Reflection on working with TPACK

In my last post I reflected on the process of working on the final assignment, now I will reflect on working with TPACK and my ideas to integrate technology in education.

First of all I think that I learned more about TPACK by applying it in practice. That was directly our inset for our professional development program: you learn most about TPACK when you are working on it and apply it in practice! And I really liked that. The TPACK framework seems so logical that you might think it could not be so hard… But the opposite is true! It is very complicated! That is also what you discover when you are working on it in practice. Because it is very complicated I think that it is important for educational designers to make the TPACK model workable for teachers, you cannot just learn teachers about it in theory. I think that the TPACK model could be useful for the integration of technology in education, but it is not enough. Technology has to become something usual in education, not something special. That is the reason that the educational training institutions have a crucial role! When student teachers are there already learning to teach with technology they get really used to it. They are also grown up using technology so it might be easier for them to use it than for teachers that did not grow up with using technology. But for the older teachers I think that good practices are very valuable. Just show them what the possibilities are and how they could apply it. School leaders play a crucial role in respect to this. They can stimulate their teachers and make sure that the boundary conditions are good and that the vision on ICT is clear and that teachers believe in that vision. He can do that by showing good practices, professional development programs in relation to this and by obliging them to use it in some way.

Because I am not only a student but also a teacher, in this course I constantly thought about how I use technology in my education. Because I am teaching physical education I am always using technology in the broad way of the definition of technology, but the kind of technology this course was mostly about, ICT technology, I am not using at all actually. I am conscious about it now, and I see some possibilities that I have mentioned in earlier blogs. I will try to do something more with technology from now on! But I also think about what I have learned about TPACK, even more than I already did about, when I am preparing my lessons and when I am reflecting on the lessons I gave. I think that I have now a good basis for elaborating what the possibilities are for my specific situation.

This is my last blog in relation to the course ‘Pedagogies’. I really enjoyed to blog about my experiences and I hope that others enjoyed reading it!

Reflection- time again! About the process of working on the final assignment.

It has been a while since my last post.. Not that I was not working on the course, I was pretty busy working on it actually, and now I will write something about that period. What did I do?

For the course ‘Pedagogies’ we had to work on the final assignment to finish the course. In groups of four students we could choose to design a lesson based on TPACK or to develop a professional development based on TPACK. My group, with Jeffrey, Mariëtte and Simone, choose to work on the professional development assignment, as most of the groups did. We thought this would be most interesting for us and most challenging. Because three of us are teachers, designing a lesson would not be so hard. Developing a professional development is more the kind of work we imagine to do when we are graduated… Nice to try it out! We had four weeks to work on it and after we finished we had to present what we have developed to the other groups.

I will not tell in detail what we have developed here, in short we have developed a professional development program for primary school teachers and educational training teachers in which they learn about TPACK and apply what they have learned by designing a lesson plan form for student teachers to use in their internships. In this way we reach not only the teachers of today, but also the teachers of the future.

When we started to work on the assignment we were all very enthusiastic about what we were going to do. Simone can up with a very good idea to work out the assignment directly and we all agreed that that was a good idea to work out. The first time we came together we discussed a lot about how to shape the rough ideas and worked out what we should do. We had all good ideas but we could not work out everything so we had to choose and clearly define a plan. Because of the time pressure we felt that we could not just try something and decide later if we are on a good way, but that we had to make a good plan before we could work something out. I experienced that we all were really conscious about that and that we did not lose time but that we came directly to the point and worked effectively. All members of our group brought something different because we all are very different and have different background. I think that we used that in a very positive way and that was an added value for our group. We listened to ideas of each other and we added something and discussed about it. I have experienced it as a very pleasant collaboration!

After we had worked out our rough ideas we decided that it would be best to think everything over and come together one week later to work out the ideas together. That was important to really take care that we are all still at one line and work it out in such a way that we, after that meeting, could split up some work. We discovered that we almost had the same thought about it, so it was good to talk it over and got at one line. Together we worked out the main ideas for the program and all choose something to do for the next meeting. It seemed that we all wanted to do a different aspect of the assignment and we all agreed that we had to work on an aspect we are good at! We agreed that next week we all had done a great part of the job, and if we discovered some difficulties that we could ask each other for help; we stayed in touch with each other by email. Because we clearly decided who would do what, everyone did what he or she had to do. The nest meeting we talked about what we did and what should be done to finish. We split up in couples to work out what we still had to do and agreed that what was not finished should be done at home. We again distributed the job and we finished it in time!

Concluding

I really enjoyed working in this group because the collaboration was very good! We listed well to each other and worked effectively. The division of coming together and work things out by yourself was pleasant and we really made use  of what we are good at.