Literature Search Findings follow:

Cameron White suggests technology provides opportunities to make social studies education empowering and transformative. However, meaningful, student-centered, constructivist approaches are vital. Further he emphasizes the transformative approach begins in the teacher education with empowering technology and constructivist integration. Simulations, (with inquiry, literature, technology, learning centers and cooperative learning) are mentioned as techniques to make social studies education project-based and process oriented.


Bredemeier is often cited for describing simulation games as a means to bridge sociological abstractness and direct experience. Games are also a tool of cognitive learning. Reviews of literature on games show they can be effective teaching devices.

Joyce, Weil & Calhoun. (2000). Models of Teaching (6th ed., pp. 347-357). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

White, Cameron. Pre-service to the "Real World": Transforming Social Studies through Technology. This paper first appeared in J.D. Price, K. Rosa, S. McNeil and J. Willis (Eds.), Technology and Teacher Education Annual, 1997 (CD-ROM edition), Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, Charlottesville, VA. It is reprinted with permission of AACE.
Obtained 3/30/03, http://www.cssjournal.com/cwhite.html


Bredemeier, M.E. (1978). Providing Referents for sociological concepts: Simulation Gaming. Teaching Sociology, 5: 4090-422.

Bredemeier, M.E. and C.S. Greenblat. (1981) The Educational Effectiveness of Simulation Games: A Synthesis of Findings. Simulation and Games 12:307-332.

EXAMPLES:


1. For a simulation not containing technology, I assemble seventh grade history students into a Byzantine army shield wall. The students line up, shoulder to shoulder, hold their left arms across their chests to simulate a shield, and thrust their right arms, straight forward, to simulate javelins. Next, they march forward in unison, maintain a straight line, jab with the javelins, and drive a larger barbarian off the field. In this exercise they experience the protection of shield walls, the advantages of organized military units, and importance maintaining unit cohesion when foot soldiers face fierce barbarians or resisting cavalry charges. For applicability, they learn the advantages of cooperation and teamwork.


2. For technological simulations, the best applications, I found so far, apply to skill attainment (Flight simulators; driver training simulators), science (simple physics principles; frog dissection) and music. In music, technology is developing keyboards and composition programs that can reproduce the sounds and mimic an entire orchestra. (At this point we enter an ambiguous boundary between simulation and actual composition.)


SIMULATION IDEA:


In my Byzantine lesson plan, I use enactments and role playing. In addition to the shield wall exercise, I enact a scene where the emperor (`Ho Vasilios) humiliates a captured enemy king. The emperor (me) sits on a throne and a student (carefully selected) is brought before the throne. The captive kneels before the emperor, and bows his head to the floor. The emperor then places his foot on the captives head and used it for a footstool. In Byzantium, a choir would sing from the Psalter Who is a God as great as our God? For the choral simulation, I project the text (in Greek) on the screen and chant the line in Byzantine chant.  

TiV QewV megaV wV o QeoV hmwn;

Su ei o Qeos o poion qaumasia monoV.

The concepts presented from these simulations are:

1. From the shield wall, students recognize the same practice today in police tactics for riot control;

2. From the footstool, students learn that showing the bottom of your foot to someone is an extreme put-down or expression of contempt. Students are shown this practice continues in the Mid East. They see examples in news clips where protesters stand on portraits of unpopular leaders or hit a portrait of that leader with their sandals.

The simulated Greek choir reinforces language and vocabulary acquisition skills through cognates. (See my Advance Organizer, Greek Fire, for Greek cognates.)

REFLECTIONS on SIMULATIONS:
Simulations should be highly successful learning/teaching tools because they integrate the tools and concepts we encountered in earlier readings in iMET. For some examples, they involve inductive processes, interactive processes, and constructivism. For inductive processing, students are processing active data as input, they must form a hypotheses quickly, apply it and get feedback on their decision. Simulations are, by definition, interactive (as opposed to animations) and reap the benefits of interactive learning. Constructivism (J. Buner) comes into play as students again apply pervious knowledge and have simulators present new results, information and changes to the learners knowledge base. Further, simulations can be tailored for any comnination of the multiple intelligences.

Simulation results in concept attainment. To conduct a successful simulation, teachers use Advance Organizing to introduce the simulation and direct the exercise. And then, simulations may lend themselves to distance learning.


WEB SOURCES:
For good scientific applications I found the examples from IMET agenda excellent.

http://www.hazelwood.k12.mo.us/%7Egrichert/sciweb/applets.html


For a great tutorial, examples, and educational application, the Scots developed an excellent site


http://clydesdale.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/hw_inside/inside/primer/






For a virtual Frog dissection kit:

http://www-itg.lbl.gov/ITG.hm.pg.docs/dissect/dissect.html

For Whites article on transforming social studies by technology, see

http://www.cssjournal.com/cwhite.html