TPACK in my World

Over the past few weeks I've been talking mostly about how technology can support learning. Not entirely suprising since the course this weblog was originally made for is title Pedagogies for Flexible Learning Supported by Technology. If you look critically at my posts though one can see that teachers are left out. Or when they are not left out I'm mentioning the hard work they have to do in order to integrate this technology into their daily work environment. And that while Michael Fullan says "Educational change depends on what teachers do and think - it's as simple and as complex as that". So if integrating technology is hard and cumbersome, why should teachers even want it.


First I want to go back to one of my first posts on this weblog. It was about flexibility, I was describing how new technology can support flexible learning. Being a student I off course looked at how these situations can be advantageous for myself, how can technology support my learning. But I completely neglected how technology can support my teachers. If location and time-based flexibility helps me by making it easier for me to study, can this work for my teachers as well. In my time at this university I've often received e-mails in the wee hours of the night in response to questions. So my teachers are obviously using it as well. This does mean however that they need some additional knowledge of technology, not everyone is comfortable using e-mail just yet but more importantly their pedagogy has to change, the lectures might not be the central focus of their teaching but rather the communication with their students. This requires them to acquire new skills in order to deal with this but by doing so they gain greater freedom themselves in deciding when and where they want to help students. By becoming more TPACK-proficient teachers can perhaps become more flexible in the way they teach. This can in turn perhaps help alleviate some of the stress of being a teacher by allowing them to plan their own time a little bit more.

Then I looked at different types of pedagogies and how we can support those by technology. And once again I adopted a student's perspective. How can we support students by using technology in working with new pedagogies. As if the students are the only ones that need to get used to this. Looking back and thinking critically it seems teachers are the ones that could actually use the most support. If we change a pedagogy 1/3rd of the TPACK model changes. And due to the integration of all elements this means that more than likely everything else will change as well. So what can TPACK do here. New pedagogies can open up new opportunities to teach content in a different way. It can also let teachers see that maybe not all new technology is evil but that if you change the way you teach, maybe you can change what you use to teach with or maybe even change what you teach. TPACK can help in exploring these opportunities by showing teachers that maybe changing one thing isn't enough. If you just replace a blackboard with a digital white-board not much changes. But if you change your content and pedagogy alongside it a new world can open for both teacher and students alike.  TPACK therefore can help teachers see what the new possibilities of technology are and how they can use if to change their daily routines to perhaps become more exciting.

Looking back at these 2 reflections on earlier posts I now see that if you look at technology from a teachers point of view that there might indeed be some hard work ahead. TPACK in itself is quite a bit of work to get, integrating 3 sub-domains into one can be a lot of hard work. And changing one can often mean changing all 3 which means might mean even more work.

But TPACK can also help show connections between several elements.  This can help the teachers understand the worth of new technologies and how they can integrate them in their daily teaching. Therefore TPACK is a double-edged blade and it all relies on that final part. The context, if we place all the three elements in context we can see the value of them and how they can help a teacher in preparing themselves for 21st-century teaching with technology. 

What the .... is TPACK?

Lately in the world I'm living in the word TPACK has been thrown around a lot. It's an interesting concept detailing the knowledge teachers need in order to become 21st century professionals. For those of you who do not know what TPACK is in this first post about it I will try to explain in my words what is TPACK.

If we look at teachers in classrooms we can see that they need a lot of knowledge to function and that the amount of knowledge they need is always increasing. This calls for help, help for the teachers to understand what they need to know in order to be good teachers. According to Punya Mishra and Mathew J. Koehler teachers need 3 forms of knowledge. First of all, they need to know what they are talking about, teachers need content knowledge (C). Secondly teachers will need to know how to teach it. What pedagogies are most effective and how to apply these in their teaching (P). And in a 21st century environment teachers will need to know about technology. What is out there and how we can use this in order to support the learning of their students (T).

Now note how I've been assigning letters. If one looks carefully these letters are in the word TPACK as well. This is because TPACK aims to not see these three elements separately from each other but rather integrate them. In order for teachers to become good practitioners they require Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK!).

But having this knowledge is not good enough. In order for the types of knowledge to have meaning the knowledge has to be integrated. Technological Knowledge should be linked with Content Knowledge (TCK). Pedagogical Knowledge linked with Technological Knowledge (TPK) and off course Content Knowledge with Pedagogical knowledge (PCK). And in the end they should all come together so a teacher becomes TPACK proficient. Teachers should not only know the separate fields of knowledge but should also know how these different aspects work together in harmony.

All of this does not makes sense however if it is placed out of context. Teachers do not function in ideal situations but rather work in a classroom with ever changing variables such as student demand, parental demand and pressure from governments, boards and other people that think they know better than teachers what they should do.  Therefore the different types of knowledge the teachers have, should always be applicable to their surroundings.

Included here at the bottom is an illustration of how these different elements would look when put into a model. One can see how the different types of knowledge flow together within the context of a situation and how they finally come together to form a TPACK confident teacher. This final step is both the most critical and the hardest and in future posts I will be looking at how we can achieve this.

Innovative use of CMS' in Flexible Learning

After reading several more blogs about the use of CMS' in different pedagogies I've stumbled across a few things that kept my mind busy as well. First of all we all seem the share the same ideas, maybe we're being to influenced by what we're discussing in class or outside of it and starting to create a hive-mind.


Secondly I feel I and others with me could perhaps benefit a bit for some more out of the box thinking. We're highly locking into the use of CMS' in the ways we're using them ourselves I feel. And this way of use is dictated by our teachers, who might not be all that comfortable in using these technological tools. From experience I can at least attest to there being a huge difference in Blackboard usage between teachers. 


So how can we do something about this, well we could start a discussion together, what are ways of using CMS' in flexible learning that we've not yet seen all that much. Personally I feel that there's more ways of collaborative learning that can take place, not just the sharing of data but actively working together via web-editing tools to work in the same document at the same time for example. I also think that for group work an integrated planning system could help for groups that heavily divide work and are not working all together all that much. A task list can help get a quick overview of what's left to do. Such a list can for example by provided by the teacher as a guide for the students. 


But those are just my ideas, what are yours?

A Small Step For Journalism, A Giant Leap for Scientific Reporting

Have you ever read a news article about something interesting science wise but you were questioning the results, the methods or anything like that. Well I have, and I've more than once though, if only I could take a look at the paper. But unfortunately news reports hardly ever come with nicely standardized APA references, or links to the paper at all. Fortunately the BBC aims to change this. Hopefully others will catch on to this trend so we can have clear scientific journalism for all.


Read the full article here: http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2010/10/08/bbc-new-linking-guidelines-issued-science-journals-mentioned/

Words in the News

So to prepare for our next lecture Petra asked us to find an example of an online learning environment showcasing one of the pedagogies I discussed in a recent post. Whenever I think of online learning environments I think of the BBC's online learning center. Their resource section for teaching English has helped me teach English to loads of other people. But now I decided to look at it through some more educational glasses. What kind of pedagogy are they using exactly? 


To take a more clear example I decided to look at one of my favourite sections, the words in the news section. This page takes one of the most prominent news items of the day and does it's best explaining the words by providing both an explanation and pronunciation. 


I would personally classify this as a form of experiential learning. Instead of just simply learning the words out of context one can actually follow a topic they find interesting and experience the English language whilst doing so. If they than cannot understand this information than they can seek help by looking at what it means and how they can pronounce it. 


I think this is a nice example of how we can use on-line learning environments to support learning. Instead of learning these words from list and out of context one can actually experience the way these words are used. This can create learning that is far more likely to stick.

Gaming as Homework

Unfortunately this is for Dutch people only...

Basisscholieren krijgen huiswerk in vorm van game

(Novum) - Een game-ontwikkelaar heeft een programma gemaakt waarmee basisscholieren huiswerk via een soort Hyves kunnen doen. Daar schrijft het AD vrijdag over.

Via een website kunnen scholieren een profiel aanmaken en quizvragen beantwoorden over aardrijkskunde, taal, topografie, rekenen en geschiedenis. Daarmee kunnen ze punten sparen voor bioscoopbonnen, beltegoed en proefabonnementen op tijdschriften. Ook is het mogelijk wedstrijdjes met andere leerlingen te doen.

De dienst is niet verplicht en kost tot acht euro per maand. Het programma wordt al door zo'n zevenduizend leerlingen in de groepen 6, 7 en 8 gebruikt. "Wat doen kinderen als ze thuiskomen en huiswerk moeten maken? Dan gaan ze ook even op MSN, Hyves of Facebook. Ons programma, Squla, springt daar op in", zegt een medewerker van de ontwikkelaar in de krant.

Toetsinstituut Cito werkt met het bedrijf samen. "Het is een toegankelijke manier om kennis te maken met de lesstof." Leerkrachten gebruiken de website al op het digitale leerbord voor de klas. "Dan oefenen we de vragen en maken we er een leuk wedstrijdje van", zegt een docent in het AD.

Bron: http://nieuws.nl.msn.com/algemeen/article.aspx?cp-documentid=154819647

Support of Pedagogy by Technology

More and more technology is becoming a part of our everyday life and also our education. The way we use this technology in education is something that is not yet agreed upon however. The question however is, is their one best way to use technology in education or is it dependant on the context and the way education is given shape.  In other words, does the used pedagogy have an influence on the way technology is being used. Today we will be looking at this question by studying 5 different kinds of pedagogy and seeing what we can do to support these ways of learning by the use of technology. The form of technology we will be looking at is a Content Management System (CMS). A great example of such a system is BlackBoard 

Traditional Learning:

I would like to start with just simple traditional learning. We are all familiar with this kind of pedagogy since it will be the one we’ve most likely encountered at one point in our life. The teacher stands in front of the class and explains the subject matter. All students pay attention to this and then go to work on exercises that are given.

Supporting this via a CMS can be done in a myriad of ways. Most of them are most likely only using the standard features of the online environment. Teachers can put the assignments online and provide additional information for the students to use.  

Inquiry Learning

The second form of pedagogy I’d like to discuss is inquiry learning. This is a personal favourite of mine. In inquiry learning the knowledge is constructed by the student instead of being given by the teachers. The teachers start off with giving a question. The students than go out on their own and find the answers for these questions. They then report these answers and discuss them amongst each other and reflect on the answers.

To support this via a CMS we could look into more advanced features. Many CMS’ come featured with options for students to discuss amongst themselves. In inquiry learning discussion can be of great value since not all answers found will be the same. The use of discussion boards or chat sessions can help students with discussing these answers amongst themselves and helping with the reflection.

Leittext method

The Leittext method is a method often used in practical education. This method is based around 3 points. 1. Independent Learning. 2. Thinking ahead and planning 3. Learning from your own mistakes. By engaging in practical assignments students gain knowledge, apply this knowledge and practice practical skills. The students are being guided by ‘Leitfragen’ or guiding questions. These questions guide the students to take a systematic approach of thinking about the skills they need to learn and help regulate the way the students learn. This method focuses on learning complete skills.

The question of how to support the students can be answered in many ways. Independent learning lends itself great for support by a CMS. The teachers can provide the information and allow the students the use this information how, when and where they want. More interesting features could be using a planning feature. Students could use a planning tool within the CMS which teachers can look at as well so they can monitor how well the students are planning and how well they are sticking to this planning.

Collaborative learning

Collaborative learning is a way of learning where two or more people collaborate to learn. Thus far this seems to be quite obvious. The idea behind collaborative learning is based on the idea that knowledge is created where people come together and share knowledge and take on asymmetric roles. In collaborative learning students come together in a way where the end product is a result of the work of the individuals and the students need to rely on each other.

Collaborative learning can be supported in similar ways as inquiry learning. However as said collaborative learning also requires the students to share knowledge. A file exchange system where students can share the products of their work and share information can be of great help.

Experiential Learning

The final form of pedagogy I’d like to discuss is experiential learning. Experiential learning is learning by reflecting on what we’re doing. It’s a form of learning where the focus lies on experiencing the content that is to be learned rather than learning it from a textbook. By experiencing the content rather than it just being told the learning can be more individualized.

Supporting this kind of learning with a CMS can be quite tricky. The idea is that students do not study the content by just reading about it by going out in the real world to experience it. This is off-course hard to accomplish with a system which is not placed in the real world. Where the CMS can help is in the reflection. Students can share their experiences and discuss their findings.

In conclusion we can state that CMS’ can be used in many ways to support different forms of pedagogies. Obvious ways can be collaboration but we’ve seen that more CMS’ can be used in more interesting ways. Personally I feel that with the addition of technology we can support students in their learning process and there are many unexplored avenues we can go down. However I don’t feel I’ve explored them all thus far and I’m hoping you can help me figure out other interesting ways.