Teaching Social Studies with Technology: New Research on Collaborative Approaches

This research is about using technology in teaching social studies and collaborative approaches. The researchers based their findings on results of “The MITTEN Program” (Taylor and Duran, 2006, University of Michigan-Dearborn) .This program explored the effectiveness of integration of technology in teaching social studies in the schools. MITTEN program finding was based on many surveys for educators about how effective the use of technology is in their teaching. The researcher came up with many conclusions such as the positive role of technology in students’ achievement, “The qualitative data collected during the MITTEN project helps to explain why student achievement in history increases when technology is used” (Taylor and Duran, 2006, University of Michigan-Dearborn). The MITTEN program also connects student’s engagement and pedagogy to the use of technology in teaching in order to meet students’ needs. The research also stated that technology is very powerful when it comes to designing activities and projects. I agree with MITTEN program about the problems of integrating technology in teaching- learning environment such as plagiarism and absences of computers in houses for many students.