T what?

TPACK...technological pedagogical and content knowledge. That's a mouthful. The easiest way for me to understand what this acronym means is to break each part up into my own connotations relating to the course interpretation.

Technological = technology...how well we understand and can use technology
Pedagogical = how well we know how to teach
and
Content = how well we know the topics we are teaching
Knowledge = what we know

Basically, as teachers, we can use any cominations of the these terms. We could have great technological knowledge, but not be very good at teaching it. We might know the subject content (content knowledge) and masterfully present it to our students with our pedagogical knowledge, but not know how to integrate our technological knowledge into our teaching. The ideal is a mix of all of the above.
We learned the term "modalities" in our ed psych class. The best teachers use multiple modalities as they teach, reaching all types of learners in the process. That's kind of how I interpret TPACK. We use all the components of TPACK to reach our learners.
I think most of us teachers have the pedagogical and content knowledge down (hopefully!). The trick is the technology part. The kids we are teaching are raised in a world of technology. My nephew could operate the computer better than his mom when he was 5!
For me, something that stood out in the reading was that using a powerpoint reading is NOT considered using technology for learning. Yes, you are using technology, but the kids are not. A powerpoint is serving the same purpose any visual, like a posterboard, serves. The key is to get your students using technology! Don't show them, but let them do!

I love google. For the technologies we explored I played with google earth and google sky. I've only used it a little before, and they have raised the bar! You can change the daylight settings, or watch the sunrise from a particular setting. How cool is that?
For kids, we could have them play with map making and directions. You can click on little icons that give details about particular places. I might have my class write directions of how to get to the doctor, or vet, or park from their house. Figuring that out on google earth is way more fun than just drawing a map themselves. It also makes the learning more concrete.
I also checked out Kidsperation, or Inspiration 8. It's a program that allows you to make awesome visuals like outlines, bubble charts, tree charts, etc. You can even create a visual one way, and with the click of the button the program would convert it to a different type of visual. (multiple modalities...wink wink) I might have a student who learned best with text representations. But another student might learn better with pictures. Viola...just click one button and I have both! This is ideal for group projects or class presentations. Don't ya just love technology?

Teacher Observation for Psychology

Relief Society Lessons

A question that has intrigued me ever since I began to teach and learn about teaching in a public school setting is that of “church teaching.” I learn so many great things and get so many ideas that I can use in a classroom full of children, but how can I successfully implement those into a regular family ward Relief Society or Sunday School lesson full of mostly elderly people who can’t hear and move the same way children do? I believe that we all learn like children. We all appreciate engaging lessons that apply to our lives and get us thinking. Nobody likes to sit still for an hour.
This past Sunday I gained some enlightenment into my question. As I sat in Relief Society my eyes caught view of a beautiful poster board. It was a work of art with pictures and words. I was intrigued before the lesson began. Anyone who cared enough to put this amount of time into a visual must really care about her material. Throughout the lesson, this teacher shared with us her talent for art with different visuals. You could see her enthusiasm for the topic, and her love for us as she was willing to share her talents to help us learn.
I don’t think this teacher planned her lesson thinking, “I’m going to be sure to implement a constructivist learning approach as opposed to a behaviorist approach. She didn’t probably think in terms of labeling her methods like we have to in our college classes.. Her approach was based on the pure principle of love. She loved the topic, the gospel, the “students,” and she did everything in her power to let that love show and touch the audience.
There might be some things I would do differently if I taught this same lesson. I wish I could do it exactly the same—it was so effective—but everyone is different. I couldn’t duplicate that artwork if I tried. I might bring myself into the lesson in a different way, perhaps through music, but my goal would be to show love as she did.

RSS, Web 2.0, Goodreads, it's delicious....

Well I have to say adding an RSS feed is pretty sweet. It eliminates all that clicking around to check a bazillion differnt websites. But I have mixed feelings about it. In some wierd way, I kind of like having to check a bunch of different websites. I don't know, maybe I have an internet addiction or something. Or maybe it's just a good way to procrastinate doing other homework assignments you just don't feel like doing.
Delicious and goodreads are pretty useful, too. It's nice to have all your resources save in a place you can access online instead of having to save them to your hard drive, or email account, like I used to do. And it's useful to have a network of others that you can see what they are reading or using and share ideas. hmmm...i guess I kinda like technology! The only think I don't like is having a hundred differnt accounts that you have to remember!

week 1 - technology

My technology background... well I remember in second grade we took a keyboarding class. It was awesome. There were games to see how fast we could type, like the racecar one. Did any of you ever have those? Then in high school we were required to take a Word and Excel class. I went to a really small, lame high school so they had to fill time with something. In my art class last semester we learned some basic photoshop skills, which I love! And I have another blog previous to this one, but I don't update it very much. oh...and I LOVE google! Did you know that you can text google on your phone, for free? You can get weather, sports scores, movie times, directions...