"Packaging of Salon 4"

"Digital Technology and the End of Social Studies Education"

During this salon session,one quote from the article that we spent some time discussing was: "In each of these situations teachers are using technology to slow down learning, to focus on thinking, to help students deal with more complex primary materials and more meaningful problems, to foster democratic skills of dialogue and debate." The confusing thing about this quote is that when most people think of technology, they think of high-speed and moving faster. So why is Bill Tally saying that technology is being used to "slow down learning?" I found this to be extremely interesting and in some ways, very true. As a high school math teacher with a packed curriculum and a regents exam to prepare for, each minute of my class is precious. Technology provides me with tools that can manipulate images to support theorem's and formula's I teach in math. Do I have to use technology to teach my students these skills? The answer to this question is no. Do I want to use technology to better my students understanding of the topic? The answer to this question is yes. This is where the struggle lies. Technology allows us to show and do things that otherwise would not be possible in a classroom. The problem is, technology takes up time. For me to visually show my students that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees or that the sum of the squares of two legs of a right triangle equal the square of its hypotenuse on a program such as Geometer's Sketchpad would take a few minutes of time. Worried about the only 42-minutes I get to see each class a day,I could just give my students the formulas, ask them to memorize it, and hope they can recall it when the test comes up. However, the learning taking place for my students is very limited. Although technology will "slow-down" the learning by taking up more time, in the end, it will prove to be more beneficial because my students will understand the concepts rather than store it in their short-term memory. Either way, isn't it good to sometimes take a step back and slow down??

The Museum Box Project is a really good tool to use to teach Social Studies. The inspiration for this tool was by a man named Thomas Clarkson who would carry around a box of items to illustrate his arguments during his anti-slavery campaign. This is the perfect educational tool in that you can actually make your own box of items by adding Word documents, images, and captions. It's the perfect way to integrate technology into your classroom by allowing students to create a Museum box of a historical person of their choice. It is definitely more engaging and interesting than having students write a paper or create a timeline on oaktag. Technology allows students to do the same amount of work and research but in a more fun and exciting way. The learning taking place by using technoloy is immeasureable and in my opinion, long-term.