EDAP+Paper+1

The T otal PACK age un PACK ed by Ryan Shetler

In Judi Harris’s video she said we don’t build the house around a faucet so we don’t build the curriculum around the technology. She said in planning you find your objectives first then go out and find the resources or technology that can help you teach that skill. Is it okay to ever do that backwards? For example, in August I’m leading a PD about the iPads in our school. I want the teachers to look through the different apps on the iPad so that when they look at their objectives they will say, "Oh there’s an app for that." Right now however, when they are looking at the skills, they don’t know how they can use the iPad to help them teach that skill so I feel like I’m doing the opposite of what she said in the video and I’m showing the teachers the technology first and saying now that you see these apps and the different ways you can use the iPad, what skills can you use the iPad to help teach. Is that OK?

After reading more of the TPACK articles I can answer my question by saying yes, it is okay for me to have a PD where I let the teachers look through the apps and find out what they do, BUT it is not enough. If all I did in my PD session was go over the 10 best iPad apps that I have found, I would only be showing them the T in the TPACK. And I think most teachers already put the P+C together. They know their content and they look for the best pedagogy to try and teach that content. If all I show the teachers is 10 of my favorite apps then I'm showing them T by itself and not how to integrate it with P+C. What I plan to do is have the first 15-30 minutes showing them the TPACK model and giving them an example of putting all three together with one of the apps. Then I'm going to give them a sheet with 3 columns- Objective (Content) How are they going to teach it (pedagogy) and what app are they going to use (technology). Then I will give them about 2 hours to play with the different apps with their grade levels and see what activities they come up with by using the different apps. Then the last 30-45 minutes we can have a sharing time of what apps they are going to use for a lesson and what it might look like as a final product.

One of the things I noticed in the research that Koehler and Mishra did in their article about what happens when teachers design educational technology? is that it takes a while for people to work together in groups. I noticed that they groups that did start working together started gelling around 8 weeks. I thought and wondered how often we have elementary students working in a group for a week or 6 weeks (a whole grading term) at the longest and we wonder why students don't know how to work in groups. We are always changing things trying to make sure everything works and sometimes we have to make sure that we just give our idea time to develop and grow, just like a plant doesn't grow overnight. After 3 days after planting something you don't say hey this isn't working lets dig it up and try again. You wait, maybe give it more water or sunlight but you don't start all over, it takes time.

One of my hobbies as of late has been looking up apps and seeing what they do. I'm always on the look out for an app that does what I want it to do and teach the way I want to teach that particular subject. I have been quite disappointed in many apps. What I've learned from these articles is that I should be disappointed to some extent. What they are saying is that most things like the iPad is a great example was not intended for educational uses. We as educators need to repurpose the device for education. I feel like we even need to repurpose educational apps. I think the problem with most educational apps is that the people who develop educational apps really know the Technology and they know what Content they want the students to learn and they put those together without getting any input from a teacher who knows the Pedagogy.

I was going to take the app idea and put it into my Glogster. I was going to put the apps that are good on content in the C- circle and the apps that have good P in the Pedagogy circle but as I was thinking about it I wondered what would go in the center? Then again after reading the articles that none of the apps by themselves can go into the circle without the teacher. The teacher is the one who take the app and add the style of how the app is to be taught or takes the learning from the app and adds reflection, interaction, or other extended learning.