TPACK- a New Form of Teaching in the 21st Century

Last week, the focus was on the SAMR model and why the SAMR model was so essential and necessary to the 21st century classroom and how it encouraged concept-based learning. This week, I want to talk about another important teaching model that highlights and captures the era we are living in today called TPACK.TPACK is very essential to all 21st century classrooms, as it uses and takes advantage of all the available resources out there in the world, and creates a model that all teachers should follow in order to be meaningful, purposeful, and powerful teachers in an engaging and student-centered classroom.

So, what exactly is TPACK? TPACK stands for technological pedagogical content knowledge and combines these three elements equally to produce an intentional and effective teaching strategy for 21st century teachers. Teachers must know and understand the content they teach, know how to teach this content, and know how to incorporate technology to support this content and these teaching practices. True and meaningful teaching occurs when a teacher uses all three aspects of TPACK: technological, pedagogical, and content.

Pedagogical and content knowledge were once the only two areas focused on by teachers. As long as teachers knew the content they taught and knew how to teach it, they were effective and purposeful teachers. However, in the 21st century this dynamic has changed due to the increase in technology, the wide availability of technology, and the many resources and opportunities that technology is now offering. We must make this shift and change in our teaching strategies and incorporate technology into our daily teaching for our benefit and for the students' benefit as well. Students in our world today constantly use technology and we must account for this by incorporating a variety of technological devices and sources.

I came across a very fascinating and thought-provoking blog that talks about the evolution in teaching strategies, in regards to TPACK. As mentioned above, content and pedagogical knowledge were the only two aspects in teaching before the 21st century. Then, at the start of the 21st century as technology became more rapid and available, we see a need for technology incorporation in the classrooms and a need for using technology to aid pedagogy. Today, things are just a bit different. With the wide, easily-assessable use of technology, we are seeing technology become part of pedagogy and seeing technology become seamless as it merges with pedagogy. As Meneghini states in the blog (link at bottom), "I will take one step further to say that technology is no longer the focus because pedagogy and technology are actually merging… More and more we see how fast changing technology is part of the world and how that impacts the ways people learn."

As we see technology becoming part of pedagogy, or in other words, seeing the way we teach being teaching through technology, it poses the question: what is the future of TPACK/ the teaching method? Meneghini suggests that: "...the supporting role of technology in learning will only grow and tend to becomes seamless." This means that technology will completely merge with pedagogy and pedagogy will be called "Pedagogy in the Digital World," creating a higher emphasis on pedagogy. Content is still in the picture, but it is not so highly focused on because content can be found and learned through the touch of a button with the empowerment of technology. Technology will become our teaching and learning in all aspects.

 

TPACK is truly a dominant and significant part of the 21st century classroom, as it requires teachers to equally use technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge in order to be meaningful, purposeful, and powerful teachers. TPACK and the SAMR model (mentioned last week) both embrace technology and use technology to its full potential, taking advantage of all the available sources technology has to offer. Technology is impacting how we teach or what strategies we use to teach the content. Truly, if we want to be successful and effective teachers, specifically concept-based social studies teachers, we will embrace and fully use the TPACK and SAMR model in our classrooms and teaching methods.

Here is the awesome blog! http://langwitches.org/blog/2013/12/10/is-technology-shoving-pedagogy-to-the-center-stage-tpack-reviewed/