netTrekker Blog

Social Studies Goes Digital

As school districts around the country look for solutions to a variety of challenges, including ever-shrinking budgets, disengaged students, growing class sizes with students of all different abilities and interests to name a few, many are exploring how a transition from print textbooks to digital resources can help them address some of these challenges.  When the Indiana Department of Education issued a blanket waiver allowing school corporations to use a broad range of multimedia, computer and Internet resources to supplement or replace traditional textbooks, two districts quickly took advantage of this new option and chose to implement netTrekker as a replacement for their social studies textbooks.

Delphi Community School Corporation, a small district in Delphi, Indiana, and Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation with over 11,000 students in Columbus, Indiana, both subscribed to netTrekker in 2009 to provide more engaging, dynamic resources specifically for their social studies curriculum.  Both districts realized that a transition from traditional print textbooks to a new way of teaching with digital resources was not something that would happen overnight, and not something that would be successful without the right combination of digital resources, professional development, technology/hardware infrastructure, and a commitment to transform teaching to meet the unique learning needs of their 21^st century students.

Both districts have seen exciting results including a more current and vibrant social studies curriculum, a more engaging collegial classroom atmosphere, the ability for teachers to quickly find resources for differentiated instruction, and even increased attendance and graduation rates. But the most powerful result of this print-to-digital transition might be summarized in this statement by Greg Lewis, a member of the Bartholomew Textbook Adoption Committee.

“Students have choices as to how they go about accessing the information – versus one pathway to the assignment like in a textbook. They can be masters of their own education.”

Click here to read more about the print-to-digital transition in Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation.

Is your school or district making a transition from print textbooks to digital resources? If so, what has been the biggest impact you’ve seen on teaching and learning?

Tags: 21st Century Learning, bartholomew, delphi, netTrekker, print to digital, social studies