Activity 1

Tpack

Have you ever wondered why teachers have different methodologies to teach the same content? Teachers have different patterns of knowledge in order to teach efficiently according with their teaching perspectives. Through the research we have been digging It is clear that there are 7 forms of knowledge, those are:


Content Knowledge (CK)

It is the way general education took place among teachers in S XIX, which is: the body of information that teachers implement and teach a particular content. This particular material is expected to be learned by students,( by heart in general). This way of teaching include contents such as, English language arts, mathematics, science. The Content Knowledge make reference to the facts, theories, concepts or principles, taught and learned ( rote memory) instead of teach in a way that students are able to relate skills, like reading, writing, reasoning or researching


Pedagogical Knowledge (PK)

It is the knowledge that every teacher should have about the methods, manners, and practices to relate teaching learning, focusing on student interests, values, goals and from those perspectives catch their attention. Teachers, in this area have the knowledge that is involved in every matter of student’s learning, as well as the way to manage the classroom, plan in a meticulous way the mastery classes, the way to develop a plan, or strategy in order to implement it in class and overall student evaluation, (that should be formative).

These teachers embrace technique’s or methods knowledge in order to be developed in classroom, and overall hold strategies to evaluate students development. A teacher mastering a good pedagogical knowledge knows how students build their knowledge in order to acquire skills. A good pedagogic should be capable to have wide knowledge of cognitive structures, social interaction and development theories with the aim to apply them to students in their classroom.


Technology knowledge (TK)

When data about technologies are acquired, this technologic tools or resources can go from the classic books, blackboards, projectors, to the technologies that nowadays we are using such as Internet, mobile devices, and laptops, whatsoever. In order to use from the simple chalk to the more advanced iPad it is of overriding importance have the skills and knowledge to use all of them, e.g. in digital ones would be essential to master operating systems, or computer hardware among others.


Pedagogical content Knowledge (PCK)

Blending pedagogical & content knowledge, will give as a result to know the way to teach the item we want to transmit. If we go back to 1850, we can learn that some teachers, such Giner de los Ríos or the first psychopedagogist Herbart realised that  a good content won´t be retained by students properly if the way to transmit it was not well though and planned. Back there teachers started realising that mastering any content would not be enough to catch the student’s attention, but they were minorities on implementing the PCK. In 1986 the idea of PCK (A mixture of pedagogy and content) was built on Schulman’s.


Technological Content knowledge (TCK).

If teachers are able to teach the content using technologic resources (TCK), they will know how the subject matter can be changed by the application of technology. But is it plausible to teach a good content writing on the blackboard or through a projector? Will the student master a subject if a teacher coach students a subject such sciences just with a innovative application without, planning the time to teach them accordingly to use the application or without knowing the different student’s levels?


Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK).

Finally, the result of mixture technological and pedagogical knowledge  The teachers that implement (TPK) have the knowledge about how a range of technological tools can support teaching. But, what about a good content? Maybe in Kindergarten TPK will be useful or even in the first year of primary education. Imagine being the best pedagogic, using a math application without the right knowledge in maths, how would be the teacher transmit their students in a 2º grade equation that Y can be also X?

As a necessity to integrate all these practices together, In 2006 TPKC was born. “This is a blending of technology pedagogy and content. A bit later, It was renamed TPACK, the knowledge of the three subject content, forming an integrated total package”. (Thompson & Mishra, 2008).


TPACK focuses in complex interaction between the teacher’s knowledge of content pedagogy and technology. It is the wisdom and understanding of the interaction between CK, PK and TK. It is the way to use a good content, in order to transmit it well to the students in a catchy way, and of course knowing which kind of technological resources use depending on the goal to master. That means that technology is not helpful unless the teacher knows how to implement it according to subject, its difficulty, his student’s motivations, capabilities etc.


This data below could be a similar approach in % of a well though TPACK depending on student's ages.


First year of primary education. Subject: Maths.

Pedagogy 65%, content 15 %, technology 20%.

Secondary education, subject: Maths.

Pedagogy 30%, content 40 %, technological tools 30%.

Maths at University.

Pedagogy 10%, content 50%, technological app, such excel 40%.

Cardboard schema

Here we can see the pictures taken by our journalists doing the first groupal activity of the course in our first two weeks.

We don't have the poster in digital format but here you can see the final product of our cardboard explaining TPACK

So many memories

Roles

On this task the research processes were developed jointly. Perhaps in our first week the results won’t be optimal, since our knowledge is still limited. Nevertheless as time passes by and we learn from mistakes done, we will cross our path of learning. Apart from each one main task, all the members were assigned different investigation tasks, in order to build our blog accordingly, so Raquel was in charge to look for TPACK social media and organization. She also opened our tweeter section; Rocío wrote the seven components of TPACK; Rosana was in charge of creating the mind map and read all the information downloaded by the group; Cristian was in charge to look for information about the TPACK development in Europe; María was the one who associated the components with the subjects that we are facing this year; Fernando was assigned to investigate everything related to mind map. He compiled the information about the main features of this method; and finally, Feli created our presentation page, assigned us different tasks to research, she also researched about TPACK history, researchs in USA, and she wrote about it as well as our final results.

Roles distribution:

Feli: Facilitator.
Raquel and Rocio: Journalist.
Fernando: Translator.
Cristian: Curator-Farmer.
María: Analyst.
Rosana: Star

What have we learned?

Tpack is a way to teach that integrate technological, pedagogical and content knowledge perfectly. It consists on including pedagogical techniques that use technologies in constructive ways to teach content. However, it doesn’t mean that these three knowledges should be integrated in the same amount, since depending to the cognitive development of our students we can include more amount of content, pedagogy or technology.

It is proved that a teaching more interactive, creative and practice produces an acquisition more effective and long-lasting. And technology lets it us. But… why don’t every teachers use it? Saying “we don’t have the resources necessaries” is the easy answer, and in some case it could be true. But, what about the teachers who don’t want to innovate or introduce new applications? Many teachers deny changing their traditional teaching without thinking the improvement of their students. It seems that they are afraid of improving.

Everything turns out the same: lack of money and lack of time. However, we think that the most important thing is willing to work. Introducing new things require time and dedication and it is not easy finding out people with it.

Teaching is not an easy task. We should be open-minded to new ways to teach. Joining pedagogy, technology and content is the best way to teach and at the same time, the most effective to learn. But, to be honest, doing the perfect mixture is not easy at all.

Concretely in our case, we are going to be teachers of primary education, so our teaching will have more pedagogy than other thing, at these stages, children require mainly pedagogy. We should be good pedagogist in order to know the path our students would take, the difficulties they would go through, and the way to make the subject appealing for them. A good pedagogist will know the correct activities to carry out with their students, what technology will be the indicated and how transmit the content.

Technology was created to facilitate our lives; so, why is not it facilitate our teaching? 

Self-evaluation

Here we have our table with the marks of all the member of the group and the group.As you can see, all of us have  the same  mark because we think that all of us have made our job well,  give everybody  good ideas, using our creativity and trying to get the maximum mark. Our point of view is that we had made a good job  in  this  activity,  however, nothing  and nobody is perfect. We could make it better in the sense that it was the begining, we did not know how to do it, and with few days  for  do it  because we had to know  how  we had to make the roles, the blog, make an account of twitter... so we worked very hard.