TPACK - What is it?

Welcome to the world of teaching and the use of acronyms!

What is TPACK?

TPACK is just one type of learning design framework used by teachers. For those of you who are not familiar with the art of teaching it is actually quite a complex process. There is a lot to consider and plan for prior to entering any classroom.

My understanding of a learning design framework is that it ensures that the teacher is able to consider and integrate all elements necessary for a successful learning experience. In relation to TPACK what are these elements?

The elements of the TPACK learning design are represented by the acronym as follows:

• Technological
• Pedagogical
• And
• Content
• Knowledge 

Individually each element appears to be almost self-explanatory although I personally have had to tackle with the word pedagogy quite a few times in consolidating my own understanding.

Let's start with two of the terms listed above, "pedagogy" and "content". 

Pedagogy. Pedagogy as defined by CQ University (2013) means "the strategies, techniques and approaches that teachers can use to facilitate learning."

Content. This is used to describe the material or subject matter the teacher is teaching. For example, mathematics.

On their own they are not going to create any great learning experience but when they are used together they create not only another acronym (PCK - Pedagogical Content Knowledge) but as described by Mishra and Koehler (2006, p1021) they describe the "manner in which subject matter is transformed for teaching". Mishra and Koehler (2006, p1021) also go on to say that PCK occurs "when the teacher interprets the subject matter and finds different ways to represent it and make it accessible to learners".

So PCK is our starting point. It is transforming subject matter for teaching. Let's introduce technology!

If you are like me and superficially consider how technology fits in to a learning design framework you may initially consider that it is just a support tool for teaching content. Whether it be used for presenting information learnt by students, or just a different platform to present the same pedagogy. For example, putting information sheets or homework questions on a wiki or web-site for students to read.

Like I said, superficial thinking, NO! Technology is much more than that. The word that made it all fit together for me was INTEGRATION!. Wendy Fasso our course co-ordinator considered this concept in our tutorial and for me it tied TPACK together.

Technology to me is integrated into the learning design framework in that, just like content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge, it is a knowledge base for teaching (Mishra and Koehler, 2006). If integrated correctly, technology together with pedagogy and content knowledge, could reinforce the concepts of Bloom's Taxonomy including higher order thinking. If used correctly with the correct pedagogy and appropriate content, it can be less of a platform for presenting learning and more of problem solving tool. The trick is working out what type of technology suits your problem. For example how can I use a wiki to incorporate collaborative learning and extend the learning to solving a problem? How can a wiki make my students work through a problem collaboratively and create new ideas?

However, if you stop and think about TPACK for too long it can start to get quite complex. When that starts to happen, I find it useful to look at a diagram that links the three knowledge bases together. Where they intersect in the middle is where you get TPACK.

Image Source

As with with most things teaching it is a good idea to share ideas. I have been communicating with my fellow GDLT students, looking at their blogs and sharing ideas. The following YouTube video on TPACK is quite popular and I first watched it on Amy's blog. It helps to sum up in fairly basic terms how each element of TPACK fits together.

Source

If you are after more information on the topic of TPACK, I also found a web-site of a company working in  remote areas of Australia that discusses it further. If you would like some further insight please look at the following link.

Reference List:


CQUniversity Australia. (2013). EDED20456 - Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Study guide.
Rockhampton, Qld: Author.


Mishra, P and Koehler M, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record Volume 108, Number 6, June 2006, pp 1017-1054

Connectivism

I have read the materials, including that by Siemens, on connectivism as a learning theory and I would have to say my first thoughts are certainly positive. I think it encourages and teaches independent critical learning.

I realize that learning is and should be scaffolded by a teacher and I don't see why this can't be done with an approach inclusive of connectivism. I think that as a teacher if you can enable connectivism in your students they will as learners develop and grow in their independence, which will enable skills for real world learning after their formal education comes to a close. It appears to me that connectivism encourages and develops skills in learners that enable critical analysis and connection of information.

The question posed in our engagement activity is "Is connecitivism a learning theory or is it a theory about how learning is best supported?"

Being in the first week of my education course this feels like a big question. I am not sure of the answer but if I consider the other learning theories outlined I start to consider that it stacks up as a learning theory.

Consider Behaviourism and Social Constructivism they both describe how learners learn based on a learning methodology. For example behaviourism discusses practice and positive reinforcement. Social constructivism discusses learning based on experiences, social interaction and collaborative learning.

I think Cognitivism is a little different in that it is more focused on how the brain works and how to build on schemas to encourage learning.

However, based on the fact that I think connectivism has a learning methodology just like behaviourism and social constructivism I believe it should be categorised as a learning theory even though it appears from our tutorials, not everyone in the academic world is in agreeance.

It is not supporting learning, it is in itself teaching a student a certain way to learn. On a basic level, the student learns how to access, critique and connect information using a whole range of skills, contacts and understanding. To me it feels like connectivism opens up the world of learning on a global stage.

This you tube video was in our learning materials and I think it is worth keeping to refer back to.

Reflection on Prenksy's Ideas

Wow, I am a digital immigrant. I love the terms and the article "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" by Marc Prensky(2001). I have to admit I did laugh out loud when I read the section on the digital immigrant accent. I do print out documents from the computer to read and edit. Not sure that I have recently called someone to discuss my email but I know that there is a strong possibility that I have been guilty in the past.

That is what is so exciting about studying this course. Hopefully, I can move closer to communicating with the digital natives even though I strongly agree I will never be one.

What I also found interesting is the discussion on how digital natives are used to parallel processing, multi-tasking and receiving information really fast (Prenksy, 2001 p2). My husband and I have two children who are 5 and 8 and they do have access to technology such as an ipad, DS, internet etc but they don't spend an incredible amount of time on them. At this stage in their life they are more interested in dancing and the trampoline. However, my husband recently went down to Sydney to visit his three nephews who range in age from 3 to 16 and was blown away by their multi-tasking skills in relation to technology. They were often on more than one piece of digital equipment at one time, researching, communicating with others and playing games. Certainly impressive. Reading this article by Prensky (2001) on digital natives was like listening to my husband describe the skills of his nephews in Sydney when he returned from his trip.

Maybe that is what lies ahead for our two children and maybe it also what they need to be successful in their future learning but I can't help but ask the question if this article and the next article "Engage me or Enrage Me" also by Prenksy (2005) broad brush our future learners too much. Even though we have a whole generation of digital natives, and I am 100% convinced that integrating technology in the learning of our students is awesome, I can't help thinking that within that group, are learners that use technology but are not that engaged by it.  Maybe they would rather be doing something physical?

Hmmmm? I have just considered also, that maybe it depends on my definition of technology? Even the students that prefer outdoors, physical learning are still using the latest in technology and are still multi-tasking and receiving information rapidly from numerous sources catering for their type of learning style. I just remembered my two children have a Wii and spend quite a lot of time using it to dance!


References

Prenksy. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants  Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/ 

Prensky. (2005) Engage me or Enrage me What Todays Learners Demand  pp60 -64 Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf

Maths and Business Teachers

Hi everyone,

I have been looking going over the learning styles and was thinking that there is possibly some correlation between our own learning styles and the disciplines we are either interested in teaching or have some background in.

I am studying secondary with my 2 teaching areas being maths and business. I was wondering if there were any other students out there who have similar teaching areas that would like to compare notes through the course.

Diversity of ideas is of course great but I am wondering if we could also compare our own learning styles and discover whether or not they are similar seeing as we have possibly similar backgrounds in the disciplines we have studied.

We could then discuss how that is going to impact us as teachers and our students as learners in the way we design our lessons etc. Maybe we may find positive and negative ways that we tend towards and then find ways to extend ourselves in our teaching ideas. Maybe our learning styles are as diverse as everybody else?

If you would like to contact me via our forums, create a group or just comment in this blog that would be great.

Learning Styles

What is my Learning Style?

Before I ventured into this topic in our course material I thought I had a pretty good idea of my learning style. I have been through high school, university and completed additional studies to become a certified practising accountant. I have confidence in my learning ability but only if I work hard enough. I don't seem to have too many magic moments of just getting it. I have to break it down and have an ordered plan. I need to understand the first concept before moving onto the next. I also seem to need to organise everything before I start (which unfortunately is where my time went in week 1! Now that it is week 2 my time is going on working out how to use this blog! ahhhh. This is a roller-coaster very exciting, very frustrating, very exciting..... ) Anyway, back on the topic my biggest need is to have a clear understanding of my path. (Working on that at the moment!!)

In processing information, what is most important to me is to make complex topics simple and in my terms or I just won't get it. I don't believe I am actually that good at recalling facts so I prefer to try and understand concepts and then organise my material or facts so that I know where to find them when I need them. My CPA exams were open book so organising my material meant for me that I had an index system for the facts and information. When I was studying I made sure I understood the concepts and ideas but didn't bother with remembering details such as specific formula or names of legal cases etc. But I did know where to find them.

Well, now I have had a look through the course material on learning styles and have found it very interesting.
I have taken the index of learning styles (ILS) questionnaire which was developed by Felder and Soloman and my results were a bit surprising to me. They were reasonably neutral except that I have a moderate preference to visual learning as opposed to verbal. I do acknowledge that Felder and Soloman make the point that the ILS is only an indication.

Maybe my learning style may be not as rigid as I first thought. Maybe I don't apply the same method to all of my learning. I think that is partly true but I still feel that unless I clearly organise my learning before I start I am way out of my comfort zone. I certainly appreciate a clear direction.

It does make me think however, that the idea that one's learning style can adapt to different learning situations is worth exploring. The type of learning that I have been considering so far in this discussion has only been my "academic" learning to date. I would describe that as being based around self-regulated text-book type learning. The learning style I have applied in the past has been successful in that situation but maybe I can look at tweeking it in this new environment. I also need to ask myself if I have been using the same style of learning outside of my academic environment? For example, I completed a white water rafting course in my early 20's and became a commercial rafting guide. I then moved on to becoming the operations manager for a large tourism company in Cairns that specialised in white water rafting among other products. I haven't really considered my learning experiences in those environments so maybe I will need to do that throughout this course as well.

I also haven't really answered the scaffolded questions in engagment activity 1 but in reflecting on my own learning style from the past, it does make me consider what would I do with a classroom full of 25 students with a variety of learning styles? I have to admit that until now I thought that if applied my academic learning style to a classroom that both the students and myself would have a successful learning experience. I may need to re-think that and I am certainly open to ideas throughout this course.

In relation to the remaining questions in this activity I think I may need to come back to them later in the course as well, as I navigate my own learning journey in this ICT environment. Otherwise I may finish this post in week 8.

It has taken me a little while tonight (a couple of hours actually) to learn how to transfer a document to my moodle drive, which I have never heard of and then to link it to my first blog! I also found out that I had to do some formatting to the document in the google drive, otherwise the document changed and did not make a lot of sense. I did not realise that any of that was part of my learning plan tonight and felt like I was driving way off course.  I had planned on quickly completing all of the week 1 activities in 2 hours and then moving onto week 2 tommorrow. Aahhh, not a lot of comfort in my progress  a couple of hours ago as my learning plan and schedule flew out the door. However, I must admit that if I think about what I have learnt tonight I would have to consider that I have had a successful learning experience and even feel a little empowered with my new learning tools.

Thanks for listening! Now what is Activity 1-2?????? Might stick to the compulsory ones for now.

Multiple Intelligences?

 I have now also taken the Multiple Intelligences questionnaire and my results are outlined below. The results do appear to be consistent with my own personal ideas of what my results would look like.

Welcome!

Hi everyone and welcome to my first blog. As per my title this really my first blog and will definitely be a work in progress.

For those of you who don't know, I am setting up this blog as part of my post-graduate university course in education. Until this semester, I had no idea what a blog was and now I think I may get addicted to it. I have been setting up this blog for about one hour and it seems amazing to me what it can do. I have also somehow set up a google+ account which looks pretty awesome as well.

I was listening to Wendy's tutorial and was surprised when she mentioned that facebook has dropped in popularity except with maybe the 40 year + age group who has just found it. Well I guess I fit into the 40+ age group and have had a half-hearted interest in facebook only recently. Now that I have been playing around with google and blogging, I think I am going to skip facebook and start here.

Watch this space for reflections on teaching and learning and ICT!