Reflections!!

                        Well, when I first joined this course, I thought well now we will be starting to learn about this fantastic model of TPACK right away! In the first lecture, I slowly realized that we are first going to inspect and understand each element of the title of this course ' Pedagogies for flexible learning supported by technology'. The title did seem to intrigue me at first. I knew something about pedagogy and technology, but I was wondering about what is flexible learning! As I started reading articles about flexibility, pedagogy and technology and writing it on my blog, slowly they started to make sense, just like a jigsaw puzzle. The initial anxiety and excitement of starting a blog and feeling a little lost seems to now slowly give way to understanding about this course.                          

                        Few things that struck me like an aha! moment are: flexibility is not just about distance learning..anything which gives the decisions regarding learning in the hands of the learner is flexible learning. for eg: the students can choose how they would want to express what they have learnt or what should be the criteria of assessment or what to learn when and how. And as you unfold this further, the implications for learner, teacher and the course organizer can be better understood.                                                 The second one was the difference between the pedagogical approach and delivery method. I had read about blended learning and posted an article on blogging as a form of blended approach. Blended approach is a instruction delivery method where there is a blend of a web based and face to face interaction. Its not like problem based or inquiry based method of learning. A significant difference!  In the technology class, i realized how narrowly i was perceiving technology as digibord, computers and iphones. But during the exercise i saw that cameras, GPS, on-line games etc. are all technologies that can be creatively integrated in making learning fun and meaningful!                                                 So here we have pedagogies that can make learning flexible and fun if used with appropriate technology. Sound simple, but i guess its not as simple to practice..like most simple things in life:) I keep wondering though how would they actually translate into practice, in a real life situation. There can be so many permutations and combinations of these three and other factors like context, teacher capacities, school polices, resource availability would be influential too! Hope to learn about these in coming days!

Reflection about using and teaching TPACK

This will be my last blog for the course of Flexible Learning. In this blog, I reflect on the final assignment, designing a professional development course for teachers in which they’ll learn to work with TPACK. And, of course, we had to use TPACK in our own design process... In this blog, I will reflect on that two points, the design process and the working with TPACK.
Design process
We had to design a programm in groups of four students. The four of us all wanted to design a professional development programm, so that was the base on which we choosed to work together. And I have to say it was a good decission. I’ve never worked in a group so easy and efficient (I hope our grade will reflect this feeling...).
Context
So we had to design a course for teachers in which they’ll learn to work with TPACK. And we wanted to use the TPACK model by designing this. So, the first thing we had to do was choosing a more detailed context. Who will be the participants, what are they allready knowing, how long will the programm take, etc. This was discussed very quickly, we all wanted to design something for teachers of different primary schools with different knowledges and the programm will take place in a couple of months.
T, P and C
Then we went to the P, the C and the T. The content was allready given, teaching the teachers TPACK. And that was all we wanted. Stimulate the teachers to use TPACK for integrate technology in their lessons. Then we thought of the pedagogy. We thought that collaborative learning will be a good way to learn the use of TPACK in combination with some lectures and expert-guidance. But the most important is the interactivity of the teachers. So we thought the working in teacher teams would serve this the most. Thereby, we came almost autimatically in the TPK. How can you make teacher teams work when there are teachers from different schools? Here the online working with eachother was mentioned. New technologies as Skype or chat in an online learning environment was the best way to support this.
I will not repeate exactly what we described in our paper, so I won’t go systematically across all the elements of TPACK. But what I told in this blog illustrated the way we used TPACK. It all was going very natural. There were no difficulties by a forced way of thinking of: ooh, what will be the TCK, or how do we reach the PCK? By thinking of the elements T, P and C, the integration came with it. To start with the design, the model helped us to think about T, P and C, and thereby, the rest wasn’t that difficult anymore.
Implementation in programm
So, the elements of the programm were clear in the first meeting. But how do we do this in practice? We discussed that, and very soon we came with a global planning of the programm. Everyone was agreeing with starting with some theoretical information and examples, and than working in teacher teams with guidance of the expert. After a couple of weeks of trying TPACK, another, shorter day will appear with sharing experiences with the other groups. There were no great discussions in our group. Everyone came with ideas, and we could use the most of that ideas in our programm. So, after that meeting, our programm was globally set up. We’ve token some time to think further, and we used technology to discuss later that week. We had a chat-meeting to experience what we wanted to let the teachers do. At the end of that meeting, we agreed that contact eachother by chat is a possibility that can be handy, but voice-to-voice contact would be more effective. Because we experienced that by chatting, everyone can type something at the same time, with the result that you can type something when another is typing the same, or allready about a whole different subject. Conversation isn’t as effective as it could be in that way. So, the teachers are advised to use Skype instead of chat...
But after that chat-session, our plans were clear. We could divide the tasks for working things further out, and have contact by mail. And that went out very well! I wanted to be critical, but it wasn’t necessary! In no time, our report was on paper, and I was happy with what we’ve made. We’ve put in some good ideas (having enough coffeebreaks to support informal learning) and I think that teachers can integrate TPACK with our programm quit well.
Working with TPACK
Some short words about working with TPACK because I allready talked about this in the former of this blog.
As I mentioned before, I experienced that working with TPACK made us effectively think about the integrated elements of the course. Thinking of TPACK, I was aware of the relations between the T, C and P and of the content of the elements on their own. By using TPACK, you really can integrate technology with pedagogy and content.
I also thinks it’s good to work with TPACK by yourself before you say to others that they have to use it. In the last weeks, we’ve thought about TPACK, and also this time, we had to design a development programm for teachers working with TPACK. But now, we had to work with TPACK by ourself. Because of this, I could experience what it is to work with it. And I found it a handy model. Now, by having used it once by myself, I can more easily tell to others why they should use it also (because it is a complete model, you can use it to really integrate content to pedagogy to technology and in reverse... in stead of just add it on). And I think I will use it more often when I have to design a lesson or programm.  I believe this is really a good model to use for designing lessons and for integrating technology. This because it is a complete model and you are forced to think explicity about the three elements and their relations. Further, by using TPACK, you have to be flexible in your thinking and by this, you can use new ways of teaching something in a way that it will be more effective than you did in the past. And that will help students to learn more effective, efficient and with more satisfaction!
Conclude

Reflection about using and teaching TPACK

To conclude, I think that using TPACK to design a course in which TPACK will be learned was a very nice way to complete this course of Pedagies for Flexible learning using Technology. With this case, we had to use our newgotten knowledge and in the same time we experienced TPACK by ourselfs.  I’ve learned a lot about flexibility, technology and TPACK in this way, and I liked it very much also! And I think that the awareness which the TPACK-model gives you of the integration of pedagogy, content and technology all in a given context is a great effort of this model in designing lessons!