Reflection on learning TPACK (and maybe gaining some myself)

When looking back at this course I immediately have to think of my preconceptions going in. I thought technology was for the student much more than it was for the teacher. During this course I have come to see though that technology is much more for teachers as well.

Working with the TPACK-model has shown me that there's more than one way to tackle a problem. Most importantly, not every technology integration has to start from the technology, it's often not even the best idea to do so. Maybe it's sometimes a better idea to first look critically at what you're teaching and how you're teaching it and than look at if you can integrate technology. But sometimes it can be a nice challenge to look and see, how can I change my teaching style or content covered with this new type of technology that I like. I feel that as I become a better educational designer this model, and some of the accompanying tools such as the RUBIC or the Survey can help me greatly in seeing things from more than one perspective. And I'm well-aware that I can use this perspective at times.

When used to design an actual product the TPACK framework once again showed it's strengths (and maybe some weaknesses). We tried to actually incorporate TPACK both as something to be taught and something to be taught with. I do feel that the model sometimes looks a bit too much at the technology aspect, or perhaps that was still me using the model to incorporate technology rather than letting myself be guided by content or pedagogies, something to perhaps look more into the next time I use this model.

Before closing I'd like to less look back and more look forward. How can we help teachers in integrating technology. I feel that this comes from using the model to see how C and P knowledge integrate with technology. In this way the teachers think about what am I teaching, how am I doing it and how can I support this. During my most recent courses I've come to see that starting with technology might not always be the best idea, but cynicism has this tendency to run strong with me so perhaps I'm overly critical now. Again, something to be aware of for the next time I use this model, to try and see how can we use this to jump-start novel technology use. My class-mates had some interesting ideas (which you can see on their blogs probably by going to my friends-list -->) which I am interested in trying out.

And finally I'd just like to say: Doing this course was a blast, I can see the elements of TPACK as they came to live during this course and the things we learned opened my eyes for trying out new things. Let's see if I can keep everyone up to date on my progress with this on this blog. Hopefully I'll talk with you on this blog soon, I look forward to your ideas on what TPACK means for you!

Awesome tool is Awesome

TPACK on Prezi

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.