Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Journal March 10 2009
I am sure glad that you did not start out with this as our first discussion! This is very researched based—my weakest area not coming from an education background. Although my nursing background and teaching nursing background I had some framework in which to start from. Once I got all the terminology down I could focus more on what the framework was all about. Reading the discussions always gives me insight into how other schools operate, what peers from education background are thinking and the different age groups of peers let me see their point of view—discussions are a huge part of learning for me.
Now back TPCK—I think most of us were in agreement that TPCK is the framework to adopt but getting there is another matter. Most of students felt that knowing the technology well enough to integrate it is the part where we fall short. One student commented that a 30 or 60 minute in-service does not mean we can integrate that technology in our content area. I so agree with that! I know that I am very lucky in our district with technology and professional development—when we instituted the TABLET Cadre’s on our hopes of one day having 1:1 computing in our district—the district spent a lot of money on hiring the right person to get this off the ground and then in the amount of professional development to support technology. When I got my tablet I had to meet once a month and participate in weekly discussions in the district moodle site. We had to present technology integration project at the end of the year with the rest of the schools and then we got to see what everyone else was doing as well! We will be starting our 4th Cadre this year!
We had tech coaches in each school and prior cadre members to support you along the way as well! All of this has definitely allowed many of our staff to confidently integrate technology into their content areas! We find that there is a better collaboration process in place since the Tablet Cadre’s started as well. I think that we have about 5 teachers that are enrolled in a special technology project/process with Will Richardson’s “Institute”—he has been rated one of the top ten technology educators in the country.
One of my peers commented that she didn’t think that you have to teach with technology to be successful and to have successful students—which may be true today but when these students graduate over the next 10 years, the business world will expect a certain level of expertise in using technology. I don’t think that you will be able to compete with a tech savvy person applying for the same job. The same holds true with the digital divide—we need to find ways to get technology into their hands (perhaps the mini-computers?) because they need to be on the same leveled playing field.
My last comment on TPCK that sometimes it is very difficult to read an article like the one that was assigned with all the author citations going on! It often disrupted the flow of the article. In the end I have learned a lot from these discussions. Karen