TASK 2

This week we had to do an activity about TPACK .

In this activity we explored this concept throught some question that our teacher gave to us. Then we had to represent the concep in an infromation map

What exactly is TPACK? (p.e. it is a technology, theory, a model, an animal, poetry, an author? All of these? About what?)

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a model created by the professors  Punya Mishra and Mattew J. Koehler from the State University of Michigan between 2006 and 2009, that identifies the types of knowledge that a teacher needs to dominate to integrate the ICTs on an effective form in the education that it gives.

TPACK is the interaction of three primary forms of knowledge: Content (CK), Pedagogy (PK), and Technology (TK).

It also gives importance to new manners of knowledge that vary in the relations between them, showing four additional areas that teachers can apply to the technological teaching: Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), Technological Content Knowledge (TCK), Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK).

What are the essential elements of TPACK and how are they related each other?

TPACK stands for: Technological Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge and Content Knowledge. And from the relationship between these three main areas appear:

• Technological Knowledge (TK): this is the knowledge and mastery of technology so that an educator can use and confidentially use of technology in the classroom including when it is not required
• Pedagogical Knowledge (PK): This is the knowledge and practice of teaching & learning that an educator can use such as classroom management, taxonomies, planning & assessment…
• Content Knowledge (CK): This is the knowledge of subject content such as concepts, theories, ideas, frameworks, evidence & proof and established practices  including ways to develop such knowledge.
• Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK)  links together the pedagogical and content knowledge to bring about learning that is built upon strong subject knowledge and teaching  & learning strategies.
• Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) links together technology and content knowledge to bring about learning that is built upon strong subject knowledge and a mastery of “more than the subject they teach”
• Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK): Is “an understanding of how teaching & learning can change when particular technologies are used in particular ways” Knowling a range of tools & their appropriateness within different strategies.
• Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK): this is truly meaningful, deeply skilled teaching with or without (because sometimes this can be the best choice) technology. It differs from three individual concepts because to embrace all three simultaneously requires a deep understanding of how all three can work together to bring about the best technologically and pedagogically sound learning based upon a deep understanding of subject matter. An example of this might be a lesson plan based upon assessment (PK) which looks at the content matter (CK) which examines how technology (TK) could transform learning.

How would TPACK be useful for you?

As we want to become teachers and nowadays technology is always present in our lives, we must know how to use this type of tools to integrate them in our lesson in a correct way.

Our generation has seen how the technology invaded our classrooms and how teachers started used them to improve the quality of teaching. But it also occurred in other aspects of our daily life like in.

Besides is a tool that we as teachers, we could use with the aim to extract the best of the students, developing other capacities that could be developed thanks to the intervention of technologies.

How is TPACK related to your degree?

Our degree help us increasing our knowledge about technology, because it will be very useful in our future . We will be able to introduce the technology in our classes in an easy way and making the teaching-learning process more easy to carry.

If we don't have this knowledge we won’t know in our future class how to apply in a way that help our students learn more easy, because teaching is not only about knowledge, is also about knowing how to apply the technologies and methodologies we have in our knowledge..

Also, try to answer the following question to us: There is an important part of the Teacher’s action that is not already included in TPACK model? Is TPACK enough to understand the work of a teacher?

It could be necessary to include some elements related to personal interaction of teachers with students, such as the importance of having a personal relationship with them.

Diversity has to be included too. Although exist a model of students, every child is different, so we can say that TPACK is not enough to understand the work of a teacher. This model offers a big amount of information about what teachers have to know, but there are many elements that teachers learn by practice, not studying.

Apart from the creation of an information map about TPACK, this week we have had another activity. The day of the presentations, we had to answer some questions to our classmates during their expositions. These questions were about what captured our attention most, if they prepared something that we not, also if we did something that our colleagues did not, and finally we had to give them some advices.

What more attracted our attention of our classmates’ presentations was the great originality of their information maps, as well as their good expositions. In addition, it was interesting the contact that our classmates had with the listeners, since they were doing them participants of the expositions by interactive posters. Also, the majority of our colleagues’ posters were related to their team name and they used different types of materials to create them, so that was something that we liked so much.

There were several things that our classmates did in a different way from us. Many groups explained what types of information maps exist and why they had chosen what they did. Moreover, they also gave us information about the evolution of TPACK throughout time and showed lot of examples. They also talked about different dates related to the topic and the future of TPACK.

In general, all the presentations were original and our classmates were good communicators, but in some posters we watched that letters were very small and was difficult to read it. This was something that we had kept in mind, so that we tried to do our poster the biggest that we could. Apart from that, we think that our classmates did a great job.

Lastly, we realized that the majority of our classmates were nervous and we understand them, so that we advice all of them that they had to be calmed, because they were doing a good job.