P3+Week+9

TPACK - What is it? The combination of Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge coming together to provide an ideal learning experience for my students.

I found this image at @http://tpack.org/

I had never heard about TPACK before, but it defines my personal philosophy about technology well. We should not just be using technology for the sake of technology. Technology should be used when it is the best way to engage students in learning. I do a lot of hands-on, interactive learning. However, I never do an activity in my class just to do an activity. We only do an interactive role-playing type lesson because that is going to be the best way for students to be introduced to a topic or to remember a concept. Then when we continue to teach the topic, I can refer back to the activity we did and students can connect with the content because they experienced it. The same should be said for technology. I should never use technology just to use technology. I should only use technology in the cases when using technology is going to be the best experience for students so they can remember what we learned about.

I believe that TPACK is about increasing my ability to develop lessons where the use of technology is a vehicle for delivering the most engaging, relevant lesson so that my students experience genuine learning.

With our History Alive! Curriculum from TCI, I believe we have the best combination of PCK - Pedagogical and Content Knowledge. My challenge is to find ways the incorporate technology into this excellent curriculum so that I am addressing student learning with TPACK.