Discovery Education’s Social Studies Techbook™ series offers a digital solution that replaces traditional textbooks and features dynamic, standards-based digital content and engaging resources. More than 100,000 middle school students are currently using Social Studies Techbook, with over 100 school districts across 33 states in the U.S. beginning to integrate the digital resource into classrooms this fall.
The digital textbook solution will now be used by some of the most innovative school systems in the 2014-15 school year, including Alabama’s Baldwin County Public Schools; Arizona’s Sunnyside Unified School District; Colorado’s Garfield School District No. Re-2; Idaho’s West Ada School District; Missouri’s Poplar Bluff Public Schools; North Carolina’s Rowan-Salisbury Schools; Tennessee’s Oak Ridge School District; and New Jersey’s Vernon Township School District, among others. Each district will have access to the full suite of Social Studies Techbook courses, including two United States History courses, World History and World Geography & Cultures.
The newest course, U.S. History II, covers the period from the Civil War to the Present and together with other U.S. History offerings, it provides districts with more options for meeting their Social Studies requirements. Later this fall, Discovery Education will add an additional course, US History, Prehistory-Present.
“Social Studies Techbook will provide our students challenging and meaningful learning experiences in social studies, encouraging them to think critically and helping to foster the global viewpoint necessary for college, careers and citizenship,” said Chris Layton, a U.S. History teacher at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge Schools.
Social Studies Techbook is a web-based teaching and learning resource. Each subject area in Social Studies Techbook includes a multimedia reference library that links key people, places and events to documents and videos; interactive maps, digital investigations and activities; primary source documents; and informational texts. Techbook is designed to support multiple reading levels and languages, promote personalized learning, encourage critical thinking and enable project-based learning. The resource supports English language learners through features such as hundreds of Spanish language video segments, a multimodal interactive glossary, and a Spanish reading path with text-to-voice capability.
To support educators nationwide interested in using digital resources, Discovery Education is partnering with the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) to offer a new webinar series. Throughout the month of September, the three part series will focus on a variety of topics, including unlocking the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) framework with digital resources, using digital tools to enhance Social Studies instruction, and how teachers across the country are using digital resources in their classrooms.
