Introduction
The authors define telecollaboration as an experience that allows a joint teaching effort to occur without geographic limitations through the use of videoconference equipment. Telecollaboration offers occasions for students and teachers to exchange social studies ideas, to have access to other classrooms, to learn from multiple perspectives, and to utilize technology to create relationships. The initial article provides a rationale, a program design including telecollaborative topics, sample reflection questions, and advice for middle school teachers desiring to collaborate about social studies curriculum and instruction using telecommunication tools.
The original paper provides examples of telecollaborative activities for middle grades students. This supplemental paper expands upon these ideas about telecollaborative learning and teaching from the vantage point and experience of social studies methods professors who work with K-8 preservice teacher candidates. During the past year (2004-2005), preservice teacher candidates in North Carolina and in Mississippi collaborated with one another through the investigation of personal, family, local and state history-related topics. National and global perspectives necessary for the development of civic mindfulness were also considered. This higher education telecollaborative experience was supported by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS)
( http://www.socialstudies.org/about/ ) standards and the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) (http://cnets.iste.org/teachers/t_stands.html )
As social studies methods professors, the authors strive to motivate teacher candidates to dare to be innovative in their future teaching. What better way to inspire and encourage confidence and motivation than through modeling the use of technology for preservice teachers? In other words, modeling the use of the technology with preservice teacher candidates provides opportunities to experience and consider the possibility of seamlessly integrating new technologies for teaching and learning in the content areas, particularly social studies. Harris (1999) has identified that curriculum-based telecollaboration is most appropriate when students are exposed to differing perspectives, have opportunities to compare, contrast, and combine similar information collected from various locations and communicate with a real audience to expand their global awareness.
Design of the Program
The social studies methods professors who collaborated on this project developed activities related to personal, family, local, and state/national history. The activities and their rationales are described below. The telecollaborative protocol used in this endeavor was derived from a model collaborative project with similar objectives that was organized between the University of Virginia and University of South Florida (Mason & Berson, 2000).
Personal History Rationale
Sometimes students enter a social studies class seeing little or no relevance to history. Often, they are intimidated by the idea that they will have to teach history or any aspect of the social studies. They share common loathsome social studies experiences which include the memorizing of dates and being subjected on a routine basis to traditional lectures. Students come to the methods course with poor attitudes and efficacy levels toward teaching social studies. The purpose of the planned telecollaborative activities is to help students see the relevance of their own life to history. Teachers need to identify and research their own personal histories (Parker, 2005). Everyone has a story, and most people feel comfortable writing or telling about themselves. Only the students, themselves, can speak in the proper context, with the correct vocabulary and tell the story accurately. They can also support their personal history with primary source artifacts. For this preservice teacher project, students brought in an item that represented a part of their life. They described, contextualized, and summarized their personal relics and made connections with the students at the other university. This activity introduces the students to thinking like historians.
Family History Rationale
Families are different, and families tell stories. The storytelling process has occurred for centuries. Before print was utilized, oral history was the prominent means of communicating traditions and stories and valuing one's perspective. In this particular preservice teacher activity, students shared a primary source from a family member (photograph, letters, and other relics) and delivered a personal narrative from the perspective of the family member. For example, the students were able to make cultural, social, and religious connections by discussing important events from their heritage.
Local History Rationale
As the community expands from self and family, to local areas outside the home, so does the telecollaborative activity guide and protocol. Local history is vital to understanding the social roles, school roles, occupation roles and recreation roles of a community. Knowing the past of a local area gives current residents a better understanding of the local “flavor.” Uncovering differences and similarities among communities and neighborhoods is a popular way to address local histories.
Social studies professionals know they must encourage and invite community members into the classroom. This activity involves sharing guest speakers in a more traditional use of the videoconference technology. The learning community that is created allows for roles to interchange often. For the telecollaborative project, each preservice class chose a local historian guest speaker to represent the local community. Students were equipped with questions regarding local goods, services, producers, work, play and climate influences that they had developed for each of the historians.
State/National History Rationale
In the social studies methods courses, core democratic values are introduced along with the purpose of the social studies. Despite the fact that social studies is not a tested subject in elementary schools in North Carolina or in Mississippi , students need opportunities to collaborate, deliberate, and seek understanding together. Ironically, they need to seek understanding of testing, standards, and issues facing the social studies profession. Students need more opportunities to participate in democratic conversations and seminars. Democratic citizenship requires deliberation, debate, and discussion regarding the core democratic values. Issues, such as poverty, war, political persecution, and population growth, help increase awareness for students.
For this telecollaborative project, comparing and contrasting candidates or election issues and their parallel platforms as well as other related election issues corresponded naturally and effortlessly during these social studies methods courses. We were fortunate to have a videoconference on Election Day 2004. The students were assigned to deliberate and purposefully reflect about the issues they felt were the most important in the election, through the lens of an educator of the future. Controversial issues, positions, and values were discussed, along with the important debate of whether or not to share these positions with elementary students in the future.
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