Monday, March 19, 2018

TPACK for Education is the Right Track!


What happens when you combine three integral parts of modern education?!?!

TPACK!

Alright, alright, another educational acronym. I know this one is new to some of you, in fact, I've just been learning about it myself!

TPACK stands for:

Technological
Pedagogical
Content Knowledge

There are some spectacular diagrams out there which demonstrate how these three intersect. Check out this post on Schoology by Dylan Rodgers, "The TPACK Framework Explained". 

Rodgers points out that, "TPACK shows us that there's a relationship between content, knowledge, and pedagogy, and the purposeful blending of them is key"

I love the tool analogy found on Mark Fijor's blog post! Instead of asking teachers and schools to start with the tools, he's asking them to start first with the task. If I want my preschool students to identify letters and produce letter sounds, I need to pick the right tool for that particular task. Thinking about this in relation to TPACK, I could try out some augmented reality flashcards connected to letters. As with any technology in education, there is a very expensive version of this from Alive Studios, and a more affordable version with AR Flashcards.  

One of my favorite examples of TPACK is this video of a kindergarten teacher integrating technology into a content-rich and required portion of the curriculum, word families. This teacher may or may not have known about TPACK at the time, but she did an excellent job incorporating technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge.

See for yourself in this video from the Ed Tech team at Blue Valley Schools:


Are you now inspired to think differently about technology integration in your own learning experiences? Whether you are designing curriculum for preschool students, or college students, all learners will benefit from using a TPACK model in the classroom!




No comments:

Post a Comment