Journal #4

In order for teachers to incorporate new technological tools into their teaching, they will need to learn a specific knowledge called “technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK). What differentiates between a teacher and another person who is specialized in the same subject area is a teacher’s ability to make subject matter intellectually available to their students. So with all the new technological tools available for interactive subject matter learning, the next step would become how to framework those tools to accentuate your lesson plan. The article, Too Cool for School? No Way! written by Punya Mishra and Mathew Koehler, shows that in order to do this we have to have a “creative repurposing” strategy. “Such repurposing is possible only when the teacher knows the rules of the game and is fluent enough to know which rules to bend, which to break, and which to leave alone.”

What is the first necessary step for teachers when trying to incorporate new technological tools in their lesson plan?

The first step with technological incorporation into lesson plans is first for “teachers need to develop a willingness to play with technologies and an openness to building new experiences for students so that fun, cool tools can be educational.” Teachers have to maintain their ability for lifelong learning and use this to benefit their class.

What exactly is TPACK?

TPACK is technological pedagogical and content knowledge. In application, TPACK would be the teacher’s ability to use their knowledge of a technological tool and be able to teach it to the individualized learning strategy of each student.