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Golden Opportunity or Gilded Blackboard?

The Value of Technology as a Tool for Literacy, Socratic Dialogue and ELL Empowerment in the Social Studies Classroom

by Chris Mullin, Santa Ynez High School, Santa Barbara, CA. E-mail Chris.

In the last twenty years, the access to fast paced, highly visual and pulse-quickening entertainment has grown by leaps and bounds. While one could probably say the same for the increase of gladiatorial bouts, chariot races and bear baiting of Nero's reign in the first century AD, the entertainment that bombards us today is almost exclusively technologically generated and communicated. This fact, perhaps an accepted truism hardly worth mentioning aloud, has accompanied the growth and maturation process of every child we see pass through our classrooms. The end result, for better or for worse, is that the mind of an average teenager today is simultaneously well adapted to receiving and cataloguing rapid visual data while at the same time lacking in the patience and/or interest for decoding the seemingly static print of our textbooks and novels. 

Literacy and reading comprehension woes tug on our shirtsleeves in every subject matter in the form of low standardized test scores, incomplete reading assignments, plagiarized Internet essays and seeming academic lethargy. Rounding out this cultural malaise toward reading is the ever-present influx of English language learners. Children of myriad cultures find their way into the public school system, neophytes to the English language who still nevertheless experience the technological barrage so easily provided by a cheap, home cable hookup. Consequently, most teachers are looking for ways not only to inspire their English readers to perform the task at hand but to find methods that make literacy accessible to children who cannot read or write even in the language of their country of origin. 

Compounding this dual challenge of multi-media overload and deficiency in basic literacy is the fact that the ability to read and write well has become divorced from the public mythology of a path to success. Students see financial gain available through scores of non-collegiate avenues. The ability to read and write - once the sine qua non for social and economic advancement - seems to have taken a back seat to a strange hybrid of the traits accompanying "gangster-rappers," samurai Wall Street yuppies, and computer nerds. This current intensity of technological auto-stimulation among teenage students begs the question: Should we find a way to use the status quo to promote literacy and content acquisition or should we wage a determined war against a media openly confrontational to that soul of literacy, the quietly read book?

As a dedicated educator, it is hardly my purpose to recommend bowing to the trend of replacing literacy with audio-visual inundation. Watching a contemporary historical motion picture can be exciting and bolster interest in the content but it is irresponsible to the subject matter of history to attempt to remove reading. However, the computer and digital technology of the previous two decades has transformed and arguably improved major facets of our lives and there is ample reason to consider its use in the classroom. 

Therefore, I decided to study how the implementation of technology rich lesson plans in the teaching of high school social studies will positively affect:

• Increased content comprehension at all levels from ELL to AP by creating a context for a specific subject matter
• Meaningful classroom dialogue related to the historical content
• The lowering of affective filters normally associated with the high text and lecture approach to teaching
• Comprehension of content by making use of stimulating visual literacy

Technology in some form has been a part of the classroom for decades. When the technological community began to mass-produce the overhead projector in the late 1960s, cutting edge educators looked on gleefully at the streamlined visual wonder and claimed it would transform teaching. To be fair, at the time it solved many problems such as chalk dust, turning your back on the students and how to project large visual images into a communal staging area. Now we are forced to admit that the overhead projector has done little that a good old-fashioned slide projector and chalkboard could not do just as well or better. It greatest fault lies not with the modern technology but with the archaic methodology teachers used alongside it. Teachers used the new technology to teach in the same old way, rather like using an unplugged electric beater to manually stir a batter. 

Similarly, I question to what extent are today's teachers using cutting edge technology to revisit the sins of the past. Does using technology to take attendance and enter grades constitute any advancement in teaching worthy of the billions spent on classroom internet hookups, data projectors and legions of overloaded servers? If teachers type notes into a multi-media software slide and then project those images with the help of a data projector are they really implementing technology or merely offering a gilded chalkboard? If we as teachers are going to try to tap into their students' predisposition toward multimedia in order to successfully implement the learning strands and content standards, we must be sure to implement activities that speak to the unique assets of modern technology. 

Teaching Tools
I used four contemporary technological tools in my teaching and surveyed one hundred 9th - 12th grade students ranging from ELL to Advanced Placement about the use and their response to these tools. The tools are:

•  Multi-media software such as PowerPoint and Hyper Studio 
• Data/Video projectors for teacher and student presentations 
• Internet search engines and email
• Computer speakers and CD and MP3 players

Teaching Activities
Multi-Media Presentations
One of my most successful efforts has been in the forum of content laden multi-media presentations. At the start of each new social studies unit, I like to create a slide show of roughly 30-40 images of primary sources. I present the images in a darkened room on the big screen with a primary source music file playing in the background. What the students see is a 2-4 minute highly visual presentation that immerses them in content in a non-threatening manner. Prior to the viewing, students are asked to take out a sheet of paper and to jot down any ideas, thoughts or connections that are stimulated during the show. I end the show by freezing on one particularly dramatic or meaningful primary source image and then lead the students in a summary discussion. Once we have brainstormed on initial impressions, students view and decode several of the more powerful primary sources from the show.
A good example of this type of activity is a recent presentation I created on Jacksonian Democracy. In the background I played an 1832 pro-Whig campaign song while the students viewed images of humorous political cartoons of the day. The students brainstormed reactions to the images as the show progressed and immediately following the slides, we debriefed as a class. In this situation, I had students call out observations and react to other students' comments. At this point, I had the students look at five or six of the more meaningful slides and through a series of directed questions, unravel their meaning. Because no one had seen these primary sources before, no one was an expert. Students who were normally reluctant to speak saw the more aggressive students making assumptions about images and as frequently as not misinterpreting the meaning. As the class self-corrected and clarified meaning for each slide we were able to move onto the next one. 

By using current technology, a teacher can knock off a solid show like mines in less than an hour, save it on a hard drive and email it to colleagues across the school and nation. Without the presence of current technology the above-described activity so rich in visual literacy and the bolstering of decoding skills as well as content acquisition could take place rarely, if ever. 

Data/Video Projector
Over the course of the school year I have delved into a number of other technology related activities designed to heighten content knowledge both among traditional college prep as well as ELL students. I frequently presented via a digital projector a primary source political cartoon related to the historical topic at hand. I blocked out the text and captions related to the image ahead of time and asked the students to brainstorm predictions of what the characters might be saying or how the political cartoonist might have entitled his/her cartoon. Once the students had voiced their opinions and predictions, I used the mouse to reveal the actual text. Students were then able to compare their predictions with the actual results. 

Computer Learning Stations - Internet and Software
Another technological method that I have found useful is computer learning stations. I divided my students up into groups of four and sent them around to different computer terminals in my classroom with different pre-set sites on them. 

For example, in one case I used a World War I web site entitled Trenches on the Web and had them open to areas such as World War I propaganda, letters between the Czar and the Kaiser, new war technology. At each station the students had to scroll and click around the site and answer a series of both factual and critical thinking questions. 

I have also found that one of the best uses of contemporary technology was to stimulate good Socratic dialogue. Most teachers would agree that the best way to teach the standards is to encourage students to make their own meaning out of the content. In social studies classroom, the traditional lecture is the preferred methodology of the minority of students and often incomprehensible to emerging English learners. This year I have made it a point to use images projected by a data projector to stimulate the dialogue on a whole-class level. In my AP Euro class I presented two eighteenth century woods cuts from London. Both woodcuts presented humorous images of London folk drinking, one portraying the beverage gin in a very negative light and the other presenting beer in a positive light. Without any lecture, and relying only on the two images for prior knowledge I was able to guide the students through a series of questions that left them with a proper analysis of the intent of the political cartoonist. 

Audio Files
I use audio files as a way to lower the affective filter, raise literacy and address the standards. One of the greatest resources for the social studies teacher is myriad of historical primary source audio files. From FDR's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." speech to Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit primary source, audio files are very accessible to the teacher and very approachable for the English language learner and AP student alike. Each time I introduce and audio file, I also make sure that I use the data projector to present the written text of the song. Students of all levels need the reinforcement of perceiving the text visually as well as audibly. By presenting music or dramatic radio broadcasts, I found myself far more likely to engage the students than if I had simply handed out the text. English language learners can match word sounds to written words. Virtually all the social studies standards have some sort of audio primary source that can be used as a content teaching support. In the past I have used baroque music to teach the Counter Reformation and Mr. Sandman to teach the Eisenhower administration. 

My Findings
From my student surveys and my personal observations and experience in the classroom, technology has had a significant impact on my students and me as a teacher in a number of areas.

Increased comprehension from students of all levels and the creation of a context: 
My initial focus in the implementation of technology was to increase comprehension of subject matter for all students from AP to ELL. My belief was that I could use a barrage of primary source images backed up by a primary source audio file to create a quick context into which students could implant any new learning. 

I asked two questions to my students:

1. Multi-media presentations have helped me to establish a better feel for the era we were studying. (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree)
2. Has technology helped you establish a "context" or general feeling for the topics you were studying?

Ninety-seven percent of the students marked either "strongly agree" or "agree" for the first question. In the second question, 96% marked "strongly agree" or "agree". Students had mostly positive comments to make:

"You kind of get a cool feeling with the music. It adds a certain touch that makes you understand the era." - College Prep Junior

"I like watching multi-media presentations in history because it seems to bring more life into the topic. Sometimes in the afternoon my attention span is small and multi media presentations help me stay focused. There is also more visuals that helps me recall and capture an era better." - AP Junior

However, there were also a small number of students who were rather dubious as the effective use of technology:

"It hasn't really helped that much but only because I basically know the topics we learned this year. But it does make it much more interesting." - CP Junior

"Not really to me. It's the teacher and the way they explain it." - CP Junior

Based on student response, my primary theory in this area is that if the teacher can create a temporary historical context or flesh out an existing context in the mind of the student, two things will happen. First, students will be much better able to categorize new historical information and second, students will be more likely to discuss a newly addressed topic. I found virtually all the students admitted in their surveys that multi-media presentations were entertaining and well over 80% said they felt the presentation were helpful at establishing a better context. My personal perception was that in regular content assessment areas, students were better prepared on subjects where they had seen a multi-media presentation. 

In particular, I thought my short technological lessons with data and video projectors were valuable to students ELL students. Because the documents were mostly visual, all students, regardless of English literacy, could take part in the analysis process, both internally and externally through shared comments, engage in analyzing primary source documents, and attempt to make historical conclusions. Second, by the time the actual text was introduced, the students had already created a predictive and historical frame of reference onto which they could attach their language decoding. ELL students seeing new words or terms for the first time stood a far better chance of increasing historical literacy. Third, by engaging in prediction and the analytical viewing of rich visuals, students were much better able to recall historical content later on. By using technology in this manner, I was able to expand on the more limiting reading and lecture oriented methodology. Students now had multiple frameworks for all of their subject matter acquisition. 

Addressing the needs of limited English participants was particularly important to ensure increased comprehension. Beyond video, I discovered a number of other technological ways to address the needs of in the teaching process. One such method was the "living tableau." I projected primary source photos such as that of the Big Three at Yalta or of The McCarthy hearings and asked students to reproduce the characters as stick figures. I then asked students to create think bubbles above the heads of their stick figures filled with historically relevant thoughts. Once the students were finished predicting, I had a number of volunteers stand in front of different figures in the projected photo and read off their thought bubble. The primary value of a technology related exercise such as this is to encourage prediction and historical writing while engaging the students with highly visual content.

Meaningful Classroom Dialogue
One of the biggest challenges that I attempted to address with technology was to find a student voice in a regular classroom discussion. I believe that by using thought-provoking still images such as posters and political cartoons projected in a large central location alongside the multi-media presentations, more students would be likely to take part in discussion. 
Students responded to my attempts with:

"I enjoy it as a change of pace. It adds more enjoyment to the subject matter and more diversity into the way we as students learn." - AP Junior

"When you see something, it is easier to relate with it. Therefore helping the average student." - CP Junior

"I love watching them. It is interesting to see what the historical events actually looked like and I can understand the time period better." - AP Junior

"You can really see the emotion or the propaganda that the time was dealing with." - AP Junior

Virtually all students gave positive comments citing both a preference for visual over written material as well as its ability to keep them interested and focused. My personal experience as a teacher who strongly values Socratic discussion is that both the multi-media presentations and the still images have led to sustained, higher order think discussion across the board. Furthermore, my impression is that a substantially wider cross section of the students will offer opinions and ideas. More often than not, I will find that the students who struggle academically will have the best insights related to visual stimulation. 

The lowering of affective filters normally associated with the high text and lecture approach to learning.
For better or worse, children today have access to a wide variety of meaningful non-written media. To the mind of a teenager, it seems everything critical to daily life can be obtained through audio/visual media or oral description. The upshot is that the incentive to become a strong reader seems to apply almost exclusively to those who seek out literacy for recreational and intellectual purposes. 

Though I was seeking responses to the affect of technology, I found students frequently expressed distaste for reading:

"Students last much longer when watching a presentation rather than simply reading hundreds of pages in a book." - AP Junior

"It is very good to understand the mood of the time. It if just comes from a book, it doesn't really bring you into it. The presentations make it alive." - CP Junior

"I think it is especially helpful for students with a low attention span and it's certainly more exciting than book work." - Non College Prep Junior

Students across the board, from non-college prep to advanced placement, expressed a negative feeling toward reading and bookwork. They also suggested that multi-media presentations helped them both comprehend and engage. Furthermore, many students also said they disliked the standard lecture format: 

"I love it! It's better than listening to a teacher drone on and on for an hour and a half." - CP Junior

"It isn't as boring as listening to a lecture; it's more fun." -  CP Sophomore

"I enjoy watching it instead of lecture all the time." - CP Senior

"I like watching the multi-media presentations rather than listening to an extremely boring lecture." - AP Junior

What I gleaned from these quotes is not a condemnation of reading and lecture - though that voice is certainly there - but rather a voice of approval and buy-in for subject matters that are peppered with presentations that speak to their backgrounds. 

Comprehension of content by making use of stimulating visual literacy
My students have made it clear that they approve of the use of technology and seem to favor it over more traditional methods of teaching. A major benefit of a well-rounded use of technology is being able to use visual literacy as a tool for content acquisition. Visual literacy denotes a body of content understanding through images. For example, a child who spends a great deal of his/her life watching professional baseball games on television will develop a virtual encyclopedia of visual information related to the game. The look of various stadiums, the camera angles on the pitcher, the side shots of the team in the dug out and the images loyal fans eating hot dogs and drinking beer are all images which speak volumes related to the game. The child blends the myriad of visual images with emotions, conversations, and even personal experience all related playing the game into a deeply complex understanding for the content of baseball. Though the child may never have read a single book related to baseball, he/she will be deeply knowledgeable about the sport and adjunct experiences. 

As a teacher, I can also make use of prior-visual-literacy as well as newly created temporary visual literacy in order to teach a certain subject matter. For example, for some students the projection of the Mexican flag might conjure up a wide variety of emotions and previous experiences. For other students, a photo of the Normandy invasion or the Kennedy assassination could summon up prior knowledge. Likewise, I can make use of a variety of never seen before images and photos to create a brand new context upon which to build further information. For example, I could show a dozen or so slides of 1950s children playing in back yard bomb shelters, radiation fallout flyers, B-movies about the "red menace," and McCarthy hearings in order to set the mood for a certain unit. I could also play period music to further establish a whole learning experience. 

Almost across the board, students felt that the use of technology helped them understand the actual content. Ninety-seven percent said multi-media helped them understand historical topics, and 96% said slide discussions helped them understand historical topics.

"Technology has helped a lot for a context because it creates a feel for how a situation was reacted upon by the people who are demonstrated." - AP Junior

"I believe technology has helped me with the material. I am studying at the time because it helps paint a picture in my head for what I am doing." -  CP Freshman

There were certainly some voices against the effective use of technology:

"Although slides and video are useful, I think it is actually the teacher's ability to teach that allows for an understanding of the topic." --  AP Junior 

"No, really to me it's the teacher and how they explain it." -- CP Senior

However, a large majority of students felt that by addressing visual literacy the teacher was able to teach to a variety of learning styles and to bolster overall comprehension. Although the students overwhelmingly approved of the use of technology to make the class more fun, 17% felt that the multi-media presentations did not help them on test performance and another 17% felt that the use of isolated still images such as political cartoons and photos did not help them later on a test. The percentages of negative responses in this area are way up from an average of 3% dissenting on the other survey questions. This leads me to wonder, if the use of technology is bolstering student buy-in, is it necessarily helping content acquisition?

Conclusions
The truth is that technology has opened an enormous door for all teachers to teach like this all the time. Contemporary technology in the hands of a skilled teacher is completely liberating and, in particular, lends itself perfectly to those teachers who are struggling to find ways to address the needs of a limited-English population. 

For a social science teacher like me, contemporary technology offers a medium for seeking out, manipulating, presenting and storing all manner of highly visual, audible and stimulating primary sources. In fact, technology creates a whole new type of historical language and allows the history teacher to teach more responsibly than in the past, when both students and teachers had to rely on highly biased textbooks for content acquisition. The constant use of primary sources, both written and visual could conceivably become the norm for the social studies classroom, with the visual supporting the written and vice versa. All students from ELL to AP would benefit from this new, hands-on approach to the social studies content acquisition. By building literacy on a scaffold of approachable historical images and other primary sources, students are able to render text more effectively. 

Since we can now see that there is little doubt that the implementation of contemporary technology on a large scale can be empowering to all levels of students, the bigger question becomes - how do teachers the skills and preparation they need to implement such technologically rich pedagogy as well as the confidence to change their traditional teaching styles? There is a strong need for professional development is necessary to ensure teachers can successfully integrate technology into the classroom. Some suggestions for how to develop these skills in teachers are:

• Investigate making technological competency a broader part of all credential programs. 
• Create a state or national public schools server with easily downloadable technological lessons and multi-media presentations based on the standards.
• Create state or district funded professional development time where teachers can observe masters in the use of technology and visual literacy.

Additionally, schools must invest more money in the purchase of contemporary audio-visual equipment. If students and teachers continue to rely upon old projectors and tape recorders, then the training teachers to integrate multi-media presentations will be useless.

We can see that through professional development, a teacher can use technology to address multiple learning styles as well as imbue the class with enough entertainment value to appeal to the audio/visual child's life experiences. By combining technology with an adequate understanding of the principle of visual literacy, teachers can better meet the students on their own ground and lower obstructions to the learning process.