The 21st Century Math Classroom

This past weekend I attended the SDCUE Tech Fair.  What particularly impressed me was the work that three math teachers are doing in order to challenge their students and differentiate their instruction.  Julie Garcia, Mundo Cronk, and Michael Salamanca presented Technology + Differentiation = Positive Learning Experiences for All! Differentiation is one of the brass rings in education, and these teachers showed a simple, practical, and successful strategy for using technology to achieve it.

Here’s what they do in a week:

Monday through Wednesday – Teach New Content

Thursday – Review with rotating stations

Friday – Assessment

Prior to each week, students are given a pre-test on the upcoming content.  If a student scores a 90% or above on the pre-test, they are put on what is called the Fast Track.  When a student is put on the Fast Track, they are responsible for completing the warm up each day, but are not expected to participate in the instruction and associated homework that is assigned Monday through Wednesday.  Fast Tracked students are assigned extension activities where they are challenged to create a learning experience for other students on the new content.  They create podcasts to show how to work particular problems or lessons that could be done using the Promethean Interactive Whiteboard.

On Thursdays, students review the new content in stations, and at these stations the name of the game is competition.  This provides motivation, challenge, and fun.  One station is done at the Interactive Whiteboard.   Here students compete in teams to be the first to answer questions correctly.  They use Promethean ActivExpressions to submit their responses.

Another station has students using iPod touches.  They play algebra games like Pop Math and Brain Tuner to hone their skills.  They also have the opportunity to review the content created by their peers by watching their podcasts.

I really like this model for its simplicity and the fact that the model constantly challenges students to do better.  I believe the Fast Track option is a nice motivator to students to want to learn so that they can have the opportunity to complete extension activities.  This strategy is fairly new to these teachers, but I think it shows a lot of promise.  I’m looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

Disrupting Class – An ineffective solution to a big problem?

The authors of Disrupting Class:  How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns argue that the current paradigm of education is broken, and though I agree with their diagnosis of the problem, I do not agree with the prescribed treatment.

The Problem: Since students learn differently and at different paces, learning experiences should be customized.  Part of the reasoning is that if instruction was student-centric and customized, learners would be more motivated.

With this much, I couldn’t agree more.  I believe that education is stuck in a tradition that is not effective, not interesting, and not related to the needs of our current society.

The Solution: The book suggests that computer-based software is the key to provide customization.  The idea is that software could be modular, meaning that it could be inserted at any point as needed.

The author provides several moving examples of how students learn using different modalities:  the young lady who learns to spell by dancing the alphabet, at the teachers suggestion, and a young man whose father helps him understand physics using realia.  Both of these adjustments in learning style were made by an adult who understood the child.  Now how would this work using modular software?  Suppose there was a software for teaching X.  Would that software offer eight different methods of teaching X?  That would mean that for each module you would need to develop eight versions.  Does this seem practical?  Is this what the authors mean?  It is hard to say because despite these moving examples, the authors do not address how software will address these learning differences, which was the whole point – to provide this level of customization.

Now clearly there are things that need to change.  The sage on the stage is the classic embodiment of the monolithic instruction that the authors deride.  This cannot continue.  But at this point in the book I am pondering alternative ways of crafting a solution.  Here are my thoughts so far:

1. Our current system of education is commonly referred to as industrial.  It fit the needs of the factory by conditioning students to repetition and following directions.  It seems to me that any new model should not make the factory model high-tech by plugging students into computer software.  The world uses computers in much more sophisticated ways than that.  Our new model should be based on the current needs of the workplace – creativity, innovation, media literacy, etc.
2. Perhaps another shift in education should be from outlining what teachers have to teach to what students need to learn.  This may seem like one and the same but our current school system does not truly hold students accountable to learning.  Grades are often based on completion, participation, effort, etc. and are rarely a measure of how much a student has learned.

I must admit that I am currently only about one-third of the way through this book, so perhaps my mind will be changed.

QR codes in the classroom – how could we use them?

At CUE 2008, I heard Hal Davidson talk about how cell phones might be used in education.  One of the examples that was most interesting to me was the idea of using QR codes that can be read by student cellphones.

QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes that can encode information that can be read at a high speed.  To the right is a QR code that would tell you the URL of my blog if you were to read it, made at a QR code generator.  Below is a video demonstration of how QR codes can be used with a cell phone.

So how can these be used for educational purposes.  Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis, sees them as a link between the physical and virtual world.  They can contain URLs, text, phone numbers etc.  She sees the potential for a rich web of learning created by integrating QR codes into museums, GPS, and creating QR code scavenger hunts.

I agree with her that the possibilities for their use in education are incredible, especially since smart phones may be our best bet for giving students a one-to-one web enabled device.  What I am having a harder time envisioning is how they will be used.  For things like scavenger hunts or providing multimedia information about items in a museum or library, with the scan of your phone, I can see the power.  I would love to go to a museum where instead of the static paragraph or two of text next to an artifact there is a QR code that will pull up an audio or video file that tells me about the piece.

But if I am wanting to give students web links wouldn’t it be easier to simply provide direct links from a webpage?  I think it is mainly when the idea is to instantly transfer a link or file to a handheld device that the QR codes have their strength.  If districts are able to manage one-to-one computing, what will be the power?  Why would I, as a teacher, generate QR codes?  Why would my students?

Hal Davidson gave the example of using QR codes to encode a homework assignment.  As students leave the classroom, they would scan the code and get the homework without writing anything down.  This seemed super cool, but then I thought, what if a kid forgot to scan?  The access to the homework was a hardlink to a physical QR code in the classroom.  For a student who was absent or forgot to scan to have access, the teacher would have to also post the information online.  If that’s the case, then the QR code seems like too much work.  Why not just post it online, and ask the students to check the website for the homework.

I’m definitely not saying that QR codes aren’t cool and won’t be useful in education.  My problem is that except for a few examples, I am having a hard time picturing it.

Forward thinking professional development

The future of instructional design especially with regard to k12 education is unclear. Because all of my loves of instructional design are focused on how to design effective professional development now and in the future, I am concerned by the  many conflicting opinions about how instruction will be revolutionized by emerging technologies because of their implications for PD. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, there are those who believe the role of the teacher will shift dramatically so that they become data analysts who simply monitor the work done by online curriculum. Others believe that the role of the teacher will shift so that they design learning experiences that don’t transmit knowledge but allow for a networked student with a teacher as a guide to help students construct knowledge. The teacher in this scenario is still instructional designer. I believe strongly that having a teacher who is still the guide and not merely the analyst is a much more powerful and hopeful view of the future of education. But how will we get to the point where teachers can use technology adequately to help students direct their learning? Several new developments in k12 instructional design and professional development offer a glimpse of what may be to come.

Several recent developments regarding professional development provide part of the answer:

Click to view the NECC TPACK presentation by Judi Harris & Mark Hofer

1.  Designing professional development based on the TPACK framework for teacher knowledge.  At NECC Judi Harris and Mark Hofer presented a plan for professional development based on this framework where the primary thrust was on lesson design/planning. Professional development on the integration of technology is not taught by introducing teachers to an array of technologies from which to choose. Instead the focus of professional development is on the design of high quality instruction where technology is identified as the last stage of planning. It is only after an appropriate pedagogical strategy is identified that the appropriate technology is paired with the lesson.

2. Currently the National Educational Technology Plan is being developed by the U.S. Department of Education with support from the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, a nonprofit research organization. Input is being solicited in order to design a plan that adequately looks into the future. Their focus is on five areas:

Topic 1: Access to high-quality learning experiences
Topic 2: Improved assessments
Topic 3: Data-driven decision making
Topic 4: Teacher effectiveness
Topic 5: Student engagement and success

Currently the plan is still in development, but the topics themselves give some clue about the future. Although the aims laid out in each topic are not new, technology will certainly provide a means to make each of these more possible.

Systemic Change – What does it mean to you?

What is systemic change?  What would it look like in a large urban school district?

SDUSD is in the process of undergoing a systemic change as the updates outlined by proposition S are planned and implemented throughout the district.  In order to identify how key individuals view systemic change, I interviewed four key individuals in the district.  Some were classroom teachers who are likely to be leaders as Prop S roles out, and others were central office staff who will likely be involved in facilitating the implementation.  Each individual was simply asked to define systemic change.

Here are some of the definitions that came up (they are nearly verbatim):

#1: it’s holistic.  It happens when a large organization makes a series of changes that are interrelated and are all focused on bringing about a single change or set of changes.  It should start from those with the vision for change, and then begin to create buy-in from the key stakeholders

Change we can believe in

#2: The outcome would truly be pervasive, omnipresent from kindergarten through 12th grade.  Every staff member would be a part of whatever that systemic process was.  The change should touch every student and every staff member.  All stakeholders should be a part of the process to make that outcome happen.

#3: change that starts in the center and goes out.  It changes the dynamics of the system and how it works.

#4: a change that takes ownership of itself over time: it remains after the change-agent is no longer present.  To have systemic change, you would need an ongoing plan with support and resources available.  Most effective when not top down, but facilitated by key people so that the mass is what ends of driving the change because they see the value.  They were included in the process and a part of creating that process over time.

Each of these reveal something about the interviewee’s take on who should be involved in the process.  Some responses such as #1 and #3 indicate that change should begin with a small cadre of individuals who create the vision.  Once that is established the vision is implemented and slowly spreads out.  In contrast, the responses of interviewee #2 and #4 indicate that they place a high value on all stakeholders being involved from the outset of the change.  These two pictures of how the change will be developed and implemented are quite different and but are not mutually exclusive.  In a large district like SDUSD, it would be virtually impossible to have all stakeholders involved in the process from the beginning.  However, it would make quite a bit of sense to organize a cadre of individuals that can speak for each of the major stakeholder groups.  This blend of these two perspectives would help to develop an agent for change that will consider the needs, limitations, strengths, and desires of all key inviduals.  Having this diversity of perspectives involved would help the group avoid major pitfalls that can occur when those involved in the planning are not well enough informed about how the elements of the system is interrelated and interdependent.

The Importance of the Teacher in Transforming Education

The video, A Nation in Crisis: America[s Education System is Broken makes the argument that education is failing our youth, which I don’t think many people would disagree with.  With increased globalization, our students need to be able to compete not just with their neighbors but with people they’ve never met in countries across the world.  “We are squandering a national resource,” the brains and talent of our youth, with an educational system that is entrenched in tradition that is unable to adapt to the new realities of the 21st century.  The new global workforce needs to develop 21st century skills and be able to adapt and learn continuously, and our schools are simply not developing these abilities in students.

The video provides a powerful motivation for change, but does not outline a solution.  What will education that inspires students and develops the ability to change and shift look like?  What will the role of the teacher be in this new paradigm?  What is it that we need to do differently?

In a previous post, I present a worry I have about one view of the teacher role in any new paradigm.  Some people who adhere to the Plugged in Vision (PIV) for educational reform (hopefully a minority) believe that the teacher should facilitate education in a very narrow sense.  They see the teacher as simply a coordinator of the students’ experience with pre-made online curriculum.  On this model, software is selected for each subject and students work through the software at their own pace with the teacher monitoring and assisting as needed.  In my previous post I presented some of my concerns with this model.  But in regard to the teacher role, I believe this model represents a very impoverished view of the teacher role.  Teachers would not teach; they would manage.  A view of the teacher that I much prefer is presented in the video Networked Student.

In this video the teacher is vital to the learning in an environment where connections are what is important.  On this model, students learn from each other and by those outside of the classroom that are grappling with the same issues.  They evaluate and share resources, discuss both in web environments and in person.  They work together to construct meaning through connectivism.  As a final product they present their learning in wikis or other media so that their learning is shared with others.

In this much more robust vision of 21st century learner, the teacher is:

• Learning concierge
• Modeler
• Learning architect
• Connected learning incubator
• Network sherpa
• Change agent
• Synthesizer

His/her role is critical in guiding student learning.  To be proficient in this new role, teachers will need to be highly skilled in content, in web 2.0 technology, and in facilitating cooperation, discussion, and interaction.

The only question is whether the vision of 21st century learning outlined by the Networked Student video will resolve the problems presented in the A Nation in Crisis: America[s Education System is Broken.

The Promise and Peril of 21st Century Learning – Differentiation?

To me one of the biggest promises of 21st century learning is the idea of differentiation.  That learning is no longer one size fits all where the teacher has to decide whether to teach to the middle or one of the extremes.  However, recently I have discovered that there are many different visions of the promise of differentiation, and one particular version worries me quite a bit.

One vision of 21st century learning emphasizes a single powerful element of differentiation only.  In this paradigm students receive instruction from software that is diagnostic and responsive.  Students come to their language arts class, for example, and turn on their computer.  They start up their APEX software, Achieve 3000, or some other online curriculum and start their work.  Instruction is differentiated because each student may be at a different spot in the curriculum. Students can learn at their own pace, and the program adapts to their needs giving them readings and questions at their current level.  This is certainly a powerful type of differentiation.  Learning is tailored to the student’s skill level.

Here are my worries.  This vision of 21st century learning (which I will call the “Plugged In Vision” or PIV for short)…

1. misses an important aspect of differentiation
2. will not adequately develop 21st century skills
3. places the teacher in the role of facilitator but not in a powerful or important way
4. makes technology virtually the only tool for learning

So let me explain my worries because I like to talk and I certainly like to be opinionated.

Worry #1 – The PIV misses an important aspect of differentiation. The curriculum is differentiated by skill level, and this is powerful.  However, the curriculum is not differentiated in any other way.  What other way is there you may ask?  Well, one important aspect of differentiation, in my opinion, is the ability to differentiate instruction by interest as well.  A student in the video Learning to Change, Changing to Learn hits the nail on the head when she says that when you have access to everything (via the internet) it forces you to discover what you are really interested in.  If I were teaching a unit on forces and motion and one of my students was a skilled programer, maybe one way she could demonstrate mastery would be to develop an iPhone application game on the topic.  Or if I have a student who wants to be a songwriter, he can write a song, record it in audacity or garageband on the topic and publish it to CCmixter.  To me this is the power of 21st century learning – to help students realize their dreams and develop their talents while they are learning.  This is not something that an APEX tutor can do.

Worry #2 – The PIV will not addequately develop 21st century skills. The traditional model of education tends to focus on the learning of facts.  That is what students are usually tested on (although some skills are tested such as reading comprehension, etc.)  But in a Google It world, facts are at our fingertips.  There is no reason to memorize anymore except for those things such as mathematical times tables that we need to be able to use with automaticity.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills identifies some of the core skills students will need to develop in order to be successful in a world where things change quickly and information is infinite.  Some of these skills are innovation, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, etc.  Now I am not an expert with these online curriculums, but from what I’ve seen and heard, these programs do not develop these important 21st century skills.  In fact, with each student staring at their own computer screen during an entire class period doing their own thing, the differentiation in skill level that the software provides hinders the ability to communicate and collaborate in the classroom.  I could ramble on about this, but I’ll stop there.

Worry #3 – The PIV places the teacher in the role of facilitator but not in a powerful or important way. It is fairly widely agreed upon that “The Sage on the Stage” model of teaching should be replaced by a model where the teacher acts as a facilitator or guide.  Although the PIV model certainly removes the “Sage on the Stage” the facilitator role that emerges is very limited.  From what I understand from proponents of the PIV model, teachers job becomes that of a helper when students are having a hard time and a manager of the classroom, and that’s about it.  The software does the teaching, the evaluation, the interaction.  What I hope for in 21st century learning facilitator is a teacher who is creative and responsive, who is constantly evaluating and adjusting.   Now I understand the worry of the PIV proponents.  The argument is that many teachers do not have the technology skill set (and unfortunately in some cases the pedagogical and content knowledge and skill set) to be able to teach in the responsive way that is possible with new technologies.  This is clearly an important point and the burden is on those of us who envision something other than the PIV model to find a way to develop these skills in our current teacher workforce and help develop skill with a new pedagogy.  Where I disagree with the PIV proponents is I believe it is possible to develop this and I believe it is worth it to find a way to do it.  Just because we have largely been unsuccessful developing this does not mean that we should give up.  To give up would be quite dismissive of teachers and their abilities.

Worry #4 – PIV makes technology virtually the only tool for learning. When students walk into a classroom, turn on their computer and plug in for the duration, instruction ignores the many tools that are possible both high tech and low tech.  Manipulatives, whiteboards (both interactive and not), PAPER, human simulations and performances, etc. are also valuable means of learning, collaborating, and commicating.  Just because computers are a VERY powerful tool does not mean that we should ignore all of the other many tools and strategies that are possible.

Now I feel it is important that I explain my vision a little bit.  My argument is not that diagnostic curriculum such as Achieve 3000 and curriculum that allows students to learn at their own pace such as APEX should not be used.  In fact, I think these tools could be very powerful integrated into a curriculum where students are challenged to do exciting things.  But I believe that project-based learning is more likely to develop the important skills that will help students become life-long learners that are adaptable and excited about learning.  I believe that I would be extremely bored and more likely to drop out of school if I went to seven periods a day where I walked into class, plugged in and did not interact with my classmates or teacher.  This to me is a bleak vision of 21st century learning.

Luckily, I am just starting a class with Dr. Fred Saba at SDSU and I’m looking forward to learning more about the power of 21st century education where interaction and responsiveness are key.  I am hoping to develop a more robust and informed vision myself.

Thanks for reading!

Longing for Moments of Ludditity

Once upon a time people used to live by the rhythms of the earth more than the alert sounds of jarring alarm clocks, you-have-a-meeting-in-30-minutes-computers, and new-message-cell-phones.  It used to be that the sun rose, so it was time to get up.

A hummingbird I saw make its call

Weather prediction didn’t come from your iGoogle page or cable television.  People knew the weather would change from a quick look at the clouds or by the way the wind blew.  Communities celebrated changes in their natural environment from the harvest to the equinox.  Now as I go about my day, I hardly notice the sky (except when I look up with a scowl when clouds are making me cold and wet) and I definitely wouldn’t know it was the equinox unless someone on NPR mentioned it or it happened to be on my calendar.

For spring break, I spent the week camping and reading.  One book I read was The Zookeeper’s Wife.  You wouldn’t think it would be a book to inspire a reflection on our relationship with nature given its many heavier themes, but a significant theme in the book is the wife’s keen ability to understand various cues of animal and human behavior.  She could distinguish between the various types of calls of a bird and

That wonderfully pokey banana slug

observed in minute details the bathing habits of muskrats.  I lament the fact that I barely can hear birds above the sound of traffic and the majority of the small mammals I see are smashed into the pavement or just scurrying quickly by in the corner of my eye.  Spending some time camping without the benefit of any networking technology AT ALL caused a wellspring of desire to spend a lot more time away from all of the tools in my daily life that literally demand my attention.  I spent time just sitting in one place for a long time observing what was going on around me like the time I spent five minutes watching the progress of a banana slug (who moved about 5 feet during that time) or the time I spent two hours sitting on a beach watching the seagulls who were all huddled together playing chicken with the waves as they came in.  I’ve decided that I need a lot more time built into my regular week that divorces me from “civilization” and allows me to spend some time in the savage beauty and virtually unknown world of nature.

One irony of this conclusion is the implication it has for my view on education.  The irony is that for years I have hoped that education would be transformed by technology, and I still do.  The idea being that once students had a laptop in their hands, they could take the driver’s seat and become the creators, deciders, designers, etc.  But having had this brief break from technology, I wonder if we don’t also have to find a way to connect student to our natural world more meaningfully.  Experiencing nature without clicks, beeps, or rings.  Not just using PASCO sensors to detect carbon dioxide levels in water but actually observing, noticing, finding patterns, etc with their own senses.  I’m not sure that this is possible since most schools are firmly rooted in our human world with very little access to anything natural.  Despite that, I hope that in our drive to bring education into the 21st century, that we don’t completely lose sight of some of the the things that centuries of the past had right.

Next book on my reading list:  Last Child in the Woods – Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv

TPACK & Learning by Design, my thoughts

In my last post I gushed about a framework for teacher knowledge that I believe is quite powerful, TPACK.  When I first learned of TPACK, I felt like a light went on.  Since I work in an edtech dept. for a school district, I quickly shared the framework with my colleagues.  Ever since, when I have planned professional development I have considered the framework the guiding principle.

Along with the TPACK framework, Mishra and Koehler proposed a strategy for developing TPACK called Learning by Design.  Here’s how I understand the strategy:  In order for teachers to develop TPACK, they should learn about technology in the context of solving a pedagogical problem.  For example, a small group of teachers might be asked to develop a learning experience for students to teach about the evidence for global warming.  In the process of designing this instruction, the teachers would consider what pedagogical strategies might help students to understand this evidence and what technology tools might help make this possible, easier, etc.

I think in general this strategy makes sense.  We want teachers to be instructional designers and consider technology use not because it would be “so cool” but because it is a natural fit.  If that’s what we want as an endpoint, why not start there?  … But I have reservations.  My thoughts on this strategy are shaped by my experiences as a student at SDSU and as a professional developer in a school district.

In my COMET masters classes at SDSU, learning by design is precisely the approach our professors are using to teach us about how technology can be used for instruction.  We are given a problem.  For example, create an educational video on the topic of your choosing.  The tool we use is completely open.  The video can be filmed, animated…be created in Flash, iMovie, Final Cut, Adobe Premier, etc.  If we don’t know the technology tool that will help us realize our vision, we learn it.  I think learning by design works in this situation very well.  But the reason it has worked in the SDSU classes is because the students are already at least fairly tech savvy, are motivated learners, and chose to participate in the program voluntarily.  We are ready and willing!

As a professional developer who develops pd for teachers who range from technology pros to complete newbies, I haven’t been convinced that learning by design would work as well in our district.  Here’s why:  I’ve worked for the past three years with a grant called ESETT.  ESETT’s goal is to help middle school science teacher integrate technology into their curriculum.  What we have found throughout the implementation of this grant (that has a heavy emphasis on professional development) is that in the first year of implementation, the teachers focus on learning the tools and dabble with finding ways to use it in the classroom.  In the second year, the teachers are at the point where they are using technology more frequently with students and feel more competent  In the third year, teachers can easily make choices about technology and explain why the tool is helpful in a particular situation.  Hence, it isn’t until the third year that most teachers develop robust TPACK.  It takes time.  It is only after teachers know what tools are available, have a rough idea of what the tools can do, and begin to feel comfortable with using technology in a supportive environment that teachers have developed TPACK.

In fact, when we begin to work with new teachers, we tend to tell them not to worry about the technology.  We encourage them to let us, as resource teachers, be the technology experts in the beginning.  Their job is to decide about the content and pedagogy and we help them find a good technology fit.  Once we help them plan, then we support them (if they want us too) by being in the classroom when they first use the new technology.  Now I don’t think this amount of support is always possible, but I do think that although the ultimate in professional development would be to develop grade-level/content area Professional Learning Communities that work together to design instruction while considering technology, pedagogy, and content, I think that getting to that point will generally require a bit of scaffolding.

Another strategy we have tried with our newest group of teachers in order to try to accelerate the development of TPACK is to have their first professional development experience be about seeing the technology work from the student perspective.  We created a Moodle course with a number of learning tasks (focused on our outcomes for the PD – i.e. developing an idea about how a classroom would be different with technology).  Each learning task had the teachers using some of the tools that they would have available to them once they are planning instruction.  For example, we showed them the basics of Inspiration so that they could brainstorm how the classroom would be different with technology and had them upload their work to Moodle as a student would.  Also, we had them synthesize their thinking in a ComicLife at the end of the day.  This way teachers learned using the tools that they would expect others to learn from.  This strategy helped them see how all of the tools can fit together in daily instruction, and there were many discussions toward the end of the day where teachers saw some natural fits with their curriculum for some of the tools and we began to help them plan those learning activities.

To sum up, I think generally there will need to be some kind of scaffolding before teachers will be comfortable learning using the Learning by Design approach.  Anyway, this is extraordinarily long for a post, so I had better stop writing, but thank you if you’ve been patient and read this far!

Innovation in Education & TPACK

What is innovation?  It’s not just about change, and I don’t think it’s just about things being better.  I think innovation is a new idea or invention that makes us wonder how we ever did things before.  It can’t be just that it is better.  It has to be soooo much better that we can’t imagine a world without that invention anymore.   For example, Windows Vista might be better than Windows XP Professional…ok, just kidding.  Bad example.  For example take 2, the Leopard OS may be better than Tiger, but the difference isn’t so great that we think, “Dang, I don’t know how I managed with 10.4!” Leopard is not an innovation even though it’s better.

But some ideas and inventions are, in fact, innovations and are such that you think, “Wow, how did I ever manage?”  Take Internet search engines and all of the ever-growing content on the web.  Who did we ask pre-Google?  What did we do when we needed to figure out how to get somewhere before mapquest and Google maps?  Having vast amounts of information stored on the web in such a way that anyone with a computer and connection can query this massive database is radical and has made our life so much easier/more fair/etc.

from Open Learning at BYU

Now in education there is always change.  Every year there is a new curriculum or a new strategy that we try only to abandon it next year or a few years down the line in exchange for another “New” idea.  There are very few ideas or strategies that can truly be called innovation.  One recent idea, in my humble opinion, is a true innovation, and it has to do with teacher knowledge and how we develop that knowledge in teachers.

TPACK, or Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (if you prefer the mouthful version), is just that innovation just as it’s predecessor PCK, or Pedagogical Content Knowledge, was before it.

If you don’t know the story of TPACK, here’s a quick synopsis.  It used to be that when teachers learned how to teach they would take their content classes and then take general pedagogical classes, and they were separate.  Then this guy named Shulmann came along in the ’80s and proposed PCK.  His point was something like this:

Sure teachers need to know how to teach in a general sort of way, but if they teach science, then there are particular pedagogical concerns that are different than if you teach math.  The way you learn how to solve quadratic equations may be different than understanding ecosystems, and most likely the way you teach it is different too.

Out of this idea methods classes were born in teacher education classes.

Ever since personal computers and internet access has become a dominant force in our culture and in teaching, technology classes have been a part of teacher education programs as well.  However, they are generally separate in the way that content and pedagogy were taught separately pre-Shulmann.

TPCK from tpack.org

Recently Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler have preposed that Technology should not be taught in isolation in teacher education because the way that you use technology will be particular to your content and your pedagogical focus.  When taught in isolation, technology generally focuses on the skills of using technology.  For example, a teacher will go to a workshop and learn how to use PowerPoint or Moodle.  This workshop will teach what each menu does, what icons mean, and how to create something using those tools.  The focus is not on how to use it to teach within a content area.  This is the revolution that Mishra and Koehler are proposing (as I understand it).

Why is this a tremendous innovation?  Because it should revolutionize professional development in the use of technology.  We should no longer focus on the tools because they are just that…tools!  We need to focus more on what those tools can create and how we can use them to make amazing things happen in education.

Now as much as I think that TPACK is a truly innovative idea/framework, I’m not sold that the Learning by Design strategy for professional development is as innovative or effective, but since this blog post is already far too long, the reasons for that opinion will have to wait to be shared until next time…