Putting online social studies and history resources in context

When teachers use online resources they must develop meaningful pedagogical strategies for delivering these materials to students. The quality of online pedagogical resources varies dramatically. In fact, many good online resources do not have any associated pedagogy. Developing instructional context for online resources must also take into account the specific needs of the students in the class. The first task in using digital resources is to consider the content needs for class. Answer the following questions before looking for content resources.

1. What course am I teaching?
2. What is the broad content focus?
3. Do I want this activity to be teacher or student focused?
4. How much time do we have for this activity?
5. What will be the specific pedagogical nature of the activity?

Once these questions have been answered certain resources will seem more appropriate than others. For example, let's say you are teaching about the Constitutional Convention in an 11th grade US history class and you want to do an extended student focused activity on the Great Compromise. Documents from the Continental Convention and Constitutional Convention from American Memory might be a good resource. This collection includes "274 documents relating to the work of Congress and the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Items include extracts of the journals of Congress, resolutions, proclamations, committee reports, treaties, and early printed versions of the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence." If you wanted to do some in more depth work you could have students use A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates 1774 - 1873 also from American Memory. This collection contains the Journals for the Continental Congress and the Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. James Madison's notes from the Constitutional Convention are available from several sites including the Constitution.org's Debates of the Federal Convention by James Madison and Yale University Law School's Avalon project presentation of The Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. Resources that might be useful for a short teacher centered activity include a presentation within the "Documents from the Continental Convention and Constitutional Convention" American Memory collection titled To Form a More Perfect Union: The Work of the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention and A More Perfect Union: The Creation of the U.S. Constitution from The National Archives.

No matter which resources are used you as the teacher will have to do a good deal of advance work to mediate student experiences. None of the sites listed above were designed with pedagogical intent. It is the teacher's job to fashion an experience for students that is meaningful and manageable.

ONLINE ACTIVITY - Go through the steps above with a content example from your class.

NEXT - Using hypertext to organize resources and present information

Web address http://msit.gsu.edu/socialstudies/culver/teaching_context.htm
Maintained and operated by John K. Lee jklee@gsu.edu
Last Modified: 06/06/02