TPACK

                                                                                

                                

Confusions is often the best way to clarify...

  WHY TPACK ?

     A WAY TO PRESENT TPACK BRIEFLY        

        

• TPACK's concept. 

The concepts that form the word “TPACK” are the three basis of knowledge that teachers must have in order to an efficient teaching with technology, and consequently an efficient learning. The seven different forms of knowledge are:

Content Knowledge (CK) is a term widely used by educators, content knowledge refers to the body of information that teachers teach and that students are expected to learn in a content, such as English language arts, mathematics, science. Content knowledge generally refers to the facts, concepts, theories, and principles that are taught and learned, rather than to related skills such as reading, writing, and researching that students also learn in academic courses.
Pedagogical Knowledge (PK) is knowledge about the processes and practices or methods of teaching, learning, educational , values and aims. The knowledge that is involved in all issues of student learning, classroom management, lesson plan development and implementation, and student evaluation. It includes knowledge about techniques or methods to be used in the classroom and strategies for evaluating student understanding. A teacher with deep pedagogical knowledge understands how students construct knowledge and acquire skills; develop habits of mind and positive dispositions towards learning. As such, pedagogical knowledge requires an understanding of cognitive, social and developmental theories of learning and how they apply to students in their classroom.
Technology knowledge (TK) is knowledge about standard technologies such as books and chalk and blackboard, as well as more advanced technologies such as the Internet and digital video. This would involve the skills required to use particular technologies. In the case of digital technologies this would include knowledge of operating systems, and computer hardware, as well as the ability to use standard set of software tools such as word processors, spreadsheets, browsers, email etc. TK would include knowledge of how to install and remove peripheral devices, install and remove software programs, create and archive documents.

When we join content and pedagogical knowledge (PCK), we know how to teach the what. On the order hand, if we mix content with technological knowledge (TCK), we will know how the subject matter can be changed by the application of technology. Finally, the result of mixture technological and pedagogical knowledge (TPK) is the knowledge about how a range of technological tools can support teaching.

As a necessity to integrate all these practices, TPACK was born.
Techonlogical Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK)

Technological pedagogical content knowledge refers to the knowledge and understanding of the interplay between CK, PK and TK when using technology for teaching and learning. It includes an understanding of the complexity of relationships between students, teachers, content, practices and technologies.

Now, we are studying to be teachers, so it is necessary that we will receive an education according to this. For this reason, we are going to analyze our first year of degree subjects such TPACK that will easily help us to develop techniques in order to facilitate the task to our future students. We can see, as 5 subjects are dedicated to pedagogical knowledge, 3 at content knowledge, and 2 at technological knowledge. So, as we realize, our first year of degree, we are receiving an education where pedagogical content has more importance that other core TPACK stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. It attempts to identify the nature of knowledge required by teachers for technology integration in their teaching.

• Who was the creator?

TPACK came to light as a useful scenario for researchers, trying to work to understand the integration of technology in learning as well as teaching.

In 1986 the idea of PCK (A mixture of pedagogy and content) was built on Schulman’s.

Two decades after (2006), due to the fact that technology was increasingly indispensable, Mishra and Koehler added technology to PCK, resulting the TPKC. This was 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.

• TPACK organization and social media 

To take information about the TPACK, we can visit some websites for example, the four principals social nets that are: Facebook, Mendeley, Twitter and TPACK.org.

1. Facebook: There is a group of people in Facebook, where you can share news and information about TPACK. There are links where we can go directly to the important page and share opinions too such as the following one:  
https://www.facebook.com/groups/tpackdotorg/ 

2. Mendeley: It is a publication management softer and there is an active group too where they have created a video explaining how you can add publications. The link specifies more: 
http://www.mendeley.com/groups/3347041/social-media/

3. Twitter: There is an active TPACK community, interacting with others about interested in teaching with technology and a god example is theTPACK methodology.

4. TPACK.org: In this section questions can be made and there will be answers, like the TPACK in general and it’s discussion too. You can find some links, opinions, and explanations at:  
http://www.tpack.org/

To sum up, it’s a good way to look for information about TPACK.  

• Associating the methods with our first year subjects

Comparing the subjects of our first year with the TPACK model, we can say that we have different kinds of forms of knowledge.

On one hand subjects such as that sociology, educational psychology, developmental psychology, educational planning and diversity have been pedagogical subjects because we have been taught the way we, as teachers should react when in our teaching path we are faced with some kind of problems to transmit the contents, as well as how we can know what kind of student are we teaching. Furthermore these subjects help us to organize our teaching and classroom, giving the same opportunities to everyone.

On the other hand we have the content knowledge subjects that are theories and educational institutions, Spanish & English oral and written communication, where we have learned the most important content that in the future we will transmit and teach to our students. We can affirm that Spanish and English are two of the most important subjects, because they are the basis of our future, so we have to study them by heart.

Finally we have the technological knowledge subjects, which try to teach us how we have to teach in the future using technology and the new methodology that is going out day by day. With these subjects we discover some programs and web sites that can be very helpful to us in some years these are TIC and Educational Organisation.

Searching this method in different continents.  In USA there has been many surveys concerning this topic, in order to reach to a better understanding of how TPACK helps to increase student’s knowledge. In 2009 a study was carried out in order to assess the development of TPACK in an introductory preservice teacher technology course. Data was gathered during these teachers education program. At the end of the study, because these teachers were well trained to use the TPACK method in courses such maths, literacy, science and social studies among others, the results reported during fall 2008 and spring 2009. The differences for TP, PK, TCK, TPK and TPACK were substantial the subscales effects increased a little bit more of 0.5. The rest of them increased but the proportion was minor.  

Results.

It is clear that every theme requires specific strategies in order to get optimal results.

Subjects such as mathematics, and literacy are linked directly to context, but an experienced teacher would also use the pedagogy to facilitate the way to understand the material to students.  As difficult as it might seem, these subjects can be also be taught in a technological way. This requires in the case of maths for instance the use of tools such as excel and statistics programs among others. In primary education, where teachers use more the pedagogy than in university, children could be taught through computers, tablets and other devices in order to associate numbers with images. In literature it will require the use of devices such as WebPages where students could easily search for different information in order to have diverse points of views such the word reference page, where synonyms can help them to wide their knowledge. Here in primary education literacy can be learned with technological devices to associate words and concepts with images too. In both cases it can be observed that the TPACK concept can be applied, as well as in other subjects, but the percentage of the methods could be different. Teachers need to be acquainted with a wide range of different skills to teach, and even though the TPACK methodology is still scarce in Spanish schools, with the proper training and experience this method will be undoubtedly the best resource to help our future students to comprehend all the topics easily.

Having more technological elements does not mean that, teaching will be more effective, there also must be a range of tools and a experienced teacher should know how to choose the most appropriate tool for each moment. The important fact is not only having good technology skills, but it is also to know the content very well and also being a good pedagogist to be able how to apply the content knowledge and the use of  the proper technological tool depending of the situation.

Members' task:

Cristian Paco (curator- farmer)

Feliciana Travieso Pérez (facilitador)

Fernando Tortosa Cutillas ( translator)

María Moreno (Analyst)

Raquel Pelayo (journalist)

Rocío Ramón (journalist)

Rosana Yepes (star)