Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies

The Journal of Social Studies Research ] (]]]]) ]]]–]]]

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Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies John K. Lee a,n, Philip E. Molebash b a b

North Carolina State University, USA Loyola Marymount University, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

abstract

Article history: Accepted 4 February 2014

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. Copyright & 2014, The International Society for the Social Studies. Published by Elsevier, Inc.

Keywords: Digital history Social studies Technology Teacher education Design based research

Introduction “This assignment has totally opened up a whole new thing for me…probably much more exciting for me and my family than for my professor!!!” The quote above is from a teacher who had just completed the digital history project featured in this research. What got her so excited? Why did it matter so much to her and her family? The answers to these questions have a lot to do with the attraction of genealogy and digital history. The British television series, “Who do you think you are?” pulls on these two areas through the examination of the genealogical history of celebrities. The series began in 2004 and has since spawned series in over 10 countries including the United States. Episodes explore family histories and tap into the deep desire people have to know more about their past. A consistent feature of all the episodes is to play out some dramatic element of the celebrities' family history, but to do that in an academic context that includes the analysis of historical archival documents and expert historical commentary as well as n

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.K. Lee).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005 0885-985X/Copyright & 2014, The International Society for the Social Studies. Published by Elsevier, Inc.

Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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the use of digital historical sources to extend the research. This sort of archival research narrative requires a careful balancing act with enough drama to keep viewers interested and enough analytical rigor to make the history seem believable. Teachers face a similar balancing act when teaching history. Teachers need to hook their students with interesting and relevant content, but must also emphasize the academic nature of historical research. Digital history provides new opportunities for teachers to engage their students while encouraging an academically rigorous learning experience. However, digital history also introduces new variables to the teaching and learning equation. Digital history is an emerging construct that describes processes for historians and students of history to use technology tools to develop dispositions, skills, and content knowledge in the discipline of history (Lee, 2002). When doing digital history, teachers and students need technical and historical thinking skills to create, manipulate, and present digitized historical primary sources and the products of their analysis. This research examines the design of a digital history project that incorporated many of these elements across multiple iterations of the project as implemented in eight classes at two teacher education programs. This research asked what methods and tools can teacher educators use to promote digital history in their classrooms. The research responds to the changing context of teaching and learning in the 21st century, specifically the rapid pace of digitization and its effect on social studies education. Using a design-based research approach, this research examined eight iterations of a digital history project implemented in two teacher education programs. The eight iterations of the project played out across four design phases that focused on digitization, personal history, and historical thinking. The project, which came to be known as the Becoming Digital project at one site and the Personal Digital History project at the other, sought to provide teacher education students with experiences digitizing personal artifacts, analyzing those artifacts, and then presenting the artifacts and their analysis in online settings. The authors of this paper were the instructors for the classes and designers of all the instructional activities featured in this research. The authors were also the principle researchers on this project. The digital history project featured in this research built on Nicholas Negroponte's notion of the DNA of information. In his book Being Digital, Negroponte (1996) describes the advantages of the move from analog to digital or, as he puts it from atoms to bits, as freeing information to take new forms reflecting the personalities and personal needs of users. Negroponte argues that being digital is “both about new content and about looking at old content in different ways” (p. 63). The project sought to push teacher education students to see analog content differently and to consider how the process of digitization is wrapped up in the more inclusive processes of meaning making, information availability, open access, and social networking. An emerging body of research and theory in digital history, social studies education, and teacher education informed this research. Prior to describing the methods for this research and the findings, the next section examines some of the most critical scholarship related to these areas. Digital history, social studies, and teacher education: A review of scholarship This review of the related literature examines three broad areas: (1) the emerging field of digital history, (2) trends in social studies teaching and learning, and (3) teacher education specifically focused on teacher change theory. Digital history Digital history is a new field that has been defined mostly by historians who are innovating within the discipline using emerging technologies. As digital history has matured, it has been marked by three defining characteristics, new access to historical archival materials, collaboration among historians and students of history, and new types of scholarship. Access to new historical sources is perhaps the most important characteristic of digital history. When digital history was first being conceptualized, Ayers (1999) described the potential of online historical sources as creating “capacious spaces in which users make connections and discoveries for themselves” (para. 9). Today, access to historical sources online is mostly assumed. Seemingly, every day brings another major collection published online. Digital history providers are outstripping our ability to even describe how much is now available online (Kelly, 2013). Ancestry.com is perhaps the best example of the incredible breadth of historical documents now available online in that they provide access to over 11 billion historical records that were not readily accessible just 10 years ago. However, even with the vast amount of digitized historical material being made available, that digital content only scratches the surface of what humans produce as part of the historical record. In a recent article in the journal Science, Martin Hilbert and Priscilla López (2011) estimated that humans have the capacity to store 295 exabytes of information, and just a fraction of that is available online. What is rarely digitized, perhaps because we rarely make them available for digitization, are personal historical materials. Even with limitations regarding the types of historical information online, access to online historical sources is changing the way historians and educators approach historical research and teaching. As the ability to access digital historical sources has become more widespread, the capacity of online technologies to support collaboration has moved to the forefront. In describing his work with public schools, Ewing (2009) argues that “digital history allows historians to engage with a broader community along the lines of more applied fields, while also maintaining standards for research and instructional activities rooted in the traditions of the liberal arts” (p. 35). Digital history enhances collaboration among historians (Thomas, 2004), collaborative efforts between historians and teachers (Warren, 2007), and collaboration among historians and the general public (Darnton, 2000; Rosenzweig, 2005). New forms of digital scholarship are now emerging that take advantage of an even wider range of technologies. An example of these innovations can be seen in the flurry of digital scholarship associated with the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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In describing the evolution of historical scholarship on Lincoln, Pinsker (2009) argues that the examination of Lincoln is entering a new digital stage. Leading to this innovation, scholarship was shaped first by those who participated in the historical events being studied and then by professional historians who studied the historical record left by those participants. Today, Pinsker (2009) says we have entered the project era, “which is being shaped by a series of innovative digital projects that will eventually make the vast majority of Lincoln-related evidence accessible electronically for scholars anywhere on the globe” (p. 437). Kelly (2013) goes even further describing how technologies are enabling opportunities to engage in the process of digital history. Kelly (2013) calls these forms of scholarship a ‘do it yourself’ type of history and suggests that these approaches privilege authenticity over originality. At the same time, Brennan and Kelly (2009) caution that not all Web 2.0 tools are appropriate for use in history, arguing instead for a Web 1.5 approach that blends expert scholarly oversight with the energy of Web 2.0 social networking. Trends in social studies teaching and learning Despite the advances in technology and research impacting our knowledge of human learning and cognition, social studies instruction largely looks and feels like it did five decades ago (Goodlad, 1984; Grant, 2001; Parker, 2010; VanSledright, 2010). Instructional practices reflecting what we know about how students learn provides a pathway to more active and constructivistoriented teaching and learning (Hicks, van Hover, Doolittle, & VanFossen, 2012; Lee, 2005; VanSledright & Limón, 2006), particularly when that learning is supported by the strategic use of technology (Wenglinsky, 2005). Given that social studies pedagogy often runs in direct opposition to how students best learn (Bransford & Donovan, 2005), social studies teacher education must intervene by providing teachers robust experiences for inquiry, interpretation, creation, and personal meaning making. As research has expanded about the knowledge and dispositions teachers need in order to be effective practitioners (e.g. Ertmer, 2005; Glaser, 1984; Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Putnam & Borko, 2000; Shulman, 1986), a greater emphasis has been placed on learner-centered and inquiry-oriented pedagogies. While the research base and rationale for making this shift is considered valid by most, on a practical level this shift has made the early career issues and concerns of teachers more complex and challenging (Cook, Smagorinsky, Fry, Konopak, & Moore, 2002). Viewing teaching through the lens of the way they were taught, many new teachers enter the professional with conventional beliefs and didactic conceptions of teaching. Confronted with innovative, constructivist pedagogies, novice teachers often feel uneasy, afraid, disturbed, and exhausted as they are being asked to depart from their traditional preconceptions of teaching (O’Loughlin, 1992). These challenges can be magnified as teachers attempt to integrate technology into their teaching practice. Teacher education and teacher change theory A number of well-developed theories on teacher change exist to help teacher educators produce instructional interventions for preservice and inservice teachers. Notably, conceptual change theory (Dhindsa & Anderson, 2004; Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982) is useful in defining the phases of change teachers step through as they grow over time. The ConcernsBased Adoption Model (CBAM) (Hall, George, & Rutherford, 1977; Hall & Hord, 2001) is particularly useful in explaining the concerns teachers have as they attempt to adopt innovative teaching strategies and technologies. CBAM suggests that teachers evolve in the types of questions they ask about changes from self-oriented to impact-oriented concerns. Conceptual change can serve as a theoretical base for making design decisions. Specifically, the following four factors noted in the literature are important to facilitating conceptual change. 1. Type of assignments: Assignments such as observations, reflections, and lesson plans, if designed well, can promote conceptual change in teachers because such assignments can encourage deep engagement, weighing of opposing arguments, and justification of opinions (Dole & Sinatra, 1998). 2. Practice and feedback: In keeping with the supposition that experience matters, teachers should have opportunities to experiment with implementing inquiry techniques (Darling-Hammond, 1998). 3. Time: Time may be the crucial factor in whether or not interventions in teacher education affect change (Artiles & McClafferty, 1998). 4. Technology use: Technology can provide expanded opportunities for observation, reflection, and exposure to new ideas. To develop teachers who incorporate digital historical inquiry methods into their teaching requires that they not just shift their teaching philosophies, but they must also embrace a myriad of relatively new multimedia and information technologies. Fortunately, these two goals do not have to be exclusive. Research shows us that constructivist teachers are more likely to embrace technology, and conversely, technology has the potential to facilitate the desired shift in teaching philosophies towards constructivism (Molebash, 2004; Wenglinsky, 2005).

Designed-based research methods This research makes use of a design-based research framework to organize and present the research. The design-based research (DBR) approach to enhancing educational interventions is useful because interventions can be rapidly refined in response to the ongoing analysis of data from the intervention. The forms of interventions vary from concrete artifacts Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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(e.g., tools) to learning activities and curricula (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). In this research, a digital history project implemented in a series of teacher education classes functioned as an intervention that was designed to positively impact teachers’ beliefs and praxis. The artifacts of these teachers’ participation in these interventions functioned as data that were used to measure the effectiveness of the intervention. The analysis of this data was then applied formatively to iteratively improve the intervention. In addition to iteratively improving the projects’ assignments and activities, the outcome of this research was to develop more generalized design theories and frameworks for others engaged in the development of similar projects. DBR exhibits five characteristics (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003), which have been labeled by Wang and Hannafin (2005) as pragmatic; grounded; interactive, iterative and flexible; integrative; and contextual (p. 7). 1. Pragmatic: The goals of DBR are to solve current real-world problems by designing and enacting interventions as well as extending theories and refining design principles. 2. Grounded: DBR is grounded in both theory and authentic contexts. 3. Interactive, iterative, and flexible: DBR requires interactivity between researchers and practitioners. The development and research takes place through iterative cycles of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign. 4. Integrative: Researchers must integrate a variety of instructional approaches and research methods. 5. Contextual: DBR is deeply contextual because interventions and research results are “connected with both the design process through which results are generated and the setting where the research is conducted” (Wang & Hannafin, 2005, p. 11).

Data sources and DBR phases This research examined eight iterations of a digital history project implemented in graduate teacher education courses taught over 5 years at two universities, which are referred to as site A and site B. Data for this research included the course materials for all eight iterations of the project as well as student products and correspondence with students. In total, 200 separate student projects were analyzed across the eight iterations. Additional data included email correspondence between students and instructors and written reflections on pedagogical implications. The project activities featured in this research involved a combination of personal history, digitization, historical thinking, and creative synthesis. These project elements emerged across four phases of the eight iterations of the project activities that were analyzed for this research. Each phase represented a cycle in the design-based research process. Phase 1 (Iteration 1, Spring 2009, Site A) This research began in a graduate teacher education course in 2009. The course was designed to explore instructional approaches for using digital historical sources. One of the activities in the course was to digitize a small collection of physical artifacts. The purpose of this activity was for teachers to learn the technical procedures for creating digital historical sources so that they could replicate such activities in k-12 settings. The project focused on using a variety of technology tools for digitization, while carefully attending to the technical details of the process. The final product of students’ work included image files and a technical description of the process students used as well as technical descriptions of the images including pixel size, resolution, and file size. The primary objective was for teachers’ to develop skills in creating digital images so they could support their k-12 students as they created digital history projects. This activity was one of several activities in the course that focused more broadly on digital history, historical thinking, and the development of instructional materials. Phase 2 (Iteration 2, Spring 2010, Site A) In the second phase of the project, the activities were adapted given what was learned from iteration 1. While maintaining the focus on digitization and the technical aspects of that process, the activity expanded to include a new focus on personal history. Students were asked to identify artifacts that were of some personal or local value and digitize either all or some portion of the artifacts. Students were also expected to describe why the artifacts had meaning and value to them and how the process of digitizing the historical materials resulted in some new understanding of history. Phase 3 (Iterations 3–5, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, and Spring 2013, Site A) The final three iterations of this project at site A involved a second expansion of the activity. While holding onto to all the requirements from the previous year, the activity was expanded to include a creative presentational component. This new component involved students creating online presentations of their digitized materials using presentation technology tools such as Photosynth and Flickr. The project continued in this form from 2011 to the most recent iteration at site A in 2013. Phase 4 (Iterations 6–8, Summer 2012, Fall 2012, and Summer 2013, Site B) In 2012, the project expanded to include students at another university enrolled in a graduate course in educational technology. Because students at site B were predominantly from non-social studies disciplines, the learning objectives and the design of the activities shifted towards orienting students to digital history through a scaffolded process of inquiry, Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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interpretation, creation, and personal meaning making. This was accomplished by de-emphasizing the technical aspects of digitization that were the focus of iterations 1–5 at site A and emphasizing storytelling. VoiceThread in particular was featured in phase 4 and became a key tool in the development of the project at Site B. VoiceThread is a web-based production and sharing tool for making multimedia presentations. The VoiceThread tool includes a slideshow platform that allows users to record voice-over commentary for each slide. Project site descriptions Site A, where three of the four project design phases occurred, is a large public university in the southeast United States. The five classes in which the project activities occurred were all sections of a graduate course on digital history and pedagogy. In the first iteration of the project in 2009, all of the students in the class were classroom teachers enrolled in either a masters of education or doctoral program. The teachers had a range of experience in the classroom from one year to over 15 years. Beginning in 2010, students in a newly created master’s level initial teacher preparation program began taking the class. In 2010, the ratio was approximately 2:1 inservice to preservice teachers. By 2013, the ratio had flipped and most of the students were enrolled in the initial preparation program. The course was taken by 80% of the students in both programs and complimented other courses on social studies methods, theory and research in social studies, and contemporary approaches to teaching social studies. The project being examined in this research was one of several class activities that were designed to meet overall course goals to: (1) develop technical skills to digitize and present historical materials; (2) develop related instructional materials; (3) understand the history and theory of the emerging field of digital history; (4) explore creative applications of technology tools to support digital history in k-12 settings; and (5) develop original digital historical materials for use in teacher education and k-12 history classrooms. All five classes were relatively small, ranging from 8 to 20 students. The course was delivered face-to-face from 2009 to 2012. The final iteration in 2013 was delivered online. Site B, where one project phase (consisting of three iterations) occurred, is a private Catholic University in the southwest United States. In total, inservice teachers from three sections of a hybrid-delivered course in applying educational technology in multicultural settings participated. The course was required of students earning a master’s in education, with the majority pursuing an emphasis in administration and policy. These teachers had a range of classroom experience from two years and up to 25, they taught from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, and they were spread across all subject areas. During Summer 2012, 35 Catholic school teachers participated; during Fall 2012, 67 second and third-year Teach for America (TFA) inservice teachers participated; during Summer 2013, 24 Catholic school teachers and five second-year TFA teachers participated. The personal digital history project applied at this site was one of several activities in a three-week sequence of the course designed to meet course goals to: (1) provide authentic experiences to use technology to support historical inquiry; (2) efficiently locate appropriate resources on the Web and identify when and how these resources can be incorporated given the diverse needs of student learning; (3) design lessons that allow learners to develop historical literacy through critical thinking and creative expression; and (4) use a variety of ubiquitous tools to present and communicate information and knowledge. In-class activities preceding the assignment provided students opportunities to become oriented to the field of digital history and gave them practice applying the use pedagogical scaffolds (e.g. Hicks, Doolittle, & Ewing’s (2004) SCIM-C strategy) available to support historical inquiry. Given that the large majority of students had limited coursework in history and limited experience analyzing primary sources, the purpose of the three-week digital history sequence was to orient students to the discipline of digital history and its implications for teaching and learning. Limitations Several limitations affected the development of this research and impact the implications of the findings. The first of these limitations concerns the use of personal historical sources. Some students did not have access to personal historical sources due to circumstances beyond their control. To accommodate for these situations, instructors at both locations did not equate personal with family history. Provisions were made for students to focus on personal historical sources or local or community history featuring publically available materials in the two communities where the research was conducted. Any application of the activities designed in this research for k-12 education would need to make similar accommodations for students who do not have access to personal historical sources. The teacher sample in this research may also represent a limitation. The four groups of teachers who participated in this study (graduate-level preservice, Teach for America, Catholic school teachers, and public school teachers) do not represent the full range of those who enroll in teacher education program. In particular, undergraduate teacher education students were not involved. Additionally, the relatively large percentage of TFA participants skews this sample from the norm. Even with this limitation, the inclusion of four categories of participants in the research does enable the transfer of findings to multiple teacher education contexts. A final limitation emerges from the fact that the authors and researchers were also the designers and instructors of the courses where the research occurred. The comingling of researcher, designer and instructor priorities and perspectives likely created some biases that impacted the development of this project. To mitigate for this limitation, rich and thick descriptions of the stages of development in this design-based research are offered along with evidence from participants’ work and the activities themselves. Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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Table 1 Project iterations, design factors, and elements. Project phases Project iteration

Design factor

Project elements

One Two Three

Original intent Student project models Conceptual shifts Student projects models Delivery medium Collaboration Conceptual shifts Scaffolding student project models Storytelling

Digitization 8 Digitization and personal history 12 Digitization, personal history, and creative synthesis 15 Digitization, personal history, and creative synthesis 20 Digitization, personal history, and creative synthesis 11 Historical thinking and Personal History 35 Historical thinking and personal history 67 Historical thinking and personal history 32

Four

1. Spring 2009 (Site A) 2. Spring 2010 (Site A) 3. Spring 2011 (Site A) 4. Spring 2012 (Site A) 5. Spring 2013 (Site A) (online) 6. Summer 2012 (Site B) 7. Fall 2012 (Site B) 8. Summer 2013 (Site B)

Students

Findings from cycles of DBR The results of this design-based research fell into two large areas: (1) project chronology as it unfolded given specific design factors that emerged during the eight iterations of the project, and (2) situational factors that reflected the ways the project took form in the unique contexts of the iterations. Results in these two areas are described below. Project chronology: design factors enacted After analyzing all student work and the design of all the activities in the project for all eight iterations, seven overlapping design factors emerged as having a strong influence on the iterative design of the project: (1) original intent, (2) student project models, (3) conceptual shifts, (4) collaboration, (5) scaffolding, (6) delivery method, and (7) storytelling. These seven design factors overlapped in places in terms of their effect, but the order of the factors in terms of their influence on the design process followed a general chronological sequence from the first design factor (original intent) to the last (storytelling). Each of these design factors is examined in this section with consideration for the project elements that were featured in each project iteration and with consideration for the interplay between the factors. Table 1 lists the four project phases and the eight iterations along with relevant design factors, project elements, and the number of students in each course. From these factors, domain theories were developed along with a design framework and design methodologies, which are described in the conclusions of this report. Design factor 1 – original intent As design-based research, the digital history project featured in this research was initiated for pragmatic purposes and grounded in existing theory. The original intent of the activity featured in this research was to provide graduate students in a teacher education program with an opportunity to develop technical digitization skills so they would be better equipped to support their students in developing digital history projects. Given this intention, the project initially focused almost exclusively on these teacher education students being able to demonstrate and describe the technical processes for digitizing. Students were expected to present their work as well, but only as a minor component of the overall project. The final product included a minimum of six digital images (photographs and/or scanned images) and one video, along with a three-page paper describing the technical processes used to digitize their physical materials. Below are excerpts from three of the eight students’ process papers. These comments are representative of the technical nature of the products of students’ work. I was able to manipulate the images using the Microsoft Office Document Imaging tool. The enhanced version was saved as a TIFF file at 2800  1701 pixels. The actual size and thumbnail images were both originally saved as TIFF files, but they were converted to JPEG files at 851  1400 and 122  200 respectively. I did this in order to save disk space (Student 1). All photographs were taken with my personal camera – a Kodak Easyshare M1033. The camera allows the user to change the picture size. The photos taken were set on the highest resolution of 10.0 MP with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Photographs were taken at a 901 angle, 12 in. above the document (Student 2). These items presented unique challenges due to their nature and the various types of digitization employed. These items were photographed using a Canon PowerShot A470 digital camera using a focal plane X and Y resolutions of 13,714.28571 dpi. All items were scanned using an HP Scan Jet 4300C flatbed scanner and the Infraview software program. The video components of this collection were made using a flip video camera with direct voice over (Student 3). The original intent in terms of the learning goals for this digital history project shaped the initial design of the project in much the way that educators might apply an instructional design model such as Wiggins and McTighe’s (2006) backwards design model. An outcome was determined at the onset of the design process and the activities to enable students to achieve that outcome were then developed. Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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Table 2 Characteristics of student model projects. Project model characteristic

Student product topic

Project iteration

Tools used

Personal connection Production value Interactive qualities Archival connection Historical thinking Storytelling

Grandmother’s reflections over three decades in a diary Personal childhood collection of baseball cards Korean family history and Korean culture photographs Family history and photograph negatives Parent courtship letters and photographs Parent courtship letters and photographs

1 2 6 5 7 7

Flickr, VoiceThread Movie Maker VoiceThread Blog VoiceThread VoiceThread

Design factor 2 – student product models Throughout all the digital history project iterations, exemplary student products influenced the design of the project. Early in the design process, after the first iteration of the project, student models became an important part of the iterative design of the project, and this process continued through to the eighth iteration of the project. These student products were particularly influential as models given six unique characteristics (Table 2). After the first iteration of the project, one student product was identified as an exemplary representation of the project goals. The project was technically sound and the student demonstrated a mastery of digitization skills. However, this project was not the only product that reflected good technical work. The reason it stood out was the compelling story the student conveyed when presenting the digitized content. The student digitized her grandmother’s diary. The diary was unique in that the student’s grandmother recorded entries on the same page for a given day over a three year period of time, and then returned to the diary 39 years later to comment on her original diary entries. The way in which the student made personal meaning out of this diary and the way she connected diary entries to cultural events in history was compelling. As a result of this student’s work, new consideration was given for how the project might be revised to encourage more personal meaning making and historical relevance. For iteration 2, the project therefore expanded to include a focus on personal history. The new project requirements sought to balance the focus on digitization and personal meaning making. After project iterations 2 and 3, new student project exemplars emerged and these had a profound effect on the quality of future projects. In each successive year, student projects became more and more sophisticated, interesting, and intellectually compelling. As the project expanded to include site B, student project models had already clearly been defined as a project key design factor; however, for iteration 6, the first iteration at site B, no student project models existed to reflect the adaptations to the project. As a result, only one of 35 personal digital history assignments were determined to be exemplary by the research team. Unique to this project was an element of interactivity, where deep reflections, made rich through critical inquiry, were packaged as essential questions for the audience to ponder prior to advancing to ensuing slides. This interactive approach to personal digital history was used as a model for subsequent classes, and as was discovered with the iterations at site A, the ensuing iterations 7 and 8 at site B yielded dozens of additional exemplars. A student model project that stood out for its historical thinking and storytelling characteristics is discussed in detail below (see Design Factor 7). The existence of model projects had a positive impact on the quality and sophistication of the participants’ work. Design factor 3 – conceptual shifts Across the four phases of this project, three important shifts occurred in the conceptual focus of the activities. The first of these shifts was from a focus on the concept of digitization to the concept of personal meaning making. The shifting of the project’s focus from digitization to personal meaning making was more than just a reaction to one student’s experiences with the project. This revision also reflected a long shift or maturation in how the concept of digital history was being instantiated across multiple iterations of the project, and how students’ conceptions of historical thinking and teaching were conceptually changing. In phase 1, the project’s design suggested that digital history was mostly driven by digitization or the technical process of creating digital artifacts. Little consideration was given to the implications of such actions. After reflecting on the all the students’ work in phase 1 and thinking about how this project was situated within the larger course goals, a decision was made to enhance the project’s focus on the implications of digitization. Given the success of all eight students in mastering the technical skills of digitization, there also appeared to be some additional capacity for students to consider how the process of digitization affected their conceptions of history and of themselves. An important shift as the project moved to phase 2 was then to frame the activity around the concept of personal meaning making and reflection. The following text from the description of the revised activity conveys that new focus. This recent newspaper article recounted one such personal story told by a woman who had discovered a collection of memorabilia. The story captures the spirit of this activity in a powerful way. I encourage you to read the story and think about how the history being narrated is situated in a very personal and until just recently, mostly unknown past. This change in focus represented a shift in how the concept of digital history was being portrayed in the activity toward a more constructivist stance. Instead of focusing on the mostly didactic process of learning about the digitization process and then replicating that process through practice, students were provided an opportunity to situate the digitization process in the context of their own experiences. Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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In phase 3 of the project, a second conceptual shift occurred as a new emphasis on the presentation of student products was introduced at site A. This emphasis on presentation required students to use new tools that would enable them to share their work with others outside of the class. This included students at site A sharing their work with students at site B who were new to the project. Several students also shared their work with colleagues and online communities. One student at site A even had his product published on a well known historian’s blog. The overall effect of these experiences was to reinforce the value of sharing the products of students’ work. As the project adapted in phase 4, the third conceptual shift occurred to reflect the contextual needs and instructional goals in place at site B. In this third conceptual shift, the focus on constructing a broad base of knowledge about digital history was expanded, as the learning objectives shifted towards orienting students to digital history by providing experiences to engage in a process of inquiry, interpretation, creation, and personal meaning making. This was accomplished by modifying the final project assignment as it had been applied at site A to focus more on historical thinking skills and dispositions needed to develop a personal digital history. The instructor at site B de-emphasized the technical aspects of digitization that were the focus of phases 1, 2 and 3, and instead chose to have students use technology tools that were likely to be ubiquitous to students (e.g. smartphone camera), and VoiceThread became the default production and sharing tool. Design factor 4 – collaboration In 2011, the authors of this research began a collaboration on the project that started with an online class discussion at site B where the author who initiated this project discussed his experiences in the project at site A with students at site B. This class discussion led to more conversations between the authors and an agreement to feature a modified version of the digital history project in a 2012 teacher education class at site B. The collaboration was marked by three features: (1) an intellectual exchange about the nature of history education, (2) discussions about the need for scaffolding to support teachers’ historical thinking, and (3) conversations about the contexts and purposes of the activity. The intellectual exchange about the nature of history education helped to clarify the theoretical underpinnings of the project, as it caused the authors to rethink how they understood history in the digital age and what new techniques and methods are required of teacher educators. Other academic disciplines have a robust literature base built around the nature of their discipline and its impact on education. Research on the nature of science, for example, has had far reaching impact on k-12 and teacher education (Flick & Lederman, 2004). Given that the literature base on digital history in teacher education is still emerging, it became useful to situate the intellectual exchange between the authors about the nature of history in the context of the academic exchanges that have occurred around the nature of science. Digital history is relatively new field in history education, so collaboration and the willingness to experiment and iterate were important for this design process. Work in digital history requires that teachers and learners be adept at using digital technologies and applying expert historical thinking skills. With the myriad of web-based opportunities for teachers and learners to explore, inquire, interpret, and create historical resources and narratives, a considerable amount of project time was spent just sorting through the options. This required collaboration and a wide range of scaffolding to support teachers who had equally wide-ranging historical thinking skills. Crucial to the growth of the project were the collaborative exchanges about how to use specific technologies and various soft and hard scaffolds (Brush & Saye, 2002) to support teachers’ historical thinking. Finally, no DBR project can exist without conversations about the contexts and purposes of the designed activities. As evidenced in the conceptual shift design factor discussed above, great care was taken to iteratively adapt activities and assignments. The research-based discussions that occurred to make these iterations possible were based on formative data analysis. Design factor 5 – scaffolding As the project expanded to site B, the design of the activities had to take into account the different needs of the students at this site. Students at site B were enrolled in a variety of content-area projects and were thus, in general, limited in terms of their historical thinking skills. Students at site A had experience with historical thinking skills. The course at site A in which the project was implemented also included in-depth activities focused on historical thinking. Given that students at site A had a reasonably high level of historical thinking skills and experience, very little explicit historical thinking scaffolding was included in the first three phases of the project. The context at site B was very different. Not only did students at site B generally lack advanced historical thinking skills, the class where the project was implemented did not include any other activities on history education. Given these contextual differences, the project was adapted at site B to include specific historical thinking scaffolds to support students. As part of the personal digital history assignment, students at site B engaged in a number of face-to-face and online course activities designed to explicitly scaffold the growth of their historical thinking. Initially, students at site B were oriented to the field of digital historical inquiry through a hands-on interpretive activity using primary source materials from the Valley of the Shadow online archive. This was followed by more focused web-based activities exploring primary source audio and video, an overview of available online primary source archives (e.g. the Library of Congress’ American Memory), an overview of the SCIM-C heuristic for analyzing primary sources (Hicks et al., 2004), an overview to elements of effective digital storytelling, and lastly, targeted practice with VoiceThread analyzing a primary source archive applying SCIM-C. Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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These additions to the activity as implemented at site B, were close in design to the more in-depth activities students completed at site A. Students at site A completed a project analyzing digital historical resources from the Valley of the Shadow. They also learned about SCIM-C in a project where they conducted analysis of digital historical documents from the Library of Congress. Students at site A also read and reflected on several research and theoretical articles on digital history. The overall similarities in experiences of students at sites A and B are important to note because they represent a deliberate effort on the part of the researchers to design a project that responds to similar interests in different contexts. Students at site A had more sustained and in-depth experiences with digital history than site B, but these experiences were meaningful nonetheless for students at both sites. Design factor 6 – delivery medium With an increasing number of teacher education courses being delivered online, developers and researchers must explicitly account for the medium(s) of content delivery, participant collaboration, and creative output. Reflecting these changing conditions for course delivery, in 2013 the project was taught at site A in an online format. This represented the first time the project had been delivered online at site A and required project adjustments. Specifically, students shared their work in draft form online for feedback on their progress. Students worked in small teams on other assignments and were encouraged to talk about their work on this project Students were also provided with screencasts developed by the class instructor to give additional details on the design and development of the project. Although the number of students in the 2013 online class was similar to previous face-to-face iterations of the class, all three of these adaptations supported the delivery of the project to larger groups. The issue of scalability was particularly important for site B where the class sections were considerably larger and delivered in a hybrid format with approximately one-third of contact time face-to-face. In fact, the hybrid delivery medium at site B functioned as another type of original design intention. The project was designed at site B to utilize tools that would enable students to collaborate and share their work online. All students developed professional websites using Google Sites through which they shared and collaborated on their work. Tools were selected for site A to accomplish similar goals. Design factor 7 – storytelling As exemplary student projects surfaced in early iterations of the research, a common trait among these projects was the emphasis on storytelling. While not an initial design consideration, the use of storytelling was not surprising given that the narrative form is widely used in history. In successive iterations of the project, more explicit goals around storytelling were introduced, and for site B the decision to use VoiceThread reflected these goals. Explicit scaffolding supporting storytelling was provided for students at site B. The scaffold was built using an expanded version of Lambert’s (Center for Digital Storytelling, 2005) model for storytelling, which includes a specific emphasis on: (1) point of view, (2) essential questions, (3) emotional content, (4) narrator voice, (5) powerful soundtrack, (6) economy, and (7) pacing. Students at site B implemented the storytelling model with attention to Lambert’s model. For example, one student in the seventh iteration of the project, a third year secondary mathematics teacher, developed a personal digital history VoiceThread that used previously unanalyzed photographs and letters to explore the spontaneous five-week courtship of his parents. The student adeptly asked essential questions and applied SCIM-C in the analysis of images, all in the service of developing a well-paced emotional story. This student’s work included a strong point of view, meaningful essential questions used to advance the story, emotional content, and was edited to be an appropriate length (economy and pacing). Evidence of the perceived value of critically analyzing historical sources to tell story can be seen in this comment from the student regarding his experience working on this assignment. Important, I think, are the opportunities for students to practice doing history. Prior to this assignment, I did not have experience working with primary documents, but having the visual and audial interactivity with the primary documents provides a level of inquiry that was engaging and fun. In building this presentation, it forced me to be critical about the aspects of the story that I included and the questions that arose. I imagine high school students doing a similar project on a family or community story that was important to them and only being able to tell that story through artifacts such as pictures, letters, and other documents. The emphasis on storytelling was not limited to site B. Students at site A also incorporated some elements of storytelling, but, as with the other aspects of this research, in ways that reflected the unique contexts at site A. Instead of following Lambert’s approach, some students at site A used narrative to reflect on the broader historical topics related to their images. The emergence of this narrative style of storytelling was limited at site A, but represented another interesting point of convergence between the two sites. Project situational factors: commonalities and divergences Situational factors that reflected the ways the project took form in the unique contexts of each of the project iterations represented the second major area of findings. As one of the five main characteristics of DBR, the contexts in which and for which interventions were enacted in this research were closely accounted for and viewed as a necessary component to maintaining authenticity. This emphasis on context was in contrast to traditional experimental design research that Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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attempts to isolate variables for inferential statistical testing. For this research there were several constraints, affordances, and related contextual realities that affected the research and development of the project activities at each site. These considerations shaped the original design of the activities and the changes to the activity through successive phases. The chronologically situated seven design factors affected the project design at both project sites in ways that reflected commonalities and divergences across the eight iterations at the two locations. A discussion of these commonalities and divergences provides additional depth about the design process and should provide designers and researchers greater flexibility in adapting this work to better meet the needs of other contexts. Commonalities Three distinct commonalities emerged across the eight project iterations and at both sites. These areas of agreement reflected the common goal at the two sites to focus on personal meaning making as well as a common emphasis on access to technology at the two sites and commonalities in the pedagogical intentions of the authors. Personal meaning making The teacher education students at both sites were focused on creating historical memory on topics that were of personal interest. This emphasis on personal meaning making began at site A and was reinforced through activities at site B, particularly through the implementation of storytelling at site B. An example of the value of personal meaning making was provided by a second year secondary science teacher who was a student at site B during iteration 7 of the project. The following written reflection from this student illustrates how she valued personal meaning making and storytelling. Everyone has a story to tell. And when I say everyone, I also mean everything. Every person, experience, event, thing, process, and even molecule is a story waiting to be told. I firmly believe that we learn best through story-telling and that there is a biological foundation for this. Something in the evolution of our species has created a neurological affinity for storytelling that must be advantageous to survival in some way. Therefore, as a biologist it is only fitting, that I support this great human endeavor of telling and retelling, sharing and listening, accumulating and passing on all shapes and styles of stories. With the rapid increase of technological tools and access, storytelling is pushing new creative boundaries and encouraging interactive and shared stories. VoiceThread is an exciting way to collaborate on the creation of stories and well as theories – ensuring everyone has a voice and we build off of a collective knowledge to produce understanding (participate in enhancing my first VoiceThread of my personal family history). The experiences were similar at site A although it was not until the last two iterations that students began to regularly emphasize the personal meanings they found in the project. In iteration 5 of the project, a student at site A exemplified this new emphasis on personal meaning making in her work. I choose to digitize a collection of census records and personal photographs documenting the migration of two members of my paternal family from a remote, traditional, and poverty stricken region in Ireland called County Leitrim. The records and photos span nearly a century which witnessed the exodus of millions of Irish men and women from traditional villages and farms in search of greater opportunity in the United States. These documents hold great emotional and psychological value for me as they connect my family with the voyages that shaped and formed America. Technology embedded At both sites technology was embedded deeply into the project activities. The projects at both sites required the consistent application of various technologies including laptop computing, digital cameras, image editing software, and web-based presentation tools (e.g. VoiceThread). Classes at both sites were either taught in computer labs or with 1-to-1 laptop computing. Technology support was provided for students at both sites as opposed to specific technology training. Students were provided opportunities to collaborate when using technology in small groups and in open lab settings. Table 3 describes the various technologies featured for each iteration of the project and the related support mechanisms put in place. The pedagogical uses of technology at both sites reflected Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) notion of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in that each technology served a specific purpose in facilitating pedagogical aims and content objectives. For example, over the eight iterations of the project the technology used for making digital images shifted from digital cameras and scanners to more the ubiquitous smartphone camera as the project’s pedagogical goals shifted from digitization to personal meaning making. Likewise, VoiceThread became an important web-based tool as more emphasis was placed on storytelling over the eight iterations of the project. Pedagogical connection At both sites, project activities were grounded in constructivist pedagogies that sought to engage students in the act of doing digital history. While the activities across all four phases utilized technology differently, instructors at both sites used a discovery learning process to both model pedagogy to the prospective and practicing teachers in the classes and to encourage active learning on the part of these students. These pedagogical similarities enabled collaboration on the design of the project in ways that may not have been possible otherwise. Essentially, as long as project activities at the two sites Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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Table 3 Technology tools and supports . Project iterations

Technology tools featured

Support mechanisms

1. Spring 2009 (Site A) 2. Spring 2010 (Site A)

Digital camera, scanner, image editing software, Digital camera, scanner, image editing software, web-based presentation tools Digital camera/smartphone, image editing software, web-based presentation tools Google Sites, digital camera/smartphone, VoiceThread

Computer lab Computer lab

3. Spring 2011 (Site A) 4. Spring 2012 (Site A) 6. Summer 2012 (Site B) 7. Fall 2012 (Site B) 8. Summer 2013 (Site B) 5. Spring 2013 (Site A) (online)

Digital camera/smartphone, image editing software, web-based presentation tools

Classroom 1:1 laptops, open lab time outside of class Classroom 1:1 laptops, online support (synchronous and asynchronous) Online support, dedicated open lab time

were focused on students constructing their own historical stories from personal and authentic historical sources, with attention to the disciplinary limitations of history, the technological means by which that was accomplished were secondary. Divergences Three areas of divergence emerged across the project iterations and sites. These areas of divergence reflected differences in the learning objectives at each site, specific applications of technology at the two sites, and extent to which pedagogical scaffolding was used at each site. Learning goals The two sites shared the personal digital history project focus, but separate learning goals existed at each site that represented the contextual requirements of courses, the needs of learners, and the philosophies of the instructors. These goals were detailed in the descriptions of the project sites, but generally speaking, because site A project activities were in a course on digital history and students were secondary social studies teachers, the learning goals were more progressive with regards to developing students’ technical skills to create original digital historical materials for use in teacher education and k-12 history classrooms. Project activities at site B, on the other hand, were situated in a more general educational technology course with students spread across grade levels and content areas and the three-week portion of the course devoted to digital history focused more broadly on goals promoting inquiry learning and digital narrative production. The consequences of these differences in learning goals on the design process were not insignificant. Because the focus on was technology skill development at site A, students tended to produce fewer digital items that at site B. Consequently, making comparisons regarding the quality of the digitized items was difficult. Furthermore, increased storytelling at site B equated to diminished technical quality of digitization. Specific technology applications Despite the fact that both sites embedded technology in project activities, the differing learning goals between the two sites led to several differences in the way specific technologies were applied. At site A, students were given specific requirements regarding the digitization process, which included a requirement for students to provide a description of the technical aspects of their work (images sizes/resolution, types of equipment used, software used, and design decisions and/ or processes). Students were also asked to provide summary information and historical context for their digitized items. Finally, students were given open-ended choices in the way they could present their work; some created digital video narratives, others created blog posts with the images and the details of their process; and other used specialty digitization tools such as Photosynth. Conversely, students at site B were not given open-ended presentation choices; rather, they were required to use VoiceThread. Additionally, rather than being required to describe their technical work, students instead reflected and wrote about the pedagogical implications of their work. The instructors at both sites sought to explore frontier learning territories with their students. The digital history course at site A emphasized technology, while the technology course at site B emphasized historical inquiry. These areas were outside of the comfort zones for each site’s respective students and instructor. While this represented a divergence in approaches, it also reflected the collaborative nature of the project in that the instructors were able to support one another in the exploration of these frontier content areas. Pedagogical scaffolding The use of scaffolding, particularly at site B, was an important design factor in shaping the project as it developed across the eight iterations. Scaffolding also represented a place of divergence in how the activities were carried out at the two sites. Both sites included scaffolding, but the scaffolds were more intentional at site B, what Brush and Saye (2002) refer to as hard scaffolds. Activities at site B included experiences applying the SCIM-C scaffolding for supporting the development of Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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historical thinking skills, online modules supporting digital storytelling, and opportunities to practice using VoiceThread as an analysis and storytelling tool. At site A, soft scaffolds (Brush & Saye, 2002) included a three-part structure for supporting the digitization process focused the technical qualities of the digital images being produced. Conclusions Over the five-year period of this project the authors have iteratively improved the assignments and activities at both sites. These changes were enacted as seven overlapping design factors and six contextual commonalities and divergences emerged. Drawing on Edelson’s (2002) notion of design-based research outcomes, an examination of the design factors that emerged from this research as well as the related commonalities and divergences suggested the following conclusions. Toward a theory of personal meaning making design The emphasis of personal meaning making and constructivist pedagogies at both sites did not dictate adherence to rigid learning goals nor applications of specific technology tools. However, the shared design factors and contextual similarities and differences at the two sites suggested generalizations about instruction, students, learning environments, and the interactions among these contextual factors. In designing digital history projects that emphasize personal meaning making, or what might be called Personal Meaning Making Design, three generalizable issues should be addressed. 1. Consider digital skills and dispositions – Students digital skills are evolving as new technologies emerge and therefore project activities and assignments must evolve in step with these skills. Similarly, students dispositions towards historical thinking should be considered in order to develop interventions designed to support, strengthen, or change dispositions. 2. Adapt to and accommodate the contextual needs of learners – All of the participants in this research were teachers, but differing needs emerged based on what grade level and subject area the teachers represented. In working with k-12 students, undergraduate students, and adult learners there will, inevitably, be countless unanticipated contextual needs upon which designers will need to adapt. 3. Be flexible in application of technologies – This research emphasized and used technologies strategically, but the tools chosen varied between sites. Had additional sites participated, it is likely other tools would have been used. Digital history is a new field that has capitalized on the emergence of new technologies. Digitization, analysis, production, storytelling, and collaboration tools will continue to evolve, and so will the design decisions built around personal digital history.

A framework for personal digital history From the analysis of data included in this research, several guidelines emerge for designing activities such as those featured here. These guidelines might be thought of as a prescient design framework for personal digital history activities and include the following: 1. Models of student work: The quality of student projects increased significantly as a library of existing student exemplars grew. Even for first iterations of projects exemplars are recommended. 2. Scaffolding: Digital history involves a combination of contemporary views of historical thinking and the use of new technologies. Depending upon the contextual needs of learners, a variety of technical and pedagogical scaffolds may be needed. Examples of scaffolding provided to varying degrees during the project included the SCIM-C heuristic for analyzing primary sources (Hicks et al., 2004), supports for digital storytelling (Lambert, 2003), and specifications for the digitization of historical documents. In the absence of scaffolds, the quality of student work can be compromised. That said, overly prescriptive scaffolds run the risk of squelching students’ innovative and creative tendencies. By definition scaffolds are to be removed as learners grow in their understandings, requiring project designers to be diligent in their assessments of students’ digital skills and dispositions. 3. Collaboration: The complexity of digital history, both in terms of the technical requirements and the historical disciplinary nature of the work suggests a collaborative partnership among project designers with specialized expertise in these two areas. The collaborative nature of this project was one of the most productive elements to the design and research process, for it enabled the researchers to capitalize on relevant strengths and navigate the inherent complexity of digital history.

Future research methodologies One of the more challenging aspects of design-based research is how the iterative and immersive design methodologies require extended reflection on the design process. An end product of any design research should be some contribution to a Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i

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larger design methodology, which seeks to provide guidance about the process of designing instructional interventions. While the work presented in this research does not provide the breadth of experiences needed for developing a design methodology, the results do contribute to existing methodologies related to designing for conceptual change among teachers. Although not an explicitly stated goal of the courses in which project activities occurred, the researchers in this project sought to change teachers dispositions, philosophies and, ultimately, teaching practice. These efforts to bring about change among the teachers were informed by the Concerns-Based Conceptual Change model (CBCC) (Molebash, Capps, & Glassett, 2009). CBCC describes stages of concern teachers will likely experience as they participate in educational interventions such as the digital history project presented in this research. The inclusion of a well-established theoretical base, such as CBCC, which is rooted in conceptual change theory (Dhindsa & Anderson, 2004; Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982) and the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) (Hall et al., 1977; Hall & Hord, 2001) is valid starting point for projects similar to this digital history project. Future research on this project is needed to more clearly define methods for measuring the extent of teacher change resulting from this digital history project. References Artiles, A. J., & McClafferty, K. (1998). Learning to teach culturally diverse learners: charting change in preservice teachers' thinking about effective teaching. The Elementary School Journal, 98, 189–220. Ayers, E. L., 1999. The pasts and futures of digital history. Retrieved 25.10.13, 〈http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vcdh/PastsFutures.html〉. Bransford, J., & Donovan, S. (Eds.). (2005). How students learn: History, science, and mathematics in the classroom. 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Please cite this article as: Lee, J. K., & Molebash, P. E. Becoming digital: Using personal digital histories to engage teachers in contemporary understandings of teaching social studies. The Journal of Social Studies Research (2014), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jssr.2014.02.005i