Chapter 6 Social studies and TPCK

Lots of things that can be used in social studies, are also resources that can be used in the English Language Arts classroom. I appreciate that Lee reports on multiple resources, and I looked up the ones I hadn’t heard of. The archival class projects were of particular interest, though I would like to note that while Lee states they are all high school history projects, the last two mentioned were actually completed for high school English courses. While his statement was erroneous, it just verifies my initial statement--resources between English and history classes can be shared. One of the projects has been ongoing for 15 years and is a history/technology elective that seems very cool and rich. I couldn’t find the Cherokee Digital History Project that Mr. Lee wrote about in a 2004 article and mentions again here. The chapter also touches on project based learning as well as problem based learning, both of which are of particular interest to me.

This chapter is well organized and thorough. Though I didn’t necessarily “learn” lots of new information, it was nice to see social studies TPCK broken down in such a manner. Something else worth noting is the issue of intellectual property and plagiarism that Lee raises. I feel as though I constantly need to check for plagiarism and ask students to cite cite cite. Even then, I still have at least one instance of plagiarism a year. Students have a difficult time recognizing that things posted online aren’t to be cut and pasted (not even pictures) without citing an original source. I wonder if this stems from our youtube, limewire, hulu, flickr society where you can watch and share music, television, videos...(do I really need to list it all) for free. I find myself answering the question “I can share it and view it for free, why can’t I just print it and call it part of my project?” multiple times throughout the year.