Blog: In the Reflect section of I-care 3 you were asked to begin reflecting on your TPACK journey by looking at the TPACK site. For this week’s blog, please draft your TPACK reflection which will go on the ABOUT THE AUTHOR page of your capstone website. This should describe your thinking as you developed your capstone and your journey getting to where you are now. Teachers across the globe are endeavoring to be more innovative, since technology now is much more at the forefront of our lives than ever before. Throughout this last year TPACK’s framework has been instrumental in guiding me to become a better educator. This learning model was developed in 2006 by Punya Mishra and helps define the knowledge that we as teachers need to teach technology in our classrooms. It is important that we use it as a vehicle for teaching, and don’t just use technology for the sake of it. This framework shows us how technology changes not just how we teach, but also what we teach. Technical knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge all are dependent on one another, and TPACK is the sweet spot where they all overlap with each other.
My journey this year has been fruitful for both me and my students where technology is concerned. I took baby steps incorporating it at first into my classroom, but my students were so encouraging that it gave me confidence to try and integrate more. Initially I would use Quizlet at the beginning of class to review new vocabulary, and then I used Quizlet Live to quiz the students in teams on what they knew. Quizizz became another favorite; when working with this app, students were able to work individually at their own pace, and sometimes this was favorable as opposed to working in teams, or working for a fixed time on each question. From Quizizz came Google Forms, as I found that I could take questions and answers from Quizizz, and then make them into a quiz using Google Forms. The use of technology in my classroom just morphed, and before I knew it I was incorporating more and more apps to enhance my students’ learning. I was already very familiar with the content I needed to cover, so that made it easier to look for the best tech tools out there to help me deliver my content more effectively. In a foreign language classroom, activities can be quite short and succinct, so having a choice of apps to use to enable students to review and learn new material was a life saver. Music then became another focus in my classroom through the medium of technology. Music I have found has always been a good hook to get students interested and engaged. I showed examples of songs in the target language, then students researched and found songs that they enjoyed listening to and whose vocabulary they felt that they could readily learn. Students were able to use great technological tools to demonstrate their learning, including making an Adobe Spark presentation of their song’s most important vocabulary words. I worked with students on making QR codes for their poster board to represent their karaoke videos and their original songs. More and more I felt as if I was working alongside my students as opposed to being the teacher imparting information at the front of the room. This was transformational for me as an educator. The use of technology in the classroom has given me more time and energy to focus on working with individuals or small groups of students, and students themselves are becoming much more in charge of their own learning. It has been a win- win situation all round.
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I work at Justin-Siena High School and with regard to technology our mission statement declares that we aim to “prepare students to serve and leave in an ever changing world.” Our Technology Department has certainly grown from what it was and much more attention is now paid to how technology is being used in the classroom with our students. Students are issued with an iPad by the school, which is for academic use only, and they waive their rights to privacy with regards to email, photos, texts, video and other applications and need to comply with school rules. They all sign an acceptable use policy at the beginning of the year, pledging that they will use their iPads in an appropriate and fitting way. We also have a social media policy and students must adhere to the Conduct and Discipline Policies and Procedures, the Acceptable Use Policy, and the Harassment and Bullying Policy if they choose to participate in activities on social media. The policy states that “students must state and assume full responsibility and liability for the content contained on all social media.” The school can ask for content to be removed from a students’ media account and students are not allowed to use representations of the faculty, staff, students, other individuals at any time without permission. What is interesting is that all of these rules apply even if a student is off campus. The policy states that “a student represents Justin-Siena at all times, even off campus or on the weekends.” Also that “conduct away from campus can and often does reflect on and affect the school community” and so therefore the student needs to follow school policy for social media and internet use at all times. Justin-Siena’s policy also says that “the school reserves the right to inspect any and all computer devices that contain data pertinent to a student’s conduct.”
I feel as if our school policy does have most things covered. The issue we have at our school I believe is that some teachers just do not have the confidence to use technology in our classrooms. In the past we had very little tech support and some faculty members are older and less-experienced with using technology. However, now have two great tech guys who always do their utmost to help the teachers, literally at the drop of a hat, so I’m hoping things may improve. We too, are very fortunate in that our Vice Principal is a Doctor of Education in Catholic Educational Leadership and she has specialized knowledge in the area of technology - she is very familiar with the ISTE standards and so forth. Due to her expertise, those standards are clearly published in our faculty folder within google and Justin-Siena also has a Framework for teaching document containing expected teaching standards. It states that teachers should promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility, that they should design and develop digital age learning experiences and assessments, facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity and that they should also model digital work and learning. These policies all refer directly back to the ISTE standards. I didn’t have any real knowledge about the school’s policy regarding taking pictures of students and posting them on twitter or on our website, so I decided to investigate. I know that in NVUSD that students have to return a form at the beginning of the year if they don’t wish to have their son or daughter’s picture used for school purposes. At the end of our student parent handbook, there is an agreement which both students and parents have to sign. It states that upon enrollment in Justin-Siena that “all students and parents give implicit permission and authorization to Justin-Siena to use any still photograph or motion imagery of themselves that is taken or is authorized by a Justin-Siena staff member for instructional or promotional purposes. By granting permission, students release any and all claims for damages for libel, slander, or invasion of privacy and violation of the right of publicity for the duration of their time as a student at Justin-Siena.” For me this is vital information, so I now know that I can use pictures that I take on field trips or within my classroom which contain student pictures and post them on my Schoology page, or within twitter or other social media accounts. I just need to start by encouraging members of my own Department to start using technology in their classroom. Some will use Quizlet or perhaps Kahoot, but certainly they don’t use tech tools every day. Hopefully by starting small, enthusiasm may grow if other faculty members are seen to be successful. I encouraged my Department to set a technology goal for this upcoming school year so that everybody might try and use some apps in their classroom. I am really interested in helping students absorb language faster and more successfully and also be more engaged and in control of their learning. Initially I investigated just using Quizlet in the classroom to see if that made a difference in how much students learned, and if it caught their attention more. Students were given a survey and also tested on vocabulary that they had learned using the app, and tested on vocabulary that they had been taught using traditional teaching methods. The study was interesting but it soon became apparent to me that it was quite limited. The survey that students were given indicated that they certainly were more motivated by using Quizlet, but the test results weren’t so convincing. The students on the lower end of the spectrum had better test scores having used Quizlet, but the more able students got high scores with both. I began to think about what else would engage, motivate students and enhance their learning. I decided to broaden my study to include the general use of educational technology for learning but also the use of music. When I was a student I remember using songs and mnemonics to help me learn facts and information in my foreign language classroom and also in history. It really helped me remember information, and in fact I still remember those facts to this day. I talked to Dr Redmond and she also talked about having had a similar experience with music and song, and so this solidified my decision to include music. The idea of getting students to make their own Karaoke videos came from Lisa Gottfried, and it seemed to work out really well in my classroom. Students seemed motivated and excited to work on their projects, which was great. What is next with regards to me research after my Masters has been completed – that’s a really interesting question! This course has really opened my eyes to the tech tools that are out there and available to students, and mostly for free too. I intend to endeavor to continue what I have started in that I will include more educational technology in my classes to help engage students and assist their learning. With regard to music, I fully intend to carry on introducing songs in the target language and having students analyze the song or gap-fill with vocabulary words. When implementing my study, I found that the songs really helped my students with their pronunciation – when they were producing their vocabulary presentations they listened over and over to the words in the song so that they could pronounce the words perfectly – I was really inspired by that. I would love to do some workshops with my colleagues, to introduce co-workers who are not in my Department to some of the fabulous tech tools that we have discovered. Just his last week I did a presentation to some of our faculty about Quizizz and they seemed genuinely interested in what it had to offer. Hopefully they will use it too! I also thought it could be really interesting to contact tech companies to see if they are interested in discussing tech tools from an educators’ perspective so that they could develop new apps that would better fit teachers’ needs.
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