Development and Application of Social Studies Digital Contents for Inquiry Based Learning: A Case of “NONTA’s Classroom” and “Higashi-Hiroshima City Library Collaboration Seminar”
The purpose of this study is to develop digital contents that support inquiry based learning and to propose application examples of “local community studies” conducted in Japanese primary social studies education. For this reason, we set up a development project team by researchers and university students majoring in social studies education and developed digital contents over a year. In this project, we formulated five “design principles” for development. The contents were envisioned in consideration of the format, cooperation with social studies textbooks and supplementary readers for community studies, correspondence with the course of study, and the fairness of the areas handled. Finally, the digital contents which name is “NONTA’s Classroom” was developed and 10 keywords were released on the website. Along with the release, in cooperation with Higashi-Hiroshima City Library, we invited local elementary school students to use the digital contents and learn and verified the application and improvement of digital content. As a result of this research, 1)we conceived the design and concrete contents and structure of digital content that supports inquiry based learning and developed it. Also, 2)we specified an example of how to apply and confirmed its effectiveness
