Technology in the classroom

 Technology in the classroom

Image source: google image

For this assignment I chose to look at the TPACK model. I believe it relates most closely with the age range of the students I teach and how I use technology in my classroom.

What is TPACK?

Image source: tpack.org

TPACK stands for Technology, Pedagogy, Content Knowledge. This means we as instructors are connecting technology, pedagogy and content knowledge in our instructions. So to break this down using one of my lessons. I teach a personal development class. In this class we combine knowledge of a career the students would like to do when they age out, technology to look up this career and the teaching of how to research the topic and then share what they have learned. 

For the lesson, I start with the content. What am I teaching and what is my students knowledge of the content. I start out by introducing the topic: what is a job, what are some examples of jobs and remind the students of prior teaching of each job. Then I use pedagogy, How can I best relay this information to the students for them to understand and use on their own. I use a slide deck in most, if not all, my classes. It is more engaging for the students, I have found. Combining the two (content and pedagogy), I display a short definition of what a job is, then play a video further defining it, I discuss what jobs we have explored and some other job ideas that could be explored. I talk about on task behavior and what that means in a job setting and we review what that might look like to decide if something is off task or on task. Lastly, I use technology knowledge by first using a slide deck to introduce and engage my students, then I breakdown how we can search for a job that interests the students. For this class we use the search engine google. The students must independently get their form of technology, open up google chrome, find google.com and search their job. I show how to find pictures and videos to display when the show and tell portion comes up. 

What this looks like all together

First, I teach the concept

• What is a job-using definitions and a video
• What is on task behavior- reviewing what a scenario
• What are examples of job we have explored and potential jobs to look up

Second, I assess how the students will learn (pedagogy)

• The use of the slide deck and videos

Lastly, I allow the use of technology 

• How can you research the job you would like?
• Chromebook
• iPad
• Where will you go to search this job?
• google search engine
• How will you present this information?
• use of pictures
• use of videos
• filling out worksheet related to the topic
• The job I want:
• I want to be this because:
• Here are examples of the job I chose:

How can I improve?

In looking at this model, I think I would improve my teachings by the use of slide decks for my students. They all present after sometime researching. This looks like them reading from a worksheet I made with guided questions and show some pictures of their job. However, in doing this research I think I could incorporate what I use every day for them. Going forward I would like my students to create an ongoing slide deck of their research and by the end we can have a class of presentations for each students job. I think this would be a cool and engaging way to keep each student focused.