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.
2 Comments
Jona Sandau
6/24/2019 10:21:03 am
Tasha, what an inspiring story! It sounds like you have done some important work around technology this year and your students truly benefited! They were so lucky to join you on this journey and it sounds like they inspired you, too. I am lucky to learn alongside you and always look forward to seeing how your work in this program is unfolding. One thing I love about this all is finding things to look forward to trying out next year, too! What are you most excited about?
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JP
6/25/2019 11:39:10 pm
I have been meaning to check out the karaoke video you have created with your students. I like seeing how you have used different apps to enhance your student's learning, and how you've really are doing so much to keep your student's engaged.
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