Numerous innovative headways have prompted cultural changes. The earliest realized innovation is the stone apparatus, utilized in the ancient era, followed by fire use, which added to the development of the human cerebrum and the advancement of language in the Ice Age. The creation of the wheel in the Bronze Age empowered more extensive travel and the making of more perplexing machines. Ongoing mechanical turns of events, including the print machine, the phone, and the Web' have brought down correspondence hindrances and introduced the information economy.
Of all my technologies, my smartphone probably brings with it the most blessings. I am ever appreciative that its map applications can guide me and my car to my destination with suggested routes if traffic piles up. It streams whatever music I choose and pulls up e-mails so I can be productive even at red lights. The apps, sites, and programs allow me to explore cities around the world within seconds. It delivers online gifs and memes that make me laugh, and I have even built meaningful professional relationships through its social media platforms. In my classes, the collaborative, digital, and virtual capabilities allow me and my students to transform our learning in innovative ways. Sometimes I sit back in admiration and warmly think, thank you for being there, right in my pocket, whenever I need you. But, as in some relationships, the burdens—individual and social—become evident with time and reflection. I rely on my smartphone and when things are not working, I get frustrated quickly, particularly if a room full of students is waiting on me to fix the problem. At times, the array of apps can be distracting when I am trying to listen to someone else, fall asleep for the night, or read something longer than a tweet. How my smartphone beeps at me can cause anxiety when I want calm. And, I know my smartphone sends all my data to a variety of companies who then sell my information for a tidy profit. I also know that my smartphone was likely created at a monstrous factory in Zhengzhou, China by workers who make under two dollars an hour with components shipped from around the globe, which upon completion, were then shipped in a Boeing 747 to the United States (Barboza, 2016). At times, I want to techno fast and turn off, find zen, and sign out. I guess I would describe my relationship with technology, in the lingo of Facebook, as it’s complicated. In 2018, our affairs with technologies are some combination of incredible, complicated, and troubling, but too often in social studies, we approach the topic with dispassion that accepts technologies on their terms, not ours. In this chapter, I am hoping to start a conversation about how social studies teachers might teach with and about technology so our students might make its uses and effects more compatible with democracy
t e a c h I n g w I t h a n d a b o u t t e c h n o lo g I e s The overarching question for the remainder of this chapter is, how can social studies educators teach with and about technology? Teaching with and about technology requires social studies educators and their students to first consider, what is technology. Just asking this question can foreground the technologies that surround us and spur us to interrogate our complicated relationships with them. Students and teachers should be awakened to see the array of Google tools, computer tablets, lighting, air conditioning, and heating systems, beams and girders (that hold up the school), chalk or whiteboards, cars and pavement outside, and pencils, paper, and books as objects of study worthy of analysis. When used well, technologies can allow us to amplify or transform educational activities, but they are almost always accompanied by a downside. Technologies like Google Earth or Expeditions offer obvious transformative benefits as they allow classes to digitally explore much of the world in ways that were impossible until recently, but they also threaten privacy and support unwanted surveillance. Similar to the TEKS, educators can tend to skip over important technopathic questions like, should anyone in the world be able to see in your backyard by pulling up Google Earth on their smartphone or computer? Yet, emerging technologies can be exciting. I love exploring street views of cities from around the globe during geography lessons with students. Students often need help understanding the excitement that surrounded emerging technologies of the past because they seem commonplace now. For example, Roberts and Butler (2014) explain how teachers are often surprised to read the following 1827 evaluation of the newest school invention, the chalkboard: It is surprising and delightful to see the interest which it kindles in even the dullest scholar. By rousing curiosity and holding attention beyond all other means, it would almost completely banish that weariness that makes a schoolhouse a place hated by so many children.
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