Find 1: I have been trying to grow my PLN and one person I followed was Dan Krutka. He is a professor who focuses on the intersectionality of social studies, tech, and civics and gives a lot of talks related to these topics. I think his insight on how technology impacts social studies education could help me to grow as an educator as I continue to incorporate new technologies into my social studies classroom.
Find 2: I found this post showing how students were using Google tour builder to create a virtual tour of places in Chicago. Since my schools is a Google school and uses Google apps, this is something that I would like to look into and learn more about because I think helping students be able to visualize places in history would help them to better understand the past and make their learning more interesting as well.
Find 3: I found another tweeter who was talking about an 8 bit gaming technology they were using to make a virtual Washington DC server. I thought this was a really interesting idea because it looks like it would allow for virtual government simulations in an 8 bit environment that looks like the capital. It is still under development, but I want to continue to watch what comes of it.
Find 4: I'm someone who knows I could be listening to more educational podcasts to get more information on social studies and technology but don't necessarily know where to look. However, I found a poster who had shared a Google Doc with a number of social studies podcasts and what their specific contents were about. I have used the document for a starting point to find some podcasts to listen to and think I know have a good foundation for where to begin.
Find 5: As someone who plays a lot of video games in my personal life, I know the impact that games can have on learning. Dr. Kat Schrier studies videogames and has written a book on how they impact education, including their impact on social studies. I followed her and am interested in looking at more of her posts and reading her book, as I feel that games can be a very transformative technology in social studies.
Summary: I think the biggest takeaway from this week was the fact that I learned about a lot of professionals I can look to on Twitter that can give me new directions to look for new technologies to incorporate into social studies. There are a lot more professionals out there that focus on social studies and tech than I thought, especially since social studies people have reputations for being "old fashioned". It kind of reminds me that your teaching is what you make of it: if you take the time to commit to utilizing technology in your discipline than any teacher can get better at it. If you choose not to, then you won't it comes down to taking the time to seek out the information you need and to get better at it.
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