Did You Know 4.0

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Go to wordle.net and create your own word cloud!! This one was drawn from my delicious posts--if you are not familar with delicious, then go and check it out by googling it!

Left M-town this morning at 4:45 am for Charleston. The skies were gray and it felt like rain when I parked my car in the garage and then trekked over to the Civic Center. I joined streams of teachers and presenters as they filed into the building. At 7:30 am it was rather quiet, and voices tended to echo in the cavernous lobby. I followed the faint aroma of coffee and then found the check in table. Since this was the last day of the conference, they did not seem to care whether I checked in or not, and I did not collect my bag and paper materials. A pity really, I could have used another bag.

After receiving directions, I went to my room to set up. My first presentation was "Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge: TPACK and Instructional Design." Not a very snappy title! Eventually three people joined me in the large room, and we sat together at the front. One person was from a small private college, another a brand new TIS, and a new C&I doc student at WVU.
We talked about TPACK--what is it? Why do we care? What do we know? Turns out we all had some ideas about it. There is a graphic image of TPACK (look up and left!). The main point is to recognize where content, pedagogy and technological knowledge intersect. We discussed what that might look like and watched a portion of Mishra and Koehler's youtube video that both models and discusses the implications for teaching and learning from the TPACK perspective. The video is on your right--just click to play.

We spent time talking about the barriers that we all face in getting to TPACK. One issue is the problem of accessibility. For example, the software and tools that public schools use routinely are often not available to teacher education programs, so new teachers may have a steep learning curve as they learn to use these programs. Of course, in some cases one can take steps to integrate software like Inspiration into our methods courses.

In other cases, it is not so easy. An example of that is the web top that WVDE has made available for all public school teachers. The web top is like a shared desktop and it provides timely information, easy access and tools to teachers. Unfortunately, since the web top gives access to student records, only in-service teachers can use the WVDE web top . Another barrier is specific to WVU. The security people block the web top and many google apps, and there have been some legal barriers as well. It is frustrating, because many universities across the nation use the web top, and of course our own WVDE uses it, along with every public school teacher in West Virginia.

So, what does all of this have to do with TPACK? If we do not find ways to effectively assess, examine and model how to teach with new technologies, then we are undercutting our ability to learn from each other and to better support out students. I had not realized the importance of the technology gap from this perspective before.

More later...