ITOUCH History

Earlier this year, CTAP Region IV established a partnership with the California Digital Library and UC Irvine History Project to collaborate on ways to promote best practices for teaching with primary source materials and to show teachers how to incorporate technology solutions into their teaching in ways that will excite and engage students. Two-day educator training sessions were designed with the designated target audiences of history/social studies educators (teachers and library media teachers), primarily in grades 4, 8, and 11. The focus is a study of how different cultural groups shaped California through resource allocations, political authority and social organization.

In a competitive application process, districts qualified to send a team of three (credentialed teachers, librarians and/or technology teachers) to training sessions in both January and March at their choice of two sites. Thirty-three teachers were accepted into the program. In return for the training and resources (Apple ITouch, AV cables and Snowball mic), teachers commit to using Calisphere resources with students and will bring back the results of the learning experience to the 2nd session. Teachers also agree to disseminate the information to colleagues at their site and in the district.

The first session took place on Saturday, January 12th at the Marin County Office of Education. Teachers received an overview of Calisphere Digital Library and were trained by the UC Irvine Literacy Project Director on how to view images as a historian and how to place what they see in a broader context of history. In the afternoon, teachers were put through the paces of learning how to use their new ITOUCH hardware with AV equipment, so they could share images and video presentations with others. The excitement and passion of the day were expertly captured by Cheryl Davis in this video presentation. A second cohort group of teachers will start the training in early February.

In a MacWorld Expo announcement today, Google released a complete new update to the Google web suite with full optimization for iPhone and iPod Touch, which will further add to how our teachers can use their ITOUCH devices. In experimenting with uses of iTOUCH in education, I can't help but think that this is where the Palm handheld always wanted to go, but somehow never got there. The ITOUCH has huge potential!