The technology in modern classrooms. An experience before and after of knowing about TPACK.

   When we had to prepare the activities, we already had in mind the types of activities we wanted to use. Bearing in mind the connectivity in the institution, we considered only using the cell phone for students to do the tasks. They all could do both of them. One of the activities consisted of having students to watch a video and write what they saw. The other one requires students to match the written word with a picture. After preparing and presenting the activities, we were told about the framework of TPACK and there are some issues to analyse.

   First of all, TPACK is an innovative structure created by Punya Mishra and Matthew J. Koehler that aims to integrate technology in the classroom. We can combine technology and the content and pedagogy of our classrooms, as suggested in the picture above.  According to Mishra and Koehler (2009), TPACK should guide curriculum development and teacher education. In the picture, it is possible to identify the three overlaps that are necessary for effective teaching: Pedagogical Content Knowledge, Technological Content Knowledge and Technological Pedagogical Knowledge. “The interaction of these bodies of knowledge, both theoretically and in practice, produces the types of flexible knowledge needed to successfully integrate technology use into teaching.” (Mishra and Koehler, 2009)

  Teaching with technology is a demanding task nowadays considering the challenges that the new technologies presents to the educators. (Mishra and Koehler, 2009) As there are too many innovations and advances and not so much training about it, most teachers see something that they like or consider interesting and they automatically want to implement it in some lessons. Consequently, they forget about the content (Content Knowledge) and how to teach them according to the needs and abilities of the learners (Pedagogical Knowledge).

   Even though the activities were well selected for the level of the students, they were too short and perhaps too simple.  They did not present a challenge for the students. Moreover, the activities could have been completed without the use of the technology. Although we wanted to present something different, we could have thought more motivating and interesting activities.

References:

> Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education. Michigan State University.

Building a Samr ladder.

   According to Ruben Puentedura (2014) the samr model describes technology integration through four level defined as “Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition”. He separates these four forms into two groups. He considers Substitution and Augmentation as part of Enhancement, and Modification and Redefinition as part of a Transformation.

  The idea is to transform the learning experiences so that the result is a higher level of achievement from the part of the students.

First of all, he tries to explain that Substitution, considered the first stage of this process, is some kind the same way teachers generally work but by using computers. If we think about this, we can say that we followed this first process because we used a common activity but with cellphones.

   Secondly, the Augmentation stage adds some improvement, a more functional change to the old activities. So taking this into account we did not do a real improvement in the activities presented. It would be the same if we made the same activities in a sheet of paper. It might be needed more innovative exercises. As a third stage, Modification is mentioned as the one that allows you to significantly redesign the task.

Finally, Redefinition is when the technology implemented allows for the creation of new tasks that were previously inconceivable.

  We can conclude that the activities planned did not specifically follow these patterns, they were simple and could be done without the use of technology. Although the matching activity is not an innovative idea because it is something that students are accustomed to do, the video that showed the different parts of the house could have been recreated and reused in other ways in order to exploit it. Thinking in these four processes gives the idea to use technology to move beyond the traditional ways of teaching and not only implement it to be more “innovative”.

Reference: 
> Ruben R. Puentedura (2014) SAMR and TPCK: A Hands-On Approach to Classroom Practice.