Social Education


Social Education

Editor’s Notebook
Michael Simpson
Social Education, April 2009

Young people are fascinated by technology, and teachers who find ways to convert their students’ favorite devices into vehicles of instruction can look for exciting results. In this issue of Social Education, our Technology Department editors, Michael Berson and Meghan McGlinn Manfra, have organized a special section on thinking, connecting and creating with technology that offers engaging and creative teaching suggestions.

Lee Ann Potter opens the issue by reporting on a recent initiative by the National Archives, which has partnered with amazon.com, Google and the Generations Network to digitize more than 100 million pages of archival documents. The collection includes rich, student-friendly materials, such as streaming videos of historic value. The digitized documents featured in her article deal with the French Revolution, the trial of Mary Surratt, and the ratification of the 19th Amendment enfranchising women.

Andrew J. Milson and Mary D. Curtis offer tips for teaching with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), including some helpful advice for teachers who are not techno-wizards. In a variant of the theme “it’s all about location,” their article highlights a stimulating, GIS-based project that involves students in the different stages of selecting the right location for a new restaurant.

Thomas C. Hammond and Alec M. Bodzin observe that schools have been slower to adopt GIS than businesses, the government, and institutions of higher education. They emphasize the versatility that makes GIS a useful tool across the range of social studies subjects, from studying the history of human migration and the decline of bison in the Great Plains region to the planning of contemporary sewage systems.

Ilene R. Berson and Michael J. Berson highlight the potential of visualization tools like word clouds, which monitor texts and speeches to generate images that present higher frequency words in larger print. Word clouds can be used for instant identification of the themes that a speaker or writer considers most important, and the authors illustrate their value for class projects such as comparing the themes of Barack Obama’s speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 with the speech by John McCain accepting the Republican nomination, as well as the analysis of the inaugural addresses of different presidents.

Online class discussion forums made a great contribution to Whitney Blankenship’s high school International Baccalaureate class on the History of the Americas. After providing students with a list of almost 40 topics that had been the most popular discussion threads of the previous year, she was able to involve students in discussions of important questions on the meaning of being American and on America’s place in the world that provoked intense online exchanges.

Meghan McGlinn Manfra introduces a new archive at Old Dominion University on an important development in the history of school desegregation—the enrollment of African Americans in schools in Norfolk, VA, by court order in 1959 after an attempt by the governor and the Virginia General Assembly to prevent integration by closing down public high and middle schools. The archive presents the story of the 17 African American students who enrolled in the Norfolk schools in the face of the bitter adversity of white segregationists.

At a time when economic recession is on everybody’s mind, students will be interested in the kind of project described by Justin Reich and Thomas Daccord, whose class conducted a multi-day investigation into teenage homelessness during the Great Depression. Using information from the PBS American Experience website “Riding the Rails,” and taking full advantage of search engines, blogs and podcasts, the students projected themselves into the lives of teenage hobos and learned a great deal about the social history of the period.

Many teachers believe in the use of art to capture the imagination of students; B. Scott Crawford, David Hicks and Nicole Doherty point out that art interpretation can also be a useful way of developing students’ analytical skills. Using the Taubman Museum of Art website, they identify works of art that have especial value for social studies, ranging from paintings by Jacob Lawrence and Childe Hassam to a woodblock print by Yoshifuji. One painting they found of particular interest for studying the history of the 1930s was Robert Riggs’s depiction of the African American heavyweight boxer Joe Louis knocking out the German Max Schmeling in their world title bout in 1938.

Two of our regular columns complement the special section on technology with topics of general interest to our readers. C. Frederick Risinger’s Internet column updates readers on the latest resources by reviewing the websites of organizations whose exhibits he found especially impressive at last year’s NCSS meeting in Houston. The websites cover the range of social studies subjects, though as he points out, a selection of this kind does not do justice to the high quality of many other exhibits. (To be sure to see them all this year, make a note of our upcoming annual meeting dates: November 13-15 in Atlanta, GA!)

In our Looking at the Law column, John Paul Ryan goes beyond Supreme Court decisions to investigate the upbringing and personalities of three Supreme Court justices who left their mark on history, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Thurgood Marshall and Sandra Day O’Connor. His interviews with their biographers highlight their formative life experiences and offers insights into the factors that distinguish judges whose careers are ground-breaking from others.

As always, the editors of Social Education welcome the comments of readers on any of the contributions to this issue at socialed@ncss.org.

How to Submit Articles

Author Guidelines

Social Education invites author submissions of the following kinds:

  • Substantive articles in anthropology, archaeology, civics, economics, geography, history, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, religion, sociology, and other related humanities and social sciences;

  • Viewpoints, analyses, and criticism of current issues related to social studies;
  • Ideas and techniques for strengthening social studies education at all levels: elementary, middle, high school, and university;
  • Significant research findings, interpretations, or theories in social studies education;
  • Articles that relate work in other academic disciplines (such as the natural sciences, mathematics, literature, and the arts) to the social studies.

Social Education also has the following departments that welcome original author manuscripts on specific aspects of the social studies: Book Reviews, Dateline, Elementary Education, Instructional Technology, Looking at the Law, Research and Practice, Surfing the Net, and Teaching with Documents.

Social Studies and the Young Learner focuses on techniques and topics especially relevant to grades K through 6. Please click on the following link for instructions for that specific journal. Write about your classroom lesson!

Evaluation and Editing

Manuscripts are returned if they do not meet the technical specifications described in these guidelines. NCSS journals rely on referees who volunteer their time and expertise. Although editors routinely seek evaluations by qualified reviewers, the editors have the final responsibility for deciding suitability for publication. The editors reserve the right to edit for style (including grammar, punctuation, syntax, and vocabulary), but changes in content are made with the corresponding author's consent.

Cover Letter

Please enclose a letter of transmittal with your manuscript, stating that the article has not been submitted or published elsewhere. If there are several authors, please indicate the corresponding author in the cover letter.

Length of Manuscripts

In general, manuscripts should be between 1,000 and 3,000 words in length, although the editors may consider longer manuscripts in some cases. Provide a word count.

Preparation of Manuscripts

Submit one original and three photocopies of the double-spaced manuscript. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, editors will request an electronic copy of the text, which can be sent by e-mail or CD-ROM as a text file (preferably in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format). If you cannot save in those file formats, save the file as a text only (ASCII) file. On the CD, write your name, the title of the manuscript, and the name of the program used to create the file. Avoid automatic endnotes, superscripts, active URLs, and other special functions. Type these items in directly.

Title Page

Include the title of the paper and the name, professional title and affiliation, complete mailing address, e-mail, fax, and telephone number(s) of each author. If there are several authors, please indicate who is the corresponding author on the title page.

Except for the title, this information should not appear on any other page, so that reviewers may be kept "blind" as to the identity of the author(s). Since reviewers won't be receiving the title page, please make sure to also put the title on the first text page of the manuscript.

Photographs, Illustrations, and Figures

Authors are encouraged to provide appropriate illustrations, graphics, photographs, lesson plan materials, figures, and samples of students' work with their articles. Figures should be numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals, discussed in the text, and accompanied by captions. Send photocopies of graphic material with the manuscript. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, originals will be requested. Art should be electronically in the following formats: TIFF or EPS with preview. Please note that all images must be at least 300 pixels per inch (ppi) in resolution.

Tables

Tables should be numbered sequentially with Arabic numerals and discussed in the text. A table should be intelligible by itself and have a concise title and column headings. Each table should appear on a separate sheet of paper after the references.

Permissions

Obtain permission in writing from publishers for text quoted at length or for materials (poems, maps, photographs, cartoons, etc.) that you would like to have included in an article. If photos of young students (or their names or work samples) are to be included, provide statements of parental permission.

Proofreading

Have colleagues or other professionals proofread your manuscript before submission.

Notes

Notes, which are numbered and follow the main text of an article, are used for citations, explanations, and acknowledgments. Place the notes, double-spaced, on separate pages that follow the text of an article, preceding other references or resource lists. Carefully check the correspondence between the numbers called out in the text and those in the notes section. Follow the style for notes and references as outlined below. Also, articles published in recent NCSS journals may serve as models. For situations not covered in these examples, follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) as closely as possible (not APA style). Use authors' full names.

Citations from books:

1. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957), 54.

2. Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 111-113.

3. Thomas O. Erb, "What Team Organization Can Do for Teachers," in John H. Lounsbury, ed., Connecting the Curriculum through Interdisciplinary Instruction (Columbus, OH: National Middle School Association, 1992), 7-14.

Citations from journals and magazines:

4. Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, "The Two Faces of Issue Voting," American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 78-91.

5. Diana Hess, "Violence Prevention and Service Learning," Social Education 61, no. 5 (September 1997): 279-281.

Citation from a newspaper:

6. Sean Holton, "Candidates Find End of Rainbows in S. Florida," The Sun Sentinel (July 3, 1996): 1.

Citation for a website:

7. National Council for the Social Studies, "National Standards for Social Studies Teachers" (Washington, DC: NCSS, 1997), www.socialstudies.org.

Several citations within one note:

8. Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957), 54; Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stinson, "The Two Faces of Issue Voting," American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 78-91; Sean Holton, "Candidates Find End of Rainbow in S. Florida," The Sun Sentinel (July 3, 1996): 1.

Citations from the same source:

9. Hess, 280. [Refers the reader to a note not immediately above.]

10. Ibid., 281. [Refers the reader to the immediately preceding note.]

References

References, which follow the notes section, are works of interest not cited within the main text or notes. For example, the references section might be a list of children's literature, teaching resources, or background reading. List items alphabetically.

Barr, Robert, James L. Barth, and S. Samuel Shermis. Defining the Social Studies. Bulletin No. 51. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1977.

Hazard, John N. The Soviet System of Government, 5th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Larson, Bruce E. "The Makah: Exploring Public Issues During a Structured Classroom Discussion," Social Studies and the Young Learner 10, no. 1 (September/October 1997): 10-13.

National Council for the Social Studies. Resources categorized by the ten themes of Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies can be found at the NCSS website, www.socialstudies.org. Click on "Teaching Resources."

Where to Send Your Manuscript

To submit a manuscript, please send it to:

The Editors

National Council for the Social Studies

8555 Sixteenth Street

Suite 500

Silver Spring, Maryland 20910

Voice: 301 588-1800 ext 122

Fax: 301 588-2049

E-mail: publications@ncss.org

Teaching With Documents

Articles from the "Teaching with Documents" series are available free online to NCSS members. Click on the ones you want to view and print. Teaching with Documents articles, published originally in Social Education over the last decade or so, were written by staff at the National Archives and Records Administration. Each article features a primary source document accompanied by teaching activities and lessons that focus on history, civics, and many other social studies disciplines.

Remember, too, that other articles from back issues of Social Education, Middle Level Learning, and Social Studies and the Young Learner are available to members at the online archives, www.socialstudies.org/members/.

The articles listed here include the primary source documents and complete lesson plans for middle and secondary classrooms. They are all presented in PDF format.

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Posted November 25th, 2008 by rich