TPACK

When I went to the Iowa Association of School Librarians conference last spring I found out about a staff development tool, or process that would facilitate the integration of technology into the curriculum. As a librarian, I have watched as students and teachers took technology classes, but then never were able to transfer those skills to their classroom work. I have also worked to integrate the Pathways to Knowledge Research Model into the K-12 curriculum for about 10 years now, and I find we are having the same problem. So when I heard a talk about TPCK, I was interested to see if it would help us to do the necessary integration of both technology and research language and skills into the everyday curriculum.


TPCK is built upon the work of Schulman. In his work, he created a model built upon the merging of pedagogy and content. The creators have added technology to this mix to create the model below:

Image courtesy of http://tpck.org


As staff development, teachers are schooled in all three areas, as well as the new areas that are created when these three areas blend together, using a Learning by Design model. I would like to add a fourth area, research, to this mix so that we can better integrate the research model starting in Kindergarten. Research might be considered a pedagogical or a technological process, and if so, there would not be a "fourth" area. I am interested in the idea of using this model district wide to provide staff development in 21st century skills. To find out more about TPCK, please check the links in the sidebar. Then maybe we can have a conversation about this tool.

It seems Iowa State University has teamed with Michigan State to develop a teacher survey for this tool. If you click on the title of this post, the link will take you to the main wiki site for this tool. You can find much more information there.

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