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Position Paper

The document discusses the National Council for Social Studies' (NCSS) position on integrating the internet into social studies classrooms. The NCSS believes the internet should be used as much as possible, but the document argues it needs to be done in a selective and meaningful way. While the NCSS wrote many articles in the early 2000s advocating general internet use, they now focus more on specific technologies and tools. The document concludes teachers need to guide students and teach them digital citizenship skills when using the internet, not just have them explore without direction.

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104 views

Position Paper

The document discusses the National Council for Social Studies' (NCSS) position on integrating the internet into social studies classrooms. The NCSS believes the internet should be used as much as possible, but the document argues it needs to be done in a selective and meaningful way. While the NCSS wrote many articles in the early 2000s advocating general internet use, they now focus more on specific technologies and tools. The document concludes teachers need to guide students and teach them digital citizenship skills when using the internet, not just have them explore without direction.

Uploaded by

api-390536267
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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My paper focuses on the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) position regarding

the use of the general Internet in a social studies classroom. NCSS believes that social studies

teachers should integrate the Internet into their classes as much as possible, and to the largest

possible extent. I support the NCSS position with a qualification: the Internet should be

integrated into social studies classrooms, but in an appropriate, selective, and meaningful way.

The NCSS fixates on the general use of the Internet in the classroom, writing 34 articles

about the use of Internet in social studies classrooms from 1983-2004.1 This is almost five times

as many articles as the next category, listed as “specific software” at only 7 articles in the same

time span. Databases are the next most commonly used tool, but only gets 4 articles in the same

21 year span.2 Furthermore, 3 of the 4 database articles come from 1983 and 1984; the

remaining article was written in 2003. Meanwhile, the 34 Internet articles are more evenly

spaced across the two-decade time period surveyed.3 A more recent look at NCSS publications

from 2017 shows that they have since transitioned towards writing educational technology

articles about specific teachers using some technological tool in a specific lesson.4 The articles

herald the Internet as a way to “explore sources from a variety of different perspectives”, but

little is given in the way of how to do that, beyond a few links to particular websites.

Additionally, hardly any articles talk about how to properly use databases in a classroom.5 Thus,

it seems that the NCSS feels that it wrote its fair share about the Internet in its nascent stages and

has since moved on to other topics. Social studies teachers are left with highly specified case

1
Cheryl Bolick, Meghan McGlinn, and Kari Lee Siko, “Twenty Years of Technology: A Retrospective View of Social Education’s Technology
Themed Issues”, Social Education 69, vol. 4 (2005): 155-161.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
“Social Education,” National Council for the Social Studies, https://www.socialstudies.org/publications/socialeducation.
5
Ibid.
studies and little general guidance on how to actually use the Internet in their classroom beyond

the NCSS simply telling them to do so.

My position is that the Internet is an extremely powerful tool that can certainly enhance

student learning, but that it also, in the words of David Cutler, presents a “Faustian bargain” that

can negatively affect student learning.6 If a teacher simply tosses students into the world of the

Internet, as the NCSS articles appear to suggest, the students will get chewed up and spit out.

Students need to be given direction and boundaries when doing work with the Internet. To that

end, Cutler suggests using tools like Turnitin to show students what plagiarism is and how to cite

properly; he also teaches students specific ways to search databases like JSTOR.7 He also says

that students need to be taught how to write effectively and process information before being

given access to the Internet; a good way of doing so is to have students write longhand notes

whenever possible. In this way, they will be forced to think about what they are writing, instead

of typing information verbatim.8

I feel that as social studies teachers, we are obligated to teach our students citizenship

values not only for the real world, but for the digital one as well. Via a moderate integration of

the Internet into the classroom, teachers can teach values like respect via a lesson on proper

online citation. Poignant topics like truth and validity get developed while exploring the biases of

different Web pages. In this way, the Internet can make better citizens without completely

drowning students in a deluge of information; the Internet gains a whole new layer of meaning

for citizenship and ceases to be a mere tool.

6
David Cutler, “Using Technology in Your Humanities Classroom”, Edutopia, https://www.edutopia.org/article/technology-in-humanities-class-
david-cutler.
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid.
Works Cited

Bolick, Cheryl, Meghan McGlinn and Kari Lee Siko. “Twenty Years of Technology: A

Retrospective View of Social Education’s Technology Themed Issues”. Social Education 69,

vol. 4 (2005): 155-161.

Cutler, David. “Using Technology in Your Humanities Classroom”. Edutopia,

https://www.edutopia.org/article/technology-in-humanities-class-david-cutler.

“Social Education”. National Council for the Social Studies.

https://www.socialstudies.org/publications/socialeducation.

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