Too Cool For School? No Way! - ERIC

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Too Cool for School? No Way!istockphoto.com/Daniel VilleneuveCell phones? iPods? GPS?Those are toys,not teaching tools!Relax! Using the TPACKmodel, teachers can repurposethese gadgets as powerfulclassroom aids!Using the TPACK Framework:You Can Have Your Hot Toolsand Teach with Them, TooCopyright 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.14Learning & Leading with Technology May 2009

By Punya Mishra and Matthew KoehlerThis is the age of cool tools.Facebook, iPhone, Flickr, blogs,cloud computing, Smart Boards,YouTube, Google Earth, and GPS arejust a few examples of new technologies that bombard us from all directions. Often our reaction when wesee a new toy is one of surprise andpleasure. These toys are cool!As individuals we see a new technology and can appreciate its coolness, but as educators we wonder howthese tools can be used for teaching.The fact that a technology is innovative and popular does not make it aneducational technology. We hear common refrains: “Technology should notdrive pedagogy,” or “Technology isjust a tool, a means to an end, not theend itself.” But these technologies havethe potential to fundamentally changethe way we think about teaching andlearning.What Is Technology Anyway?Someone once suggested that technology is all the new stuff that appearedafter we were born. The stuff thatwas around before we arrived on theplanet we often take for granted. Tothe over-30 crowd, a car is not reallya technology, but a website is. To children born in the 1990s, neither carsnor websites are examples of technology, whereas iPods and Wii gamingsystems are.We would argue that almost everything that is artificial—the clotheswe wear, the cars we drive, the pencilswe use to scribble notes, and the computers we use to browse the Web—istechnology, whether low tech or hightech. But each of these technologieshas affordances and constraints, potentials and problems that we as educators need to understand before wecan start using them for pedagogicalpurposes.Repurposing these cool tools for educational purposes, however, is not simple. If educators are to repurpose toolsand integrate them into their teaching,they require a specific kind of knowledgethat we call technological pedagogicaland content knowledge (TPACK).What about Pedagogy and Content?As educators, our job involves teaching (pedagogy) students specificsubject matter (content). Many yearsago, Lee Shulman, then a professorat Michigan State University, made aprovocative suggestion. He said thatteachers have specialized knowledgethat sets them apart from other professions. He argued that this specialknowledge lies at the intersection ofcontent and pedagogy—at the intersection of what we teach and how weteach it. He called this special pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).For example, a highly trained mathematician would not necessarily be agreat teacher of math. She might lackknowledge of core pedagogical issues,such as an understanding of students,their developmental trajectory, conceptual misconceptions they may have,and the best ways to present mathematical ideas to individual students.Quality teaching, Shulman argued, isthe transformation of content and theact of teaching in a disciplined manner.Teaching is not a process of picking up a few instructional techniquesand applying them. It emerges fromthinking deeply about the nature of adiscipline in conjunction with strategies for helping students learn thatdiscipline over time. In other words,PCK is a kind of knowledge that goesbeyond knowledge of content or ofpedagogy taken in isolation. Teachingrequires the transformation of contentin ways that make it intellectually accessible to students.Copyright 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.May 2009 Learning & Leading with Technology 15

Rapid changes in technology haveadded a new kind of knowledge thateducators have to integrate withpedagogical and content knowledge.Our work with teachers as they attempted to integrate technology intotheir teaching led us to update Shulman’s framework to include technology knowledge or TK. This led to thetechnological pedagogical and contentknowledge (TPACK) framework. (SeeA Closer Look at the TPACK Framework to the right).How Can You Repurpose Technology?The skills, competencies, and knowledgespecified by the TPACK frameworkrequire teachers to go beyond theirknowledge of particular disciplines,technologies, and pedagogical techniques in isolation. This is a contingent,flexible kind of knowledge that lies at theintersection of all three of these knowledge bases, allowing the creative repurposing of the traditional approaches.The idea of creative repurposing isimportant because most technologies that teachers use typically havenot been designed for educationalpurposes. Technologies includingstandard productive or office software, blogs, wikis, and GPS systemswere not designed for teachers, and assuch, teachers must repurpose themfor use in educational contexts. Suchrepurposing is possible only when theteacher knows the rules of the gameand is fluent enough to know whichrules to bend, which to break, andwhich to leave alone. This requiresa deep experiential understanding,developed through training and deliberate practice, of all the aspects ofthe TPACK framework and how theyinteract with each other.We provide three examples of technology that can be repurposed foreducational ends—microblogging,visual search engines, and music DJsoftware. All of these examples weredeveloped by a team of Punya Mishra’sgraduate students.The TPACK framework merges technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge.Microblogging. Noah Ullman offeredthis example of using microbloggingsites, such as Twitter, to complementface-to-face discussions in a classroom. Participants share short messages—140 characters or less—witheach other using a microbloggingwebsite. We have found that microblogging within an appropriate pedagogical frame can enhance the classroom in useful and engaging ways.The important thing to remember isthat a technology such as microblogging does not exist in a vacuum. Itsappropriate use has to be scaffolded byspecific pedagogical instructions andguidelines. Teachers should constructa “space” within the classroom wherethese student-generated commentscould be discussed. Without this,the microblogging activity remainsdivorced from the actual class routinesand thus can be relatively ineffective.Specialized search engines. Paul Morsinksuggested using specialized search engines (particularly visual search engines,such as Viewzi, Cuil, and Clusty) tohelp students understand intertextuality, which is the concept that texts oftenrefer to each other in complex and intricate ways to create webs of meaning.Students use these search engines to findwebpages containing a target phrasethey have chosen—a famous line (suchas “daggers in men’s smiles” from Macbeth), an adapted famous line (such as“method to his madness,” from a line inHamlet), the words of a book title (suchas Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness),or a character’s name (such as Grendelfrom the epic poem “Beowulf”).Copyright 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.16Learning & Leading with Technology May 2009

C ontextsTechnologicalPedagogical and alKnowledge(PK)PedagogicalContentKnowledge(PCK)As students explore their search results, they see firsthandhow words and phrases are borrowed, re-combined, andre-circulated, and they reflect on how the same words canmean different things in different contexts. As they crisscross the Web, students begin to formulate hypothesesabout vectors of influence, processes of transformation,and dynamics of popularity. Of course they coulddo this just as easily using Google, but the advantageof these visual search engines is the way the resultsappear. These engines search results, not in the textbased series of links as Google commonly does, butwith tag-clouds or visual icons. Similar search “hits” aregrouped together, allowing students to view at a glancehow citations can cluster, thus scaffolding a student’sunderstanding about how certain texts work together.Combining a search with freely available bookmarking tools, such as iBreadcrumbs, allows students notonly to record their navigation through hyperspacebut also to annotate it. They can then share these itineraries and annotations with the teacher and othersand use them as the basis for further discussion aboutthe nature of intertextuality. The annotations also offerinteresting possibilities for student assessment.DJ software. Graduate student Erik Byker looks at howfreely available DJ software, such as trakAxPC, can be usedto teach mathematical concepts such as ratios, fractions,and percentages. TrakAxPC allows users to download music samples and copy and paste them into a mixer. They canA Closer Look at the TPACK FrameworkExpert teachers consciously and unconsciously find ways toorchestrate and coordinate technology, pedagogy, and contentinto every act of teaching. They flexibly navigate the affordancesand constraints of each technology and each possible teachingapproach to find solutions that effectively combine content,pedagogy, and technology. They find solutions to complex,dynamic problems of practice by designing curricular solutionsthat fit their unique goals, situations, and student learners.These expert teachers demonstrate a specialized kind ofknowledge that the TPACK framework tries to capture bydescribing their knowledge as a deep, pragmatic, and nuancedunderstanding of three knowledge bases—content, pedagogy,and technology. We understand that, in some ways, theseparation of teaching into content, pedagogy, and technologyis not necessarily straightforward, or even something that goodteachers do consciously. When technology integration is workingwell, effective teaching represents a “dynamic equilibrium”between content, pedagogy, and technology such that a changein any one of the factors has to be compensated by changes inthe other two. For example, teachers who change the technologythey use naturally make changes to their pedagogical approachand the content they cover to create a new “curriculum” that isalso highly effective.Knowledge of technology, content, and pedagogy does notexist in a vacuum; it exists and functions within specific contexts.Teachers face a wide array of elements that make their contextsunique and different from other teachers. Consider, for instance,the one-laptop-per-child initiative. Clearly the fact that eachchild in a class has a computer that can access the Internet willinfluence how a teacher approaches curriculum development andstudent participation. In contrast, consider the teacher who hasaccess to a computer lab for 50 minutes a few times per week.This situation calls for radically different pedagogical moves.Similarly, many teachers face firewalls and restrictions on theresources they can access from class. In this context, the issueis not to argue whether or not these restrictions are good or badbut rather something to consider when making curricular andpedagogical decisions. (To read more about using the TPACKframework, see “Realizing Technology Potential through TPACK,”L&L, September/October 2008, pp. 23–26.)Copyright 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.May 2009 Learning & Leading with Technology 17

Teachers need to develop a willingness to play with technologies andan openness to building new experiences for students so that fun,cool tools can be educational.also cut the music samples into smaller units of sound and arrange them.What makes this a powerful lesson isthat students actually get to manipulate the trakAxPC software to helpthem describe and explain ratios andpercentages. Relating mathematicalconcepts, such as ratios and percentages, to rhythm, music, and tempo is away to creatively build patterns. Thesepatterns form a relationship betweenconcepts (beats per minute and ratios)that belong to different disciplines(composing music and math) butcan, and should, be integrated. Thisallows students to cross disciplinaryboundaries and transfer ideas fromone realm to another, deepening theirinsight into both domains. Moreover,this is a powerful way to bring mathematics alive to students in an intrinsically motivating manner.In each of these cases the technology was not constructed for educational purposes. Making it an educational technology required creativeinput from the teacher to redesign oreven subvert the original intentionsof the software programmer. Thiswould not be possible without a deep,complex, fluid, and flexible knowledgeof the technology, the content to becovered, and an appropriate pedagogy.Teachers need to develop a willingness to play with technologies and anopenness to building new experiencesfor students so that fun, cool tools canbe educational.ResourcesClusty: http://clusty.comCuil: www.cuil.comiBreadcrumbs: www.iBreadcrumbs.comKoehler’s blog: http://mkoehler.educ.msu.eduMishra’s blog: http://punya.educ.msu.eduTPACK wiki: www.tpack.orgTrakAxPC: www.trakax.com/software/pcTwitter: www.twitter.comViewzi: http://viewzi.comPunya Mishra is an associateprofessor of educational technology at Michigan State University. He is interested in issues related to technology integration in teacher education,design research, and creativity.Matthew J. Koehler is anassociate professor of educational technology at MichiganState University. His interestsinclude the affordances of technologies, the design of learningenvironments, and the professional development of teachers.Connecting the dots to inspired learning.cTh in k li k e a Te ahe rTeachersFirst’s in-the-classroomideas help you make connectionsto take teaching from the obviousto the innovative.Te ach l i k e aTh i n k e rTeachersFirst.comFromFor teachers. For families. For excellence.iste-ad-0905.indd 13/18/09 11:17:33 AMCopyright 2009, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education), 1.800.336.5191 (U.S. & Canada) or 1.541.302.3777 (Int’l), iste@iste.org, www.iste.org. All rights reserved.18Learning & Leading with Technology May 2009

Facebook, iPhone, Flickr, blogs, cloud computing, Smart Boards, YouTube, Google Earth, and GPS are just a few examples of new technolo-gies that bombard us from all direc-tions. Often our reaction when we see a new toy is one of surprise and pleasure. These toys are cool! As individuals we see a new tech-nology and can appreciate its cool-

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