Technology in the Elementary Social Studies Classroom: Teacher Preparation Does Matter

This article describes the findings of a five-year longitudinal study examining 23 elementary teachers' use of technology in the classroom. Specifically, it describes how these teachers' experiences in a technology-enriched elementary social studies methods course, taken in the fall of 2000, have affected their attitudes towards and use of technology in their classrooms. Many have speculated that the demands of the first few years of teaching can dwarf the effects of teacher preparation, therefore reexamining the effects of preservice education in their fourth year of inservice teaching provides a perspective we need to validate and improve our efforts to better prepare elementary teachers to use technology to teach social studies.