I spent a two days a couple of weeks ago with the faculty and leadership of Bloomfield Hills School District. The first day was a workshop on teaching, technology and creativity with the faculty of Model High School and Bowers Academy. Leigh and I had been invited there by Bill Boyle, the principal (read his blog). We spent the day exploring ideas of TPACK and creativity and it was great fun (see poems and images below).
Two days later I was back again, this time invited by the district Superintendent, Rob Glass, working with the entire school leadership on issues related to social media and what it means for schools and school districts. The morning was led of by Social Media guru, Shel Holtz, who talked about how social media was transforming the world of work and learning. [You can download his presentation here, though I must say that it is a 175MB download.] Building on Shel’s presentation I facilitated a series of brainstorming activities with all the administrators about specific things they could do in their schools and classrooms to meet these challenges. At the end of the day we had a series of key action items (short term and long term) for a range of different contexts.
All in all it was an extremely productive and fun day.
I am including below some of the stuff that emerged out of that meeting. The first is a slideshow of photographs from these two days.
And of course whenever I do a workshop on creativity can bad poetry be far behind? So here are some of the poems (and a rap song!) that emerged from the first workshop on creativity.Enjoy.
1. There once was a professor whose goal
Was to teach that creativity is whole
Effective and new
We’re making a stew
Of technology, content, pedagogy and soul
2
Some teachers on PD
Learned about creativity
They found creative products are new
From our pasts came only a few
for their own students they hope this won’t be
Deanna Vetrnone, Geoffery Parkinson
3.
Whole, roll, jellyroll
Effect, Defect, and reflect
Novel Pavel Datsyuk
Peg Pasternak, Bruce Kezlarian, Cullen Murphy
4.
There once was a girl from Nantucket
Who was so bored she said *@%& it
She developed something N.E.W.
To away her blues
And forever vowed to think outside the bucket
Matt Autha, Rosalie Burnett, Bill Boyle
5. PD Rap
I can’t believe the of change
It makes my brain feel deranged
It has my whole body freakin’
But now I’ll start my creativity tweakin’
Rapping to you in rhyming couplets
Rain my words like drops in a bucket
Like the girl on Nantucket
Who looked around and just said f%$# it
Suffering from deep amnesia
Out of lots of inertia, a little fantasia
While waiting for lunch from La Marsa.
Thinking about the old days
With nostalgia.
When we had pencils and chalk
Things moved slow
Now we start to balk
But it’s go go go
But no we know technology’s just a tool
We’ll keep up, won’t be no fool
And our whole school will rule!
Camille Dempsey, a professional development consultant in instructional technology, education, arts and leadership as well as a doctoral candidate in in the Leadership and Instructional Technology Program at Duquesne University has been ” investigating TPACK in conjunction with IT & visual art” and shared a recent presentation she and her colleague made at the Pennsylvania Art Education Association Conference.
Dempsey, J. C. & Linaberger, M. (2010, October). Art in the digital garden: Cultivating best practices in technology integration and art. Pennsylvania Art Education Association Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Clare Kilbane, Associate Professor at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio recently created an enhanced podcast/vodcast explaining TPACK as a part of an ARRA grant implemented in the state of Ohio last spring. This podcast/vodcast was designed in the style of “podcasts created by Commoncraft (with permission from Lee LeFever of course).” It now available to view on Vimeo.
Also, students in the Curriculum Design and Educational Innovation program at Twente University have been blogging about their work with TPACK. I was informed of this by my friend Petra Fisser faculty member at Twente University, and the faculty lead on this course. I have had a long relationship with the faculty and students at Twente (see here and here and here). As an extension of this, Petra wanted me to comment on the student blogs – which was difficult given that there were 23(!) of them. What I did instead is read through all of them and send some feedback to the class as a whole. [I have included what I wrote at the end of this posting, just for the record.] I also promised to provide links to their blogs on my site, for other people to read. If you do visit these pages, take a moment to post a comment or a thought. I know it will be greatly appreciated by the students. Here are the links
Here is the feedback that I sent to the whole class.
Dear friends –
Thank you for inviting me to your class (albeit virtually). When Petra asked me to look over your blogs I said yes enthusiastically, and looked forward to reading and commenting on all of your posts. At that time, however, I did not realize that there were 23 blogs I had promised to look at and comment on. I have read all the posts but given my busy schedule, I realized it would be impossible to comment on every post and I didn’t want to post on some and not on others, so I decided to write this extended note to all of you.
Reading all your blog posts was great fun. It was good to see all the different yet similar takes on the TPACK framework. Clearly all of you have approached the topic quite thoughtfully and seriously. I was also pleased to see some of the examples you guys provided about examples of TPACK. TPACK has multiple uses, as an analytic framework for researchers (so that they can use it to study actual classrooms and what happens there) but as importantly as a tool for defining a better kind of practice. This is why the examples, the mindmaps, the images, the cartoons, all were great for me to see and read. In fact for most of the blogs I went ahead and read the posts about flexibility and pedagogy as well. So I got a great introduction to the course, though in a backward sequence (TPACK followed by pedagogy followed by Flexibility).
I think this idea of placing flexibility first in the sequence was a great one because it introduced you to what I think is the most crucial aspect of the TPACK framework – the idea that one can start with any of the three knowledge bases and still end up with an integrated curriculum design. And this requires flexibility, since once you include a new pedagogy in your thinking it will necessarily change how you think of how content is to be represented and what technologies can best do that. So what is important here is the end goal – that of integration rather than how you get there.
One misconception that seemed to see had to do with the conceptualization of TCK. TCK is often described/defined as or ability to match the technology to the subject matter content to achieve specific subject matter goals or learning outcomes. Though that is not wrong it is misses an important point regarding how technology (historically speaking) has shaped and changed the representations and cognitions in the disciplines. Be it physics or chemistry, art or music, new technologies have provided new ways of understanding and new ways of representing these understandings. Think of how the advent of fMRI, eye tracker technology, PET have led to flowering of the field we now called neuroscience! Thus TCK is more than the matching it is also understanding how technologies have changed content over time and this is important for teachers to know.
That’s all for now. I have truly enjoyed reading your blogs and I wish I had the time to post comments to each of you individually. I am writing this to you from 30,000 feet above sea level, from an airplane, as I fly from Detroit to Las Vegas for a conference. How awesome can technology be!
Another final piece of advice (or suggestion) is that each of you continue to maintain your blog. I have found writing to be the best way of thinking – often I don’t know what I think about a particular topic till I start writing a blog post about it. Suddenly things that seemed clear become vague and things that I hadn’t given much thought to come to the forefront. The discipline of writing and articulating what you are thinking (for a real audience) on a regular basis is a wonderful cognitive tool to have. I have been blogging for a couple of years now and frankly I blog not for any body else (I mean I love it when people comment on my posts) but that is not the reason I blog. I sincerely hope that these beginning steps that are taking in this new medium will not stop once the class if over and that your posts will not depend on an assignment given to you by a professor but rather will emerge from your own thinking and experience. And that will be awesome.
Thank you for listening to me and I look forward to future interactions, hopefully in Enschede sometime soon.
I was recently invited to present a keynote address at the 21st Century Instructional Technology Conference (titled Elements of Technology) at the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada. Clark County is the 5th largest school district in the country with over 300,000 students and it was a great privilege to be invited to present there. I was invited there by the Instructional Technology Department (led by Loretta Asay) and my contact person was Project Facilitator, Sherwood Jones. They are a great group of people and I truly had a wonderful time there.
Apart from the Keynote I also conducted a workshop on Creativity and Teaching with Technology. I had anticipated having around 25 people for the workshop but the room was overflowing (at least 15 more than I had anticipated). That did throw a few kinks into my routine but nothing that was unsurmountable. I am sharing below some of the things that people created during this two hour workshop.
I explained my idea of a creative idea or product as being Novel, Effective and Whole (the so called New NEW)! This led Terra Graves, Thomasina Rose and Kristina Ernest to create this acrostic poem.
New
Organic
Visual
Engaging
Longevity
Educational
Fun
Freedom
Everyone
Creativity
Teachers
Innovative
Variety
Enthusiasm
Winning
Holistic
Outside the Box
Learning
Exciting
Here are a few more from Lisa Widmer, Katie Jones, Brent Mesenburg and Robert Jackson
The first two are limericks that summarize some of the things we had talked about in the first half of the workshop.
Creativity is our goal
Make it Novel Effective and Whole
When in doubt
Turn it about
And satisfy your soul
A second, funnier, version is as follows:
Creativity is our goal
Make it Novel Effective and Whole
When in doubt
Don’t Freak out
It’s quite alright if you stole
The same team wrote another poem, synthesizing some of the ideas we played with in the second half of the workshop.
Being creative is like heaven
Mimic the great Magellan
And fear not missteps
Just use the five steps
And crank that knob to eleven
The “crank the knob to eleven” of course being a response to the (in)famous scene from This is Final Tap.
A couple of other pieces that emerged from this team (can you tell this was a prolific group) was the quote:
“Tweak it to Teach it”
Somewhat along the same lines was Patrick Whitehead who suggested the following two:
Thinking is tweaking your mind
Think better… TWEAK your mind!
Apart from this display of verbal dexterity, the participants also completed a “letter search” task where they looked for letter that spell out the word “Relax, Repose, Reteach.” I had done a similar activity with students in our MAET program a year ago in Plymouth. Essentially what I did was create a somewhat awkward problem scenario the solution to which were the words Relax, Repose, Reteach. So these were the letters students searched for… and this is what they came up with.
Now for the twist! As it turns out one of the themes of the keynote (and the workshop) were the three words “Explore, Create, Share.” Students watched each of the three videos that we had created (see them here) as well as the mashup that had inspired us to begin with (see the original and the mashup here).
What the students didn’t know was that the three words (Relax, Repose, Reteach) could be rearranged to read… (surprise, surprise) the words Create, Explore, Share!! Here is what that looks like…
I must give a shout-out to High School Freshman Bryan Jones who I “volunteered” to help me out. He had a tough job, collecting all the pictures since there were multiple cameras (from regular digital cameras to iPhones), missing cables, a mac that was running Windows (which mean iPhoto wouldn’t cooperate)… and he had to pull everything together in around 25 minutes while the workshop was still going on… And he managed it without fuss and stress. Thanks!
Finally, we all watched the new Steven Johnson video “Where good ideas come from” and created demotivational posters based on what they heard and saw. Below is the video (just in case you haven’t seen it already) and below that the posters the students created.
As you can imagine this was a hectic workshop for all of us. We covered a lot of ground and the participants also created some interesting artifacts that can have a life beyond the immediate workshop. What fun!
Back in March of this year, Joel Colbert (friend and former chair of the AACTE Innovation and Technology Committee) spent a few hours working together on a document that AACTE was going to put out. Yesterday, at the meeting of the NTLS meeting in Washington DC, I found out that the report is out. You can find the report titled 21st Century Knowledge and Skills in Educator Preparation. This eschoolnews article will also tell you more: Groups urge updates to teacher preparation programs. As the article says:
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) are calling on teacher education programs to update their curricula to better prepare future teachers to integrate 21st-century skills into their instruction.
The groups released a paper on Sept. 23 seeking to establish a shared vision for infusing digital-age knowledge and skills into teacher preparation programs and spark a meaningful discussion among higher-education leaders about how to implement this vision.
I have mixed feelings about this report – even though I am thanked at the end (along with other members of the Innovation & Technology Committee). I saw my task as being taking a document that already existed and ensure that some of the key work done by the committee (such as the work around TPACK and the handbook) would be addressed in the report. So it was a task circumscribed and limited in critical ways. As some of my other writing (here on the blog and at other venues) suggests, I have a somewhat different perspective on what we mean by 21st Century Skills (starting even with my dislike of that term) and what it would even mean… but that is neither here nor there. The report is here, take a look, and let me know what you think.
A véjà du experience is about looking at a familiar situation but with fresh eyes, as if you’ve never seen it before. It forms the basis of an assignment I give in my CEP818, Creativity in Teaching & Learning course. The assignment is described in greater detail here, but the core idea is to take multiple photographs of some everyday object in such a way that the viewer cannot easily determine what the object is! More here.
Today, I spent some time with my kids re-doing the assignment. My son suggested taking pictures of his X-Box 360 but we finally went with an object selected by my daughter. Here are the pictures. What do you think it is?
I have often talked of repurposing as being key to creativity, particularly for teachers using new technologies. (See previous postings on this topic here and here, and here and here.) Imagine my surprise when this past Sunday’s comics-page had a comic on this very issue. The strip is called Jump Start below is the specific set of panels on repurposing.
Finally, Matt Koehler has mocked up a version of the game online. He created it for the EPET Hybrid PhD program he was teaching this summer. Though he isn’t sure the game is really ready for “prime-time” he does have it available on his website. Check it out: The TPACK Game, Matt Koehler version. The instructions are simple:
In the TPACK Game, you consider how Technology (T), Pedagogy (P), and Content (C) work together by randomly choosing two of the three (C, P, and T), and thinking deeply to find the third that makes them all work together in a pedagogically sound way to teach the content.
I recently (through the magic of Twitter) found out about an initiative New Literacies Teacher Leader Institute 2010. This institute was organized by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary & Secondary Education, the New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut, and the New Literacies Collabortive at the Friday Institute, (part of NC State University’s College of Education). They recently conducted a week long institute in Cambridge, MA from June 20 – 25 for approximately “130 teachers, and 10 Teacher Leaders, from across Massachusetts … to learn from leaders in the field of new literacies and engage in project-based inquiry to create curriculum units based on the MA Curriculum Frameworks.”
As a part of this was a GotTPACK 2010 session organized by Julie Coiro. Of most interest to me, and possibly to others following this blog, is the section titled “Applying TPACK Principles to Learning Projects” where participants are asked to review a selected list of projects. These projects range across content areas (from mathematics to science, from literature to history/language arts) and across grade levels (elementary to high school). Finally, the participants are asked to “work in their groups to apply TPACK guidelines” to answer the following questions:
How well does each represent a project designed by teachers who understand the dynamics of TPACK? How might you improve or adapt these projects to better reflect the TPACK principles?
It seems to me that this is a great way of thinking and learning about TPACK. By grounding it in specific examples the somewhat abstract ideas of the intersecting knowledge bases of TPACK can be specifically connected to actual projects and implementations. Moreover the open-ended task of asking participants to improve or adapt these projects prevents them from seeing these projects in some ways as being perfect or as an examples of best practice. (My concern with the whole idea of “best practice”, as opposed to Pretty Good Practice, can be found here).
This project seems to me to complement the work being done by Charles Graham and his colleagues over at Brigham Young which I had written about earlier (see here).
The TPACK Radio/Video show that we had created for ISTE is now available on Vimeo. I think this version is easier to embed and view (as opposed to a 21MB download, as it was the previous time around).
A fake radio/video show created for ISTE2010 by Punya Mishra with Matt Koehler (and a bunch of other people who are thanked in the video). We were asked to create a video for ISTE, a conference that neither of us (Punya or Matt) could attend. Our goal was to create an engaging 15 minute video that would convey our ideas about technology integration in teaching, specifically the TPACK framework. The entire thing (including the two Mastercard & UPS commercials) was scripted, shot and edited over 4 days. More details (and credits here)
Here is the second of the two commercials created specially for our ISTE Radio/Video show. The first one (a take-off on the UPS/Whiteboard commercials can be seen here). Enjoy. As always, the director’s commentary is provided below.
The backstory: I have, for many years now, wanted to create a short video along the lines of the Mastercard “Priceless” commercials. I have had many different ideas, but never really got a chance to do so. So when I came up with the idea of the Radio/Video show for ISTE, I decided this was the time to go do it.
The activity shown here (with tennis balls, flip cams, markers and transparencies) is one that I have actually done multiple times, in venues around the world. This is a simple activity that exposes a fundamental misconception people have about how objects fall. The question I ask is where the tennis ball would fall if dropped by someone in three different conditions: standing still, walking or running. Most people say that the ball would fall at the feet in the first case (right answer), and behind the person in the other two cases (wrong answer). It turns out that the ball always falls at the feet of the person – assuming, of course, that the person keeps moving at the same speed after letting go of the ball. Why the ball does so has to do with Newton’s First Law, something many people can recite back to you, even while getting this question wrong.
After I get all the responses (and it is always amazing to me just how many people get it wrong), I ask people to go and create a video of the actual experiment. I typically give them 45 minutes to an hour to do the entire thing. There is something to be said for being able to see what “really” happens, to go frame-by-frame through it. It better than any physics lesson, this activity exposes people to just how wrong their intuitions were.
There are many layers to this assignment. In some cases I have had people tape a transparency sheet to their computer screens and then track the parabolic path of the ball. You can go ahead and measure the height of the person’s hand knowing the frame-rate of the video, actually calculate the value of g, acceleration due to gravity.
Anyway, that assignment became the core idea behind the video. The entire commercial was shot, narrated and edited one Sunday afternoon. I got a group of my daughter’s friends together and we shot the still frames of them dropping the ball and shooting the video. The script was narrated by my son. Despite multiple takes he could not correctly pronounce the word “pedagogy” so tweaked the script to drop that particular word (which of course meant that Technology and Content were out as well!). The tag line “There is some knowledge you are born with, for everything else there’s TPACK” emerged out a conversation with Matt Koehler.
Our ISTE Radio/Video show needed a few commercials to break the monotony – so we created a couple. Here is the first one, a take on the UPS / Whiteboard commercials. Watch and enjoy (director’s commentary provided below).
The idea for this video came from my wife, Smita. I was talking with her about possible commercials to spoof, and that we needed something that people would recognize right away. She suggested the UPS-whiteboard commercials and bingo! I knew this was the one. A bit of doodling on paper and watching some of the original commercials on YouTube later, the strong resemblance between the UPS logo and the intersection of the three circles (that make up TPACK) struck me. And, as they say, the rest just fell into place. One of the things nice about the UPS commercials is the manner in which the “long-haired guy” changes the image with little moves here and there. I think our version does the same, at two different levels. The first is the manner in which the seeming UPS logo is shown to really be the crucial meeting point of the three circles, and then, at the very end, how the color of the marker changes from green to red! Tiny touches but they make all the difference, if you ask me.
The star of the commercial is Mete Akcaoglu, a doctoral student in our program, selected for his hair (we needed someone with longer hair to correspond with the star of the actual commercials), his “cool” Turkish accent, and his acting ability. Essentially what happened was that Mete just happened to walk by my office and got immediately “volunteered” to be the star. Not that he had much choice I do think he did a great job.
We checked out a variety of places with whiteboards (meeting rooms etc.) but all of them had some problem or the other (excessive glare, strange reflections, and inadequate lighting). Finally, Leigh Wolf was gracious enough to lend us her office (even though, I am sure, it was a huge distraction). The commercial was filmed with a Flip camera and edited with iMovie. Matt Koehler found us the right music – and 20 minutes later, we had a final version.
You can see the commercial in “context” by going directly to the ISTE10 TPACK radio/video show, but be prepared to spend 15 minutes on the entire program.
I just spent a day at MICDS in St. Louis talking with a small but select group of teachers about creativity in teaching, the role of big ideas, the meaning of TPACK, the importance of trans-disciplinary learning (among other things). What a wonderful way of spending the day! This visit was organized by Elizabeth Helfant at MICDS. Apart from the workshop, it was also wonderful to finally meet up with Mr. Nashworld, Sean Nash himself. Sean and I have been blogging buddies for a while now and it was great to finally meet up with him.
As a part of our activities today I had all the participants crate i-Images. I have written about i-Images on this blog before (see here and here).
i-Images are the brainchild of David Wong and you can find his page on i-Images here.
Anyway, here are some of the i-Images created today. I do think they are pretty cool and thought provoking, each in its own way. Click on the images below to see what the workshop participants created. Enjoy.
I have never been able to make to the ISTE (formerly NECC) conference since it falls bang in the middle of my summer teaching. This year was no exception. The only problem is that, this year, Matt and I had been invited to a special forum by SIGTE (titled “Considering the “C” in TPACK: Curriculum-based Technology Integration”) neither of us could be there. (Bummer!) So instead, we were asked to make video!
The idea of a 15 minute video of the two of us speaking into a camera was not very appealing… So we did something different. Doing something different was appropriate given our interest in creativity and the fact that our talk was about TPACK! So 4 days and untold hours of work later, here is the video that was presented at ISTE. [Halfway through this I realized that it may have taken less time to have just flown to Denver and made our presentation!]
I should also take moment to thank Sarah McPherson, New York Institute of Technology, for organizing the session and the rest of the panelists (Glen Bull, Judi Harris, Ann Thompson and Denise Schmidt) for their support. Ann Thompson and Denise Schmidt deserve a special thanks for stepping in at the last minute to cover for Matt and me.
Thanks also to Leigh Wolf for narrating and hosting the radio show, and providing her office to shoot the UPS commercial; Mete Akcaoglu for starring in the faux-UPS commercial; Soham Mishra for narrating the faux-Mastercard commercial and Shreya Mishra and her friends for starring in it.
Just a warning, the video is 15 minutes long and a 21 MB download.
I have been a big fan of Despair.com and its quirky, dark humor. I particularly love the demotivational posters, with their beautiful inspiring photographs coupled with some deeply cynical or depressing message.
Today students in my MAET summer program completed a unit on motivation. They read the standard Ed Psych motivational literature (Dweck etc.) and also watched the RSA / Daniel Pink video (that I had linked to here). And then, they created a series of demotivational posters. These posters were created in Google Presentation, with images from Flickr and most importantly they had to use their ideas from either the readings or from the Pink video. [Incidentally the video was not created by Daniel Pink, nor by RSA, but rather by Cognitive Media.]
Here is what they came up with, click on the words to see the posters. The names of the students who created them is provided below the titles.
Incentives
Scot Acre
Patrick Gillespie
Marc Compton
Shawn Telford
Individuality
Kerry Guiliano
Aaron Moran
Mike Bammer
Julie Howe
Addy Hamilton
Motivation
Barb Bedford
Cheryl Schaefer
Hope Andres
Stacey Schuh
Rewards
Grace Bammer
Mary Wever
Jessica Steffel
Sarah Blazo
Curiosity
Craig McMichael
Chloe Tingley
Lial Miller
Katie Lorey
An interesting challenge that remains has to do with how we reconcile projections of the earth with the actual shape of the earth. For instance the Mercator projection distorts what are straight lines into curves and vice versa. Of course complicating all this is the fact that what we think of as straight lines needs to be reconfigured somewhat to meet the demands of a spherical surface i.e. the whole idea of a great circle.
I recently came across a very cool web site which uses Googlemaps to map a straight walk on the surface of the earth. Check out map.talleye.com
The moment you try this out you realize just how complex a process it is to go from the Mercator projection to understanding the same path on a sphere. This also reminded me of the maps of the earth that show the demarcation of day and night on its surface. Check it out at daylightmap.com.
[More information on the Mercator projection can be found here and on great circles here.]
Back in 2007, I was second author on a paper titled Teacher as Filmmaker, in which we described an approach to teacher professional development that involved teachers creating short, evocative movies, which we called iVideos. You can read the paper and abstract (below).
In our Masters program in Educational Technology at Michigan State University, K-12 teachers create “iVideos” – short, two-minute, digital videos designed to evoke powerful experiences about educative ideas. For example, an iVideo might enable viewers to experience the vastness of space, the interconnection between people and their environment, the timeless themes in great literature, and other compelling subject-matter ideas. How might these teacher-made iVideos serve as catalysts for teacher technology education and professional development? We describe the conceptual foundation of iVideos by building on the metaphor of teacher as filmmaker – an idea that highlights how teachers and filmmakers both strive to create powerful experiences for their audiences. In doing so, we argue that teachers are enabled to transform ideas and practice by immersing themselves in deep pedagogical consideration of subject-matter, significance, audience, learning, epistemology, and aesthetics. We also discuss how this approach develops teachers’ competency and efficacy with technology.
A week or so ago I received an email from Dr. Matthew Kearney, from University of Technology, Sydney informing us that, inspired by our work (as laid out in the above paper) students in their “pre-service teacher education elective class chose to make some ‘idea videos’ on a range of current issues in K-12 education.” You can see these movies by going to
It feels great to know that our work was useful (and even inspiring) to others. Dr. Kearney adds that:
I would like to invite any interested student teachers at MSU to view an ‘ivideo’ of interest from our gallery and leave their reactions as a ‘comment’ at the bottom of the relevant page. (Our student teacher ‘filmmakers’ will be monitoring these pages for any feedback / comments / questions on conceptual or technical aspects of their iVideos.)
PS Please feel free to forward this invitation to any other teacher education institutions / staff who may be interested in this exercise.
Please take a moment to check out these videos. They are quite well done and worth a moment of your time. Drop a comment if you can, it will mean a lot to the students.
Three different news-stories/articles came to my notice today all connected by the infamous brood parasite the cuckoo. The first is a part of Olivia Judson’s blog (on the NYTimes) on biology and life (read Cuckoo! Cuckoo! here), the second is is about how scientists have tried to understand what it is that the cuckoo does to trick other birds into caring for the cuckoo’s eggs (read, Scientists Get Bird’s-Eye View of How Cuckoos Fool Their Hosts) and the third is regarding a new way of engineering design and optimization inspired by the Cuckoo! (read about the ‘Cuckoo Search Algorithm‘ here) .
Olivia Judson makes a very important point about how our perceptual systems prevent us from seeing the world “as is.” For instance, as it turns out what we “see” when we see a cuckoo’s egg is very different from what the bird sees. As one of the articles say:
In the past, this kind of analysis was tackled by humans comparing eggs by eye, but human vision differs hugely from that of a bird. Birds can see ultraviolet light and because they have four types of cone in their eyes, compared with three in humans, they see a greater diversity of colour and pattern.
What this means is that over evolutionary time, cuckoos and the host birds are engaged in an arms-race to develop better and better deception (on the cuckoo’s part) and detection (on the part of the host birds) mechanisms. As a consequence one of the host birds studied:
… lay probably the most diverse range of eggs of any bird in the world, and this is likely to be an outcome of the long co-evolutionary battle with the Cuckoo Finch.
The eggs are analogous to a bank note, in terms of the variety and complexity of markings, perhaps to make them very hard to forge by the parasite.
So the same techniques used by currency designers to reduce forgery (the intricate markings that are the defining characteristics of today’s currency notes) is used by the host birds as well. Of course forgers keep coming up with better techniques to trick us, as do the cuckoo birds… all this of course leading to a runaway race where every innovation by the forgers (read cuckoo birds) has to be matched by the police (read host birds).
Now, it turns out that a couple of engineers have take this a step further, utilizing the idea of this evolutionary war to develop a better search algorithm! So what we have here is an interesting confluence of evolutionary forces and the manner in which scientists have tried to understand how these forces work and leading to the development of new technologies and techniques for solving engineering problems. How very cool is that!
All this is interesting in and of itself, but there is a deeper point about perception being made here that I would like to highlight. Olivia Judson says it much more eloquently than I ever could, so I quote:
Which makes me wonder: what are we missing? Like the birds — like any organism — our sensory system defines the way we perceive and interact with the world, and it is limited in important ways…
And in a more metaphorical way, the sight of the cuckoo chick makes me wonder what we miss by our routine habits of thought. To what extent do our preconceived notions narrow our perception of the planet, and ourselves?
What a great question? What are we not seeing? How do we learn to see?
Followers of this blog (and people who have seen my presentations on creativity) know that this idea of “learning to see,” is in my opinion, the most critical first step towards being creative. I have talked of this in terms of “recognition v.s. perception” and it underlies my arguments for repurposing technology (that I go on and on about, most recently here). I think it is important that we continually ask ourselves this question that Olivia Judson leaves us with:
To what extent do our preconceived notions narrow our perception of the planet, and ourselves?
In other words, what are we not seeing?
(H/T Ken Friedman for the first and third links and Google for the third).
I have always been interested in the manner in which people use (or re-use) everyday things for purposes they were never intended for. Be it a piece of red tape to mark a glass door so that people don’t slam into the glass (as I see at the MSU clinical center every time I go there) or use a chair to prop open a door—these are examples of everyday creativity. I have used different phrases or words to describe this phenomena (particularly in the context of educational technology), everything from situational creativity to repurposing to jugaad.
So imagine my pleasure at serendipitously chancing upon a book titled Thoughtless Acts?
This book by Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO
invites you to notice the subtle and amusing ways that people react to the world around them. These “thoughtless acts” reveal how people behave in a world not always perfectly tailored to their needs and demonstrate the kind of real-world observational approach that can inspire designers and anyone involved in creative endeavors.
Its a neat little book, filled with photographs of different “thoughtless acts” i.e. (to quote from the book):
… intuitive ways in which we adapt, exploit, and react to things in our environment; things we do without really thinking.
Some actions, such as grabbing onto something for balance, are universal and instinctive. Others, such as warming hands on a hot mug or stroking velvet, draw on experiences so deeply embodied that they are almost unconscious. Still more, such as hanging a jacket to claim a chair, have become spontaneous through habit or social learning. Observing such everyday interactions reveals subtle details about how we relate to the designed and natural world. This is key information and inspiration for design, and a good starting point for any creative initiative.
What the book emphasizes, for me, is the the value of “learning to see” – a distinction between recognition (which is seeing the world through existing frameworks) and perception (seeing the world as it is!). (Related posts here.) I have argued that this distinction between recognition and perception is the crux of true creativity. To quote myself (see original post here):
Perception is about seeing things for what they are, while recognition is about seeing things for how they have been labeled or how we have seen them in the past.
Anyway, the book, Thoughtless Acts? is a pleasure to browse and a quick Google search revealed (no surprise there) a website that goes with the book. What else but thoughtlessacts.com. The website allows you to preview the book as well as contribute observations of your own.
And if you wonder what this has to do with education technology, take a moment to follow these links. In brief, I have argued that there is no such thing as an educational technology. What we have are a range of technologies that we can repurpose, re-see, and re-envision as being educational technologies. Be it using a audio editing tool such as Audacity as a data analysis tool or a GPS device to teach mathematics, teachers are designers of experiences for their students. Experiences that allow them to engage with the world, with deep ideas of content! (TPACK anyone?). But these technologies don’t come as a given, with their pedagogical purpose stamped all over them. Educators have to work on “re-seeing” them for their own selfish (educational) purposes.
Just found out about a review of the Handbook of TPACK by Dorian Stoilescu and Douglas McDougall for the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology (2009). You can read the full review here. Overall a positive review, with some pertinent criticism, particularly regarding the lack of references to current research in TPACK. Here’s a quote from the last paragraph.
Overall, it remains a solid approach, written by prominent professors in different fields of education, offering a consistent perspective about integrating technology in various contexts of teaching. This book gives us the feeling that, by using TPCK, the use of computers in education might finish its prolonged period of childhood that made practitioners and researchers uneasy in educational technology, and start shaping more significant roles.
Teaching with technology, for me, is all about repurposing technology. Such repurposing requires creative play. Our presentation at SITE 2010 was around some creative micro- and macro-design tasks that can help foster such creative repurposing. I just came across this 1964 Jonathan Winters / Jack Paar video that makes the same point but in a far more interesting manner. Enjoy.
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As he said, “Here’s a stick…” he said, “Make me believe in something.”
I just got back from an extended trip to California (San Jose and San Diego). I will be posting a lot more about this trip but for now here are the slides from a symposium on “Strategies for teacher professional development of TPACK” organized by Joke Voogt of Twente University. The symposium consisted of 4 different presentations by faculty and graduate students from three different universities.
You can access a pdf of the proposal here and a copy of the slides here.
Introduction to the symposium Joke Voogt, (Twente University)
Technology integration in the science teacher preparation program in Kuwait: Becoming TPACK competent through design Ghaida Alayyar, Petra Fisser & Joke Voogt (Twente University)
Developing TPACK by Design Punya Mishra, Matt Koehler, Tae Seob Shin, Leigh Graves Wolf & Mike DeSchryver (Michigan State University)
Developing TPACK through teacher design teams: The case of pre-service mathematics teachers in Ghana Douglas Agyei & Joke Voogt (Twente University)
The development of an instrument to assess teacher development of TPACK Denise Schmidt, Evrim Baran, Ann Thompson (Iowa State University), Punya Mishra, Matt Koehler, & Tae Shin (Michigan State University)
More details of the symposium can be found on Petra Fisser’s blog, here, here and here. Note: Petra blogs in Dutch but in an age of Google Translate how much of an issue is that!
TPACK Newsletter, Issue #7.1:
Special SITE & AERA Conference Issue
March-April 2010
Welcome to the seventh edition of the TPACK Newsletter, published four times each year between September and April. If you are not sure what TPACK is, please surf over to http://www.tpack.org/ to find out more.
Gratuitous Quote About Technology
“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.” ~Alice Kahn
In This Issue
-1. Gratuitous Quote About Technology
0.In This Issue (–> You are here)
1. Update on Newsletter
2. TPACK SIG Meeting at SITE 2010 in San Diego 3. Recent TPACK Publications & Presentations 4. Recent TPACK-Related Dissertations
5. TPACK at California Council on Teacher Education Spring Conference 6. Coming up: TPACK at SITE 7. Coming up: TPACK at AERA 8. TPACK Work in Progress 9. New Hybrid Ph.D. Program at Michigan State (Connecting with TPACK)
10. Learning and Doing More with TPACK
–. Un-numbered miscellaneous stuff at the end
1. Update on Newsletter
The TPACK newsletter currently has 707 subscribers! In addition to being a palindromic number, this also represents a 9.2% increase in membership during the last two months.
Many thanks to those of you who sent in corrections so quickly to version 7.0 of his newsletter! We have incorporated them in this 7.1 edition.
2. TPACK SIG Meeting at SITE 2010 in San Diego
The TPACK SIG meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 31 from 8 – 9 AM in the Marina 3 room at the SITE Conference 2010 in San Diego, California. Please mark your calendars. More information about TPACK-related papers and presentations at SITE can be found below.
There are some leadership opportunities in the SIG that may be of interest to members (faculty and graduate students). We hope to welcome many at the meeting. We look forward to seeing you there.
3. Recent TPACK Publications & Presentations Below are several recent TPACK publications and presentations that we know about. If you know of others that were shared within the past several months, please let us know (tpack.news.editors@wm.edu).
Articles/Chapters
Blanchard, M. R., Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2010). Grounded tech integration: Science. Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(6). 32-34.
Figg, C. & McCartney, R. (2010). Impacting academic achievement with student learners teaching digital storytelling to others: The ATTTCSE digital video project. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 10(1). Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol10/iss1/languagearts/article3.cfm
Grandgenett, N., Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009). Grounded tech integration: Math.Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(3), 24-26.
Groth, R., Spickler, D., Bergner, J., & Bardzell, M. (2009). A qualitative approach to assessing technological pedagogical content knowledge.Contemporary Issues in Technology & Teacher Education, 9(4), 392-411. Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol9/iss4/mathematics/article1.cfm
Hardy, M. (2010). Enhancing preservice mathematics teachers’ TPCK. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 29(1), 73-86. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/p/33136
Kramarski, B. & Michalsky, T. (in press). Preparing preservice teachers for self-regulated learning in the context of technological pedagogical content knowledge. Learning and Instruction. Doi:10.1016/j.learninstruc.2009.05.003
Lee, M. H. & Tsai, C. C. (2010). Exploring teachers’ perceived self-efficacy and technological pedagogical content knowledge with respect to educational use of the World Wide Web. Instructional Science, 38(1), 1-21. Retrieved from http://www.springerlink.com/content/d510480505435104/
Pan, N., Lau, H., Lai, W. (2010). Sharing e-learning innovation across disciplines: An encounter between engineering and teacher education. Electronic Journal of e-Learning. 8(1). Retrieved from http://www.ejel.org/Volume-8/v8-i1/v8-i1-art-4.htm
Tanti, M., & Moran, W. (2009). Warts and all: Integrating ICT in teacher training. International Journal of Learning, 16,641-655.
Van Olphen, M., Hofer, M., & Harris, J. (2009-10). Grounded tech integration: Languages. Learning & Leading With Technology. 37(4), 26-28.
Wang, Q. (2009). Guiding teachers in the process of ICT integration: Analysis of three conceptual models. Educational Technology,
49(5), 23-27. Retrieved from http://qywang.myplace.nie.edu.sg/Publications.htm
Whitehouse, P., McCloskey, E., & Ketelhut, D. J. (2009). Online pedagogy design and development: New models for 21st century online teacher professional development. In J. O. Lindberg & A. D. Olofsson (Eds.), Online learning communities and teacher professional development: Methods for improved education delivery (pp. 247-262). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
Young, C., Hofer, M., & Harris, J. (2010). Grounded tech integration: English Language Arts. Learning & Leading With Technology, 37(5), 28-30.
The following TPACK-based dissertations have been released recently. There may be more… (and if so, you know whom to contact with that information
Chase, E. (2009). Extension educators’ perceptions of the use of digital technology in their work. Michigan State University, Lansing, MI. AAT 3381427
Nathan, E. J. (2009). An examination of the relationship between preservice teachers’ level of technology integration self-efficacy (TISE) and level of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). University of Houston, Houston, TX. AAT 3388727
Sheffield, C. C. (2009). A multiple case study analysis of middle grades social studies teachers’ instructional use of digital technology with academically talented students at three high-performing middle schools. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. AAT 3394182
5. TPACK at California Council on Teacher Education Spring Conference
The annual meeting of the California Council on Teacher Education (March 25 – 27, in San Jose) has a strong TPACK thematic focus. There will be keynote presentations and panel discussions led by TPACK regulars like PunyaMishra, Judi Harris, Glen Bull and Mario Kelly. http://www.ccte.org/conferences/
6. Coming up: TPACK at SITE 2010
Here is a list of presentations related to TPACK at the SITE conference at San Diego, March 29 – April 1. There are 34 papers, presentations, poster sessions and symposia related to TPACK that will be included in this conference. Please note the SIG meeting at 8 – 9 am on Wednesday, 3/31/10 as well. Specific locations and times for the presentations can be found on the SITE Conference Web site.
We have tried to capture all of the entries but if we missed yours (or one that you know about), do let us know (tpack.news.editors@wm.edu).
Tuesday, March 30
SITE’s Digital Fabrication Initative Glen Bull, University of Virginia, USA; Gary Marks, SITE, USA; Nick Sanham, Aspex, UK; Willy Kjellstrom, University of Virginia, USA
Strategies for Teacher Professional Development of TPACK, Part 1 & 2 Joke Voogt, University of Twente, Netherlands; Ann Thompson, Iowa State University, USA; PunyaMishra, Michigan State University, USA; Petra Fisser, University of Twente, Netherlands; GhaidaAllayar, Public Authority of Applied Education and Training, Kuwait; Douglas Agyei, University of Cape Coast, Ghana; Matthew Koehler, Michigan State University, USA; Tae Seob Shin, Michigan State University, USA; Leigh Graves Wolf, Michigan State University, USA; Mike DeSchryver, Michigan State University, USA; Denise Schmidt, Iowa State University, USA; EvrimBaran, Iowa State University, USA
The Validation of an Instrument Measuring TPACK Nicolette Burgoyne, Brigham Young University, USA; Charles R. Graham, Brigham Young University, USA; Richard Sudweeks, Brigham Young University, USA
Using TPACK as a Model for School Development KirstiEngelien, Department of Teacher Education and School Development, University of Oslo, Norway; KjerstiStundal, Gjerdrum secondary school, Norway
TPACK as Shared, Distributed Knowledge HægeNore, Akershus University College, Faculty of Technical and Vocational Teacher Education, Norway; Kirsti L. Engelien, University of Oslo, Department of Teacher Education and School Development, Norway; Monica Johannesen, Oslo University College, Faculty of Education and International Studies, Norway
The annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association is scheduled for April 30 – May 4 in Denver, Colorado. TPACK will be well represented there, with approximately 12 presentations (that we could find) related to the construct. They are:
(Symposia)
Perspectives on TPACK Chair: Gerald A. Knezek (University of North Texas)
Discussant: Ann D. Thompson (Iowa State University)
Exploring the nature of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge using Factor Analysis DeannaArchambault (Arizona State University), Joshua H. Barnett (Arizona State University)
Lost and found in Translation: A TPACK Survey of Mid-Career Teacher Beliefs and Practice Lisa G. Hervey (North Carolina State University)
Measuring the TPK Component of TPACK: An Alternative to Self-Assessment Andrew Frederick Barrett (Indiana University)
Knowledge Growth in Teaching Mathematics-Science with Technology: Moving PCK to TPACK in Online Professional Development Maggie L. Niess (Oregon State University), Emily H. Van Zee (Oregon State University), Tina L. Johnston (Oregon State University), Henry Gillow-Wiles (Oregon State University)
Innovative Pathways to the Development of Teacher Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Empirical Accounts From Preservice and In-Service Teachers Chair: ChrystallaMouza (University of Delaware)
Discussant: Ann Thompson (Iowa State University)
Evidence of TPACK in Preservice Graduates’ Rationales for Future Technology Use Joan E. Hughes (University of Texas-Austin)
Preservice Teachers’ Technology Integrated Planning: Contrasting Quality and Instructional Variety by Development Approach Mark J. Hofer (College of William & Mary), Neal Grandgenett (University of Nebraska-Omaha), Judith B. Harris (College of William & Mary), Karen Work Richardson (College of William & Mary)
Using Classroom Artifacts to Judge Teacher Knowledge of Reform-Based Instructional Practices that Integrate Technology in Mathematics and Science Classrooms Maggie L. Niess (Oregon State University)
Effects of Practice-Based Professional Development on Teacher Learning in Technology Integration ChrystallaMouza (University of Delaware)
GeoThentic: Designing and Assessing with Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Aaron Doering (University of Minnesota), Cassandra Scharber (University of Minnesota)
(Individual Papers)
Developing TPACK in Mathematics Instruction. Andrew B. Polly (University of North Carolina-Charlotte)
Using TPACK Without Knowing It: Preservice Teachers’ Perceptions of Integrating Instructional Technology in Social Studies. Erik Jon Byker (Michigan State University)
The Continuing Development, Validation, and Implementation of a TPACK Assessment for Preservice Teachers Denise A. Schmidt (Iowa State University), EvrimBaran (Iowa State University), Ann D. Thompson (Iowa State University), Matthew J. Koehler (Michigan State University), PunyaMishra (Michigan State University), Tae Seob Shin (Michigan State University)
8. TPACK Work in Progress
Bob Isaacson, who works in the Faculty Development Division in the U.S. Army’s Defense Language Institute, shared a draft of a paper that he’s working on at present with us. It uses TPACK to describe “Training Requirements for Foreign Language Teaching Online.” In the paper, Bob concludes, “The TCPK construct can provide a conceptual framework for faculty development specialists to develop training that will enable foreign language teachers to make the transition from traditional face-to-face teaching to online distance teaching using both best pedagogical practices for teaching foreign languages at a distance and existing technology resources and tools.” If you would like to communicate with Bob about his work, please email him.
9. New Hybrid Ph.D. Program at Michigan State (Connecting with TPACK)
The idea of TPACK is deeply grounded in practice. Keeping this in mind, and in order the develop the next generation of TPACK-fluent scholars and researchers, the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program at Michigan State University is now offering a hybrid doctoral program focused on the evolving roles of technology in learning. This cohort-based, blended program (which combines online coursework with intensive summer classes on campus) is designed for bright, established professionals currently working in K-12 schools, universities, policy centers, and research institutions who want to earn a Ph.D. while continuing in their current positions. The goal is to bring together a cohort of practitioners, using the powerful collaborative tools we now have, to create, explore and share; to engage in dialogue and dissent; to critique and conduct research; and to experiment with new technologies, new pedagogies and new content. To find out more about this program please click on the following links:
10. Learning and Doing More with TPACK Interested in learning more about TPACK or getting more involved in the TPACK community? Here are a few ideas:
Visit and contribute to the TPACK wiki at: http://tpack.org /
Join the TPACK SIG at: http://site.aace.org/sigs/tpack-sig.htm
Join and contribute to the TPACK Google group at: http://groups.google.com/group/tpack/
Review and provide feedback on the TPACK Learning Activity Types at: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/
Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested in its contents. Even better, have them subscribe to the TPACK newsletter by sending a blank email to sympa@lists.wm.edu, with the following text in the subject line: subscribe tpack.newsFirstNameLastName (of course, substituting their own first and last names for ‘FirstName’ and ‘LastName’ — unless their name happens to be FirstNameLastName, in which case they can just leave it as is).
If you have a news item that you would like to contribute to the newsletter, send it along to: tpack.news.editors@wm.edu If you are interested in volunteering to help run the newsletter (we need help!), send email to: tpack.news.editors@wm.edu
Standard End-Matter
If you have questions, suggestions, or comments about the newsletter, please send those to tpack.news.editors@wm.edu. If you are subscribed to the tpack.news email list, and — even after reviewing this impressive publication — you prefer not to continue to receive the fruits of our labors, please send a blank email message to sympa@lists.wm.edu, with the following text in the subject line: unsubscribe tpack.news
- Judi, Matt, Mario, and Punya
Judi Harris, Chair, College of William & Mary Matt Koehler, Vice-Chair, Michigan State University Mario Kelly, Futon, Hunter College PunyaMishra, Recliner, Michigan State University
My friend and colleague, Curt Bonk, Professor at Indiana University (also known as Travelin’ Ed Man) recently interviewed me about our new hybrid Ph.D. program. For those interested in the program (and maybe even those who are not) can read it by going to Want an E-Ph.D. in Ed Tech?: An E-nlightening interview with Punya Mishra from Michigan State University. Curt asked some good questions thus providing me an opportunity to talk about this new program within the broader context of how technology is changing higher ed.
A few weeks ago I had posted about the hybrid Ph.D. program that we recently announced. There has been terrific interest in this program (but we are still looking for more people – so keep the emails and questions coming).
As we were reviewing the various emails we are receiving, it struck me that we (here at MSU) have not really done a good job of capturing all the different options we offer to practicing educators (teachers and administrators in K-12, community college and higher education settings).
The goal in each of these programs is to work collaboratively with practitioners to creatively integrate technology in their practice. Built around the TPACK framework these programs run the gamut from a 10 credit certificate in Ed Tech, to a 30 credit master’s degree, from an Edupunk orientated refresher that can be taken for credit or no-credit (for those who already have a master’s), to two versions of a doctoral program (on-campus and the new substantially online hybrid program).
This led to our designing a graphic that attempts to capture all of our different initiatives. (Thanks also to Leigh Wolf and Robin Dickson for their input. Any errors are of course mine, and mine alone.) The blue arrows indicate “points of entry” i.e. spots that you can enter the program.
These “blocks” build on each other but there is no obligation to do the whole thing. Each block is self-contained i.e. there are multiple “off-ramps” from the program. Also, classes are customized to the needs and requirements of practitioners and can be taken in a variety of formats: online, face to face (on campus, off campus and abroad) as well as hybrid combinations thereof. For instance, we have students who have taken some certificate courses over weekends, at sites near their schools, followed that with some coursework on campus and online (over summer and regular semester) and received their master’s by completing their courses with one final summer, abroad.
I recently received an email from Debra Bourne, IT Coordinator at St. Paul’s International College in Australia informing me about some work related to TPACK being done in Queensland. Specifically she mentioned a paper to be presented at the upcoming Australian Computers in Education Conference. Here is a link to the article and a copy of the abstract (I think the last sentence of the abstract captures a very important idea). However, don’t read the abstract read the full paper
Jamieson-Proctor, R., Finger, G. & Albion, P. (2010). Auditing the TPACK Capabilities of Final Year Teacher Education Students: Are they ready for the 21st Century? Australian Computers in Education Conference 2010 (ACEC 2010: Digital Diversity):. Melbourne, Australian Council for Computers in Education. Available URL: http://acec2010.info/sites/acec2010.info/files/proposal/%5Buid%5D/acec2010final.pdf (accessed 22 Feb 2010)
Abstract: The expectations for teacher education graduates having appropriate information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities to meet the challenges of learning and teaching in the 21st century are widely accepted. However, it should not be assumed that tomorrow’s teachers will enter their profession with those ICT capabilities. The conceptual framework of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology, 2008) was used to guide the study undertaken in 2009 of final year students in two Universities in Queensland, Australia. The findings are compared with those reported in an earlier study (Watson et al., 2004) which found that there was a limited band of applications with which the participants expressed high levels of competence. Importantly, high percentages of participants perceived themselves to have no competence with applications such as multimedia development, visual thinking software and digital video editing which could be particularly stimulating for learning outcomes in their future students. Furthermore, participants’ self-perception of their confidence to integrate ICT into student learning also revealed that the percentage of participants who rated themselves as having no or limited confidence with particular integration examples was of concern. This paper provides a summary of some of the findings of the TPACK capabilities of the student teachers studied in 2009, which reveal important insights to inform the review and design of teacher education programs to more directly address TPACK capabilities. The study suggests that teacher education programs tend to have been designed using Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) (Shulman, 1986, 1987) where students undertake studies in a range of curriculum (content, disciplinary) courses, pedagogy courses, and professional studies (practicum, Internship) courses, and this is now insufficient as TPACK capabilities are needed.
I just finished a marathon session of presentations and discussions with the master’s students in Curriculum Development and Educational Innovation at Twente University. It was wonderful to meet with them and discuss creativity, teaching, design, TPACK, among other things. Here are the slides I used in pdf format. Photos from the past few days can be found on my Flickr site or on the Picasa site maintained by Petra Fisser (one of the organizers of the symposium).
I had them (as one of the mini-activities around half-way through the day) write a poem capturing their understanding. Here are the poems they came up with (with the names of participants at the end). Sadly no one took me up on writing a poem in Dutch!
The year is 1897 and Tom Johnson works for a small school district. This is the story of the journey to move into the twentieth century with paper and pencil integration initiatives.
Yes, this is entirely fictional and any relation to “real life” is entirely coincidental.
What is amazing about API is not just how funny it is (it can be absolutely hilarious), or how intelligent it is (we’re talking IQ and EQ!), how scathing it can be (Ooh! that must have hurt) but how it manages to still have a strong humanistic core. At the end the teacher’s voice rings true, speaking to us across the decades. The blog is written tongue firmly in cheek, inspired by current discussions about technology integration.
But API is not a one trick pony. If it would have been just that (replace computer with pencil and repeat) this blog would get boring very fast. But API is much more than a simple one-note satire. What I have come to appreciate and love about this blog is that I often find it difficult to pinpoint the exact position the author will take next. For instance, if you read “Sorry but you need to learn to use the sharpner” I took it to be a biting piece of satire poking fun of non-tech teachers. This is how it starts
I will be out of the country for most of next week. I will have access to email (except when I am in-flight/traveling) though I may not be able to reply as to emails as promptly as I would like. For those who care I will be in Twente University, in the Netherlands, conducting a symposium on technology, learning & creativity to students in a master’s program in curriculum development & educational innovation. I hope to continue blogging when I am there… but it all depends on how much time I have.
A few days ago we announced a new hybrid Ph.D. program in educational technology. It will be offered substantially online with some critical on-campus face to face factored in. You can find more details of the program by going to the website, or by reading the news release or a news story. But here I want to speak to something else—I want to speak about my personal excitement at being a part of this new program and why I think it is important. These ideas are difficult to fit into a press release or program website, but I think they are extremely important, maybe more so, than what gets into official documents. So here goes… Read the rest of this entry »
I do think he did a great job.
