Teaching Social Studies in Virtual Space/Project Preface

Intent of the Project

This textbook is intended as a resource for social studies teachers who wish to harness educational technology in their classrooms. This book will highlight, evaluate, and recommend different media and methods for leveraging learning through the use of technology. The main focus of the work is on exposing new and novel formats for teaching in a virtual environment.

Section 1: Educational Media & Social Studies Education

There are two sections to this textbook. The first is divided out by the medium highlighted (i.e. e-books, blogs, etc.). This is the main content of the textbook, itself, where various educational technologies are highlighted. Everyone is invited to contribute, especially tech-savvy educators, students, and members of the wiki community.

Section 2: Examples & Class Projects

This section is intended as a place where teachers and contributors can post social studies [example units, lesson plans, activities, & class projects] that leverage educational technology in order to help teachers teach or students learn social studies. It is also a place where teachers may post the results of various online projects their classes have done.

This section is also intended to inform the first section concerning various educational media. The content in this section will act as a rich resource for contributors that are highlighting various educational technology media. Contributors can draw examples, illustrations, and anecdotes from this section in order to discuss the employment of educational technology meaningfully in their contributions to the first section of this book. The hope is that contributors who are not educators by profession will not be deterred from adding their ideas for lack of direct experience in the classroom. Rather, they can draw on the [example units, lesson plans, activities, & class projects]within this database in order to illustrate their ideas.

Lastly, the contents of this section will serve as ideas and suggestions for how to implement educational technology within the social studies classroom upon this book's completion. Therefore, these resources will serve as both examples and exemplars.