The author describes how high school students can use Google Tour Builder to track the impact of local Civil War veterans by conducting research with primary and secondary sources. In the article, there is a description of an example from Larned, Kansas where more than one hundred Civil War veterans settled a community on the plains. Digitized…

This article discusses the authors' experience implementing the use of the online platform Story Maps, which allows students to create digital geographic information systems (GIS) maps of past people, places, and events and combine them with text, images, and other multimedia, in three different undergraduate history courses. The authors found…

Due to the changing landscape of K-12 education in the United States, particularly issues arising from funding, safety, accessibility, and standardization, the frequency at which teachers utilize traditional field trips has diminished over the last few decades. Thanks to continued advances in communicative technology, however, teachers are able to…

The emergence of digital technology provides new opportunities for teaching and learning in the history classroom. However, these new opportunities often require new skills to be learned by teachers and students alike. This article focuses on one such digitally oriented strategy, desktop documentary making, which empowers students to easily make…

Barbara Cruz describes how what began as a challenge (i.e., finding or justifying the time to spend on history instruction in an environment of high-stakes testing) turned into a rich learning experience for students using historical fiction. By designing experiences that were literacy centered but based in historical content, this group of…

This article details the work of third grade teacher, co-author Kim Heckart, as she engaged her students in making historical documentaries: a project that succeeded in reaching all of her third-grade students. For the last five years, Kim has required students to make historical documentaries. As her students produced these works, Kim conversed…

Today's students grow up in a technological milieu of hand-held computers with high storage capacities, internet access, and the ability to shoot high definition photographs and video. As such, they are empowered to construct representations of the past virtually "on the run." In this article, the authors investigated the historical "and"…

Distance education has experienced profound changes due to the introduction of new technologies, especially mobile devices of different types. It is necessary to define new learning techniques which are able to capture students' attention and to engage them in their learning activities, reducing problems like distraction generated by the use of…

The purpose of this article is to extend the published knowledge and practices of distance learning in music to include constructivism. Dan Keast describes his techniques for the implementation of constructivism to an online two-course series of Music History. The courses' structure, activities, assessments, and other key functionality components…

The technological development and cultural acceptance of e-books today parallels the state of the printed book in the 15th century. E-books are increasingly available from a variety of distributors and retailers, and work on a myriad of devices, but the majority remain simply digitized versions of print books. Some devices or platforms include…

In the Spring of 2000, Ruth Meyerowitz and Christine Zinni began collaborative efforts--inside and outside of academia--to enhance a course on The History of Working Women at SUNY Buffalo. Videotaping the oral histories of women labor leaders, they later teamed up with Michael Frisch and Randforce Associates--a research group at SUNY at Buffalo's…

PowerPoint arouses many strong feelings, but the debate over the popular program typically pits advocates against detractors: fewer people discuss "how" PowerPoint should best be used in the classroom. Howard Strauss of Princeton University has observed that "a lot of the stuff that people try to do in smart classrooms is done badly," but…

Web 2.0 tools offer new possibilities for teaching and learning. PrimaryAccess is a Web 2.0 tool designed for K-12 history education. PrimaryAccess shares many of the characteristics of other Web 2.0 applications, but its educational focus makes it different from generic Web applications. Our work developing and researching PrimaryAccess has…

A computer program has been developed in which students explore problems, invent solutions, and search for supporting data. The nine units of "Historian" are each built around a major historical problem or question related to United States history. The structure of the program and its use by students are described. (JN)

ICT tools have been developed to facilitate web-based learning through and learning about argumentation. In this paper we will present an example of a learning activity mediated by Digalo--software for knowledge sharing through visually supported discussion--developed in a university setting. Our aim is to examine, in particular, socio-cognitive…