TPACK. Technology, Pedagogy, and Content
Knowledge. Before I watched Dr. Gary Holliday’s lecture on TPACK, I’d never even
heard of the word pedagogy (it’s the how of teaching – how you actually do your
lesson). It took a while for me to understand what exactly all of it meant. It’s
a very interesting concept, the integration of technology in the traditional
combination of pedagogy and content in the classroom. A very good video we
watched on YouTube called TPack in 2 Minutes is a great summary of what Dr.
Holliday gives us in his video.
Technology/tools are something that
are becoming increasingly available and necessary in the classroom, though they
aren’t always the easiest thing to integrate. There are many questions to be
asked about it. They start with is this technology effective? Can I easily integrate
this into my lesson? Will it be beneficial to the lesson? Is there any chance
using this technology will hurt my lesson? How accessible is this technology? The
list goes on and on with possible issues, but the benefits of using technology
outnumber them.
Those positives are enormous.
Technology can make something so much simpler. In one of my high school classes
to prepare for a debate we used a class set of iPads to look up information. We
got up to date information at the click of a button. Had we been using books,
it would have been outdated information that took a lot longer to find. There’s
also the ability to find other resources on the internet and with technology to
enhance the class – in a lot of classes I’m currently in my professors will use
videos to show something that they simple aren’t able to demonstrate in a
classroom. There are some very significant barriers, however. Money is a huge
issue for many schools. They can’t afford a class set of iPads, or computer
labs for the students to use. There’s also the issue that depending on the
place one is teaching, technology just isn’t very accessible.
In my future classroom, I want to be
able to integrate technology. Since I plan to teach first or second grade,
however, it’s going to be a little harder to integrate technology that it would
be in a high school classroom. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find
applications on computers that students can use. YouTube videos are something
that keeps a child’s attention usually, and could make a lesson more fun. My
hope is that I’ll have a smart board in my future classroom that can be used
for both myself and students to write on and use the technology. I want to keep
a constant rotation of new things in the classroom, both to motivate students
and to eventually find something that really works for me and my students.
TPACK was something that was very
confusing at the beginning. By the end, I think I mostly get it. My remaining
question is simply how to integrate technology effectively into a lesson so
that it’s not the entire thing, but as a supplement. For the answer to that, I’ll
just have to keep using the internet and using the tools myself that I hope to integrate
into my classroom so I can find out.
When my daughter was in first grade they had a reading program/game they did on the computers. They created their own robots and could earn points to spend on outfits and such as they read and took quizzes. They did this at school and had the opportunity to do it at home if they had the resources. She loved this, so technology can be a very useful thing that makes learning fun.
ReplyDeleteI've had teachers who use technology in ways that just don't make any sense. In fact, it kind of felt like they were just using it because they "had to." The idea of TPACK is new to me, too, and I'm grateful that this class taught me about it; there are both successful and unsuccessful ways of integrating technology into the classroom. Technology is so abundant; I think that's one of the reasons why it can hurt our lessons - we pick the wrong one! That being said, since there is so much technology out there for us to use, I believe that you'll be able to find stuff to use in your first and second grade classrooms. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with your thoughts on the availability of information for classes! Great blog entry!
ReplyDeleteTechnology in my opinion can become a money saver. Think about how much money a school could save by never having actual textbooks again. With the use of e-books they will never have to rebind the books yearly, get updated versions when the authors make a new edition, or replace the lost ones, or try to force the money out of a parent who's child ruined a book. I also think that it should not only be a supplement that goes along with it, but rather that it should be the main focus for the education. In an elementary school setting as you spoke about, you could possibly set up an online database where the parents could access what was learned in class today. This could allow for the students to continue their education at home with a review of what they learned that day. I think that technology can be way more affective than your giving it credit and that the future holds nothing more than advanced technology. We, as educators need to be well prepared to ready our students for the world their living in.
ReplyDeleteTPACK was very confusing to me at the beginning too. I kind of saw it as the main focus of education and was not excited at all about that idea. However, I think I can live with it being a supplement. I have found good uses for certain technologies in the classroom, and I'm sure I will find more as time goes on.
ReplyDelete