methods, I integrated technology into my syllabus and coursecontent in other ways. I developed a Web Page describing the Teacher Education Walkabout , a modelaround which I organize course assignments; to this page I linked examples ofpreviousstudents projects completed as part of a Teacher Education Walkabout. I also designed a Web Site for teaching contentarea reading strategiesusing coal mining as a theme. This same site was used by a colleague in thedepartment in a course taughtthis summer.
Digitized files of video clips were developed andplaced on the server in Instructional Technology Services and made availablethrough my electronic teacher education portfolio. I also gave a summerworkshop through Center forAdvancement in Teaching (see additional outcomes).
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OBJECTIVE FIVE: JOURNAL ARTICLES
Just prior to the beginning of the sabbatical a manuscript was solicited fromme by the editor of a special issue on the Internet for the journal ofthe National Council for the SocialStudies. The article was authored during the first month of the sabbaticaland appeared in the March issue of Social Education. I have a copy of thisissue of the journal available as a hard copy appendix.In response to a call for manuscripts for a theme issue of EducationalLeadership, a second article was prepared in the last month of my sabbatical.It was submitted the end of May and rejected by the editors. The manuscript is currently being revised and will beresubmitted.
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ADDITIONAL OUTCOMES AND CONCLUDING COMMENTS
book
revision - - The mostsignificant unanticipated outcomefrom the sabbatical
was the opportunity to revise a book that I am coauthoring.Franklin Beedle and
Associates will publish this book
later this year. Althoughthe book was at the publishers and in production the
editor, my othercoauthors, and I decided to pull certain chapters and revise
them in light ofthe articles that appeared in the March Issue of Social
Education and otherrecent developments. All involved in the publication of this
book believe therevisions will make this book on technology and social studies
much morecurrent -- a difficult task in a field that is so rapidly-changing (technology,not
social studies, is the rapidly-changing field: there are some who wouldargue
that social studies hardly changes at all!).
American
Memory Fellowship - - Anne Gosch, the media center director for Bloomington
Junior High School, and Imade a team application to the American Memory
Fellowship which was call forproprosals to attend an institute for a week and
add to the offerings of theAmerican Memory Collection sponsored by the Library
of Congress. The proposalwas about five pages. We, unfortunately, were not
selected as a fellowshipteam.
future
publication - - Asanother outgrowth of the SocialEducation article, a
colleague in social studies education at the University ofIndiana and I are in
the process of submitting a proposal to the Director ofPublications for the National
Council forthe Social Studies to edit a bulletin on the Internet to be
distributed toall the 24,000 members of the organization.
auditing
a course - - Althoughnot aniticpated in theoriginal proposal, I felt the
need to develop more proficiency in using theInternet and associated multi-media
tools such as Adobe Photoshop. To this endI audited a coursetaught
by Dave Williams in the College of Fine Arts. As a result, I gained
moreproficiency in using the Internet and selected multimedia tools. For
example, Iproduced all the banners appearing on various homepages at my Web
site.
workshop
- -In addition toincorporating banners to thevarious homepages I maintain, I
also made considerable revisions to my Electronic
Teaching Portfolio in preparationfor a presentation on this topic to a
faculty development workshop sponsoredthe last week of the semester by Center
for Advancement inTeaching.
fishnet
- - As a response to the posting about IGAP
toone of the listservs, a response was received and offered the opportunity
formeto become acquainted with people doing significant work in the inner-city
ofChicago and the Shedd Aquarium on a Web site called FishNet.
In addition to coauthoring a manuscript describing
the origin and potential of thisunique Internet educational collaboration,
additional opportunities to work on similar interests were explored when I
attended the American Education Research Association meeting in March.
Association
of TeacherEducators -- I attended the Association fo Teacher Educators
meeting in February. At this conference I chaired a graduate research roundtable
and meeting of the Transpersonal and Humanistic SIG. I also was a speaker at
featured panel on the "The Internet and Teacher Education forDemocracy."
Pekin
Public Schools -- Dr.Chuck Bowen, the Associate Superintendent, asked me to
serve as consultant onthe Learning Community 2000 Task Force.
May
Graduation -- As my sabbatical concluded, I was delighted to attend the May
UndergraduateGraduation.
In conclusion, this sabbatical provided me with vital new knowledge, resources, and strategies regarding the recent and rapid developments on the Interent. Ialso expanded my network of classroom teachers with whom social studies and theInternet interests with whom I can collaborate in the future. As the above notes, I already am finding benefits in my teaching and scholarlyproductivity as a result of this sabbatical.
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copyright © 2002;
Joseph A. Braun, Jr
jabraun@ilstu.edu
Love without reserve . . . Learn
without restraint . . . Live without dead time
