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Given that social studies pedagogy often runs in direct opposition to how students best learn, social studies teacher preparation must intervene by providing teachers robust experiences for inquiry, interpretation, creation, and personal meaning making. Digital history represents an area of innovation in social studies that can be a useful context for providing such interventions. This research applies a design-based methodology to develop a teacher education activity that reflects research on digital history and how students learn best by constructing and extending prior knowledge, processing information into knowledge, and scaffolding. Design-based research has proven to be suitable as an intervention for classroom settings in that it can be rapidly refined in response to ongoing research on an intervention. The research asked what methods and tools can teacher educators use to promote digital history in their classrooms. Through the project, 200 teacher education students, over four iterative design phases, learned to process historical information into knowledge using technology to communicate refined versions of their knowledge to outside audiences. Seven design factors and six commonalities and differences were identified as influencing the design process. The results of this design-based research informed the development of generalizations and guidelines for designing similar digital history projects.

In this qualitative case study we explored the experiences of low- achieving students responding to an educational blog. Our intention was to leverage the unique affordances of blogs to teach United States history concepts primarily by providing access to digital primary sources and facilitating on-line participation. Overall, our findings point to the positive potential of blogs to enhance instruction with low-achieving students. We found the integration of the educational blog provided an effective instructional format to differentiate content instruction and deliver "equity pedagogy." In this study student participation increased, students engaged in historical work (although tentative), and the resources activated their prior knowledge. Rather than withholding Web 2.0 technologies from low-achieving students we encourage teachers to use them to meet the unique learning needs of all of their students. With thoughtful scaffolding, it appears teachers might be able to leverage the unique features of blog-based activities to improve student experiences.

A gap in the literature on digital history was explored through the use of a survey of 104 high school social studies teachers, administered in a large urban/suburban school district in the southeastern United States. The survey examined the extent to which social studies teachers were using non-digital and digital historical resources and the ways in which they were using them. Results indicated that social studies and history teachers were using primary historical sources, but important questions remained regarding the nature of this use. Specifically, it was found that while the teachers in this survey reported using digital and non-digital primary historical sources in their classrooms, they did not report using these resources in a manner consistent with literature-based best practices for social studies and history education.

This article seeks to demonstrate how social studies has come to be an all-inclusive subject: it has become supersized. When supported by Web 2.0 technology, social studies enables students to address multifaceted problems that require the deep understanding necessary to arrive at both wise and timely solutions. We discuss how curriculum integration and emerging technology applications can support the supersizing of social studies. Two instructional projects and two instructional tools are presented as examples of how social studies can be supersized through the use of Web 2.0 technologies.

The C3 Framework encourages ambitious inquiry-based social studies teaching. While inquiry is regularly recommended as a preferred pedagogy, research has shown that social studies teachers rarely engage students in inquiry. This exploratory study surveyed social studies teachers in one school district in a southeastern state to update our understanding of teachers' instructional beliefs and practices related to inquiry and the C3 Framework. Survey responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics and open coding. Findings indicate that the majority of teachers use instructional practices that may be supportive of the C3 Framework and that the ideas within the C3 Framework resonate with most respondents. At the same time, teachers reported challenges with some key concepts within the Framework, such as taking informed action in the classroom and using questions to initiate an inquiry. While the idea of inquiry as espoused by the C3 Framework resonated with teachers, the extent to which they both believe in and practice inquiry methods is unclear and necessitates further study. This study is an initial step to inform future research and efforts to implement the C3 Framework in K-12 social studies classrooms.