Wow, are teachers incredible. We really do so much.
There’s a focused juggling and flexibility that goes into every moment of a school day, balancing students’ needs and school day constraints. At any one time a teacher is considering how to support someone who struggles to read at grade level, the further nuance to their subject matter that the textbook fails to address and an interactive way to engage with material that leverages technology as a tool.
I’ve recently learned about a framework that acknowledges all these different realms of knowledge that teachers use and consider when crafting lesson plans for their students.
It’s called TPACK and here’s a brief video explaining it in two minutes: (Robertson, 2013)
I want to be intentional about planning lessons and operating my classrooms more in “the sweet spot.” Where all three of these link up together.
A resource I found that really got my mind working on how to do this in various contexts was this game from Matt Koehler’s blog. (Matt Koehler is one of the creators of the TPACK framework, building of the PCK framework of Lee Shulman)
Here is a link to the TPACK game (Koehler, 2013)
I want to consider the tech that “was not constructed for educational purposes”, that requires “creative input from the teacher” to integrate well into the classroom. (Koehler & Mishra, 2009)
Examples of these technologies could be GoogleEarth or a podcast app or the movies I show in class. None of them are made with students and teachers in mind but can be used by teachers and students in the classroom.
Putting my TPACK hat on, I wonder what other sorts of technologies built for other purposes can I co-opt for the classroom? Specifically things made for historians and geographers to use, how can I find them and bring them into my classroom? I wonder too where the boundary is, if there is one, of how advanced/complicated a tool can be that I would still feel comfortable leveraging in the classroom? For example if a tool requires 40 hours of intense training to sort out how to use its most basic functions, that would be inappropriate for a 7th grade world history classroom.
What if I introduce a tool that overwhelms students and they feel disqualified to be able to pursue history as historians or geography as geographers? On the other hand, what if from that fear I never give students authentic tools that allow them to be relevant historians and geographers?
A tricky balance but as I unpack TPACK for myself, one that I want to continue to wrestle with and explore.
Sources:
Koehler, M., and P. Mishra. “Too Cool for School? No Way! Using the TPACK Framework: You Can Have Your Hot Tools and Teach with Them, Too.” Learning and Leading with
Technology, vol. 36, no. 7, 2009, pp. 14–18.
Robertson, Candace. TPACK in 2 Minutes. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FagVSQlZELY. Accessed 4 July 2022.
“The TPACK Game - C.” Dr Matthew J Koehler, 21 Nov. 2013, http://www.matt- koehler.com/the-tpack-game/the-tpack-game-c/.
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