Photo by Nima Sarram on Unsplash TPACK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
What a teacher lingo mouthful, right? Through the Innovative Learning Masters Program, I have become familiar with the TPACK model. The TPACK model depicts the integration of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge practices into multiple learning settings. In today's world, educators need to be well versed in technology, not just for their own organizational well-being but to ensure their students' preparedness for a world of ever changing technology. I used to have to provide students 30 minutes per day of practice on a reading foundational skills online learning platform. It felt impossible to dedicate anymore time to technology in our already packed school day. While teaching virtually during a pandemic has been a challenge, one silver lining has been the head first dive into technology. It's been a sink or swim world and I have been trying my best to doggie paddle my way through. Even though I'm still a big fan of paper and pencil work for primary aged students, I have so many more tools in my belt for engaging students in learning. As I waded through my action research in the classroom, I had to deepen my understanding and comfortability with the technological tools available to me in order to effectively deliver content knowledge in the area of math. After teaching second grade for over 8 years, I was happy not to struggle too much with content knowledge, successfully predicting what was up ahead in our math learning journey. Without effective teaching strategies, or pedagogy, however, this content knowledge and any technology skills I had would be of little use. A teacher's effectiveness in today's world largely depends on the ability to grow in, and integrate all three of these domains into one's teaching practice, especially in the world of virtual learning. The balance of all three of these elements looks different in each particular grade level and community of learners. Older and younger students need different content knowledge, different pedagogical strategies, and different levels of technology integration and skills in order to succeed in learning. Keeping these three components and their balanced integration at the forefront of the teaching practice is what leads to success in learning for students of all ages.
8 Comments
Today I made my first attempt at shooting A roll footage for my mini-documentary about my action research. I would love to make something funny or at least clever but usually my work is serious because that is what I know how to do. Learning to simply put pieces of footage together in a way that hopefully ends up making sense, is where my energies will have to go for now. I wrote out my serious storyline and serious questions and went over them a couple times. Then I proceded to record my serious interview. Despite the title of my last blog post for this class, I have actually been looking forward to the challenge of putting this project together. However, when it came time to actually record, my optimism started to wane. It was the perfect cloudy day for filming with natural light. Thank goodness I had begun cleaning my room prior to the weekend because even with the clean surfaces, I had to move plants and other items around multiple times before I finally got some kind of shot that seemed clean enough, though I'm still not sure. Next came positioning the cell phone and fixing it to the window frame with gobs of tape that ended up sticking more to itself than to anything else. It was a struggle. I filmed one interview with the reverse camera on so I got a long clip of the window frame. I got another interview in time-laps mode because somehow my finger switched the video settings on the touch screen before recording. That was a fun one to watch. I keep thinking I will do more takes and just use the best one. But at some point I need to realize, I've worked hard, this is new, and it's never going to be perfect. It reminds me of my students in the early stages of the year when I would have them record a simple response to a question on Seesaw with the microphone. Some of them, surprisingly even those that LOVED talking constantly in class, were completely paralyzed and would start the recording over multiple times (sounds familiar). I only realized this when I had to work one on one with one student in a Zoom breakout room. All I wanted was a simple quick voiced response but it was a big deal for students, something I hadn't anticipated. Oh the funny tricks our minds play on us when we encounter new challenges. I will try, I will be content, and I will grow. |
Minna NummelinLife-long learner and dual language 2nd grade teacher. Archives
April 2021
Categories |