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!

If you don’t K.I.S.S. ‘em, you lose ‘em

The KISS principle is nothing new, but sometimes it is easy to forget. KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid!  It pretty much speaks for itself.

For the past several years I’ve done a lot of professional development on technology tools for the SDUSD school district.   When I’ve planned PD, especially for a tool that is as near and dear to my heart as moodle, my enthusiasm for all of the possibilities with the tool cause me to forget this principle.  There are so many great ways that most tech tools could be used that I feel the urge to share everything that a tool can do with the teachers coming to the training.  I often have a hard time paring down the array of features and possibilities to the most important/useful ones.

What I’ve realized recently is how important it is to really keep it simple.  In fact, sometimes the simpler the better.  Here’s what I’ve found, when you show off lots of wonderful things that a tool can do, the people you are talking to will most likely want to recreate what you talk about.  That part’s great.  You want  your audience to be inspired.  The problem is that making it happen can be quite difficult (especially with something like Moodle).  If your audience isn’t able to be successful right away, sometimes you lose them.  They fall off the Moodle bandwagon or whatever bandwagon you’re pulling that day.

I’m beginning to realize that a better approach to PD may be to find the perfect hook that will make the tool invaluable.  Start there in the training, and make sure the attendees have developed the skills to be successful with that by the end of the training.  Then once they find success and gain confidence, they’ll want to learn more.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and there is only so much that anyone can truly learn in a few hours or a day. KISS!