Lesson Planning with TPACK

Video Transcription

Hi, and thank you for joining me today to discuss lesson planning with TPACK. Let's begin by looking at our essential questions. Today, we're going to address how can I use TPACK when I'm lesson planning and why is TPACK a useful framework for lesson planning? Some reminders.

Today's application lesson is based on teaching how to write a well organized essay. This is the same lesson you saw when we did a lesson plan using Shulman. The example given will be in blue and there are no key terms. Let's start with a quick review of TPACK.

Remember, TPACK stands for technological pedagogical content knowledge and it's made up of three domains. One is technological knowledge, or TK. It's shown here in pink. And this is just a teacher's knowledge of the different technology that he or she has at his or her disposal.

It's using technology intentionally, not just using technology to use it. And remember, technology doesn't always have to be the latest app. It could be something as simple as the textbook in the classroom. Next, we have pedagogical knowledge, or PK, shown here in yellow.

This is the teacher's toolbox of different methods for getting the content knowledge across, which leads us to content knowledge in blue. Content knowledge is the teacher's deep understanding of his or her content. As you can see, these have many different intersecting points.

You can have technological content knowledge. You can have technological pedagogical knowledge, and you can have pedagogical content knowledge. But when they all come together in the middle, that's when you have technological pedagogical content knowledge. And that's what we're shooting for.

So how can we use this to create a lesson plan? Well, let's look at that lesson plan of writing a well organized essay. First, we can start with content knowledge in blue. What is the content that I want my students to know? I want them to understand why thesis statements are necessary and what the requirements are for writing one.

I also want them to be able to organize an essay and understand how topic sentences and transitions play a role, as well as having a concrete organization from beginning to end. I also want them to understand the importance of outline or other graphic organizers to help with organization.

My pedagogical knowledge is the way that I'm going to teach this lesson. I could just lecture. But instead, I'm going to do some activities that are hands on and use group work. I'm doing two different types of group work. One is ability based groups. Be careful not to use this too often in your classroom.

So for the ability based groups, I'm going to pair groups together based on ability and level to text. That just means they're all going to be reading with the same goal in mind figuring out the outline for this particular essay, but the reading levels are going to vary depending on the strength of the different readers.

Next, I'm going to mix the groups up so that I have various levels working together on a group essay. This is the better type of group to use and you want to use it more often in your classroom. When you have students of mixed abilities together, it provides peer scaffolding and modeling and it helps those lower level students learn from the higher level students just even by watching them.

Next, I want to have a clear rubric for students that highlight the objectives and I want to base my feedback off of that. Then, I move on to technological knowledge. I know that I want to use word processors for typing, but I want to do this group paper so I want to use an online live editing tool like Google Docs.

I also want to introduce my students to resources online, such as an online citation generator and an online plagiarism checker. We're also going to use the computer to create outlines or other graphic organizers and nonlinguistic representations of our knowledge.

For TPK, which is where we have the intersection of technological and pedagogical knowledge, we are going to have online interactive rubrics so that the groups can look at the expectations of the teacher and have access to them at all times. The groups are also going to collaborate using a Google Doc. They might also use a message board that's on the class website to give feedback.

For TCK, which is the intersection of technological knowledge and content knowledge, we're going to have a variety of interactive and customizable graphic organizers that the students can use to help organize their thoughts. For PCK, which is the intersection of pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge, we're going to have groups work together on some of the content that the teacher is presenting, such as we're writing a thesis or the organization of a paper.

And we're going to make sure that the feedback is based on the content that is studied in that particular unit. Then in the center, we have the intersection of all of the knowledge areas and this is where TPACK occurs. What this intersection of TPACK would look like in action with this lesson is that students would work collaboratively and online to give feedback to one another based on the rubric.

Another example is students work online and collaboratively to customize a graphic organizer for their group paper based on teacher feedback. So why is TPACK useful? Well, it injects intentionality into what we're doing and it purposefully helps us incorporate technology, but it helps us incorporate it in a meaningful way not just using technology for technology's sake.

It helps us evaluate where the three knowledges intersect because they don't each exist in a little vacuum. They're always intersecting and that is what leads to really great teaching and it helps us create 21st century lesson plans for 21st century students. Let's take a minute to reflect.

What are some pros and cons you can foresee if you incorporate TPACK into your classroom? Today, we learned about how we can use TPACK when lesson planning and why TPACK is a useful framework for lesson planning. Now, it's your turn to apply what you've learned in this video.

The additional resources section will be super helpful. This section is designed to help you discover useful ways to apply what you've learned here. Each link includes a brief description so you can easily target the resources you want. Thank you for joining me and happy teaching.