Response to TPACK

Today I will be responding to a reading I was assigned regarding technological, pedagogical, and contend knowledge (TPACK).  

     In a world where my generation is so completely immersed in technology that we are even referred to by Clarke in his article as "digital natives," almost every aspect of life is different than how it used to be.  In the reading Clark refers to digital technology as having "flattened the world," making obstacles such as mountains and oceans much less constraining with a new ability to communicate from very far away.  As a digital native, this is no news to me.   

     As technology is being integrated into our schools, it is, for better or worse, changing the way we are taught and the way we will learn.  Much of the educational technology mentioned in the reading is also very familiar to me.  But there was one example that Clarke used, the Google Lit Trips Project, which totally blew my mind.  I had never thought about taking that kind of technology (google earth) and turn it into a virtual field trip.  The person who originally thought of this idea took a technology and made it, through innovation and uncanny knowledge of teaching, into an educational tool the likes of which the world had never known.  I would not have been able to do that as a music educator; I would never have thought of it.  Which leads me to my next point.  

     I was unsurprised to find in our reading that, overall, music educators used very little specialized music-relevant technology in their curriculums, so much as standard educational technology.  The technology they utilized was mainly for administrative purposes and personal use.  Because of a lack of standardized structure, it makes it very challenging for someone who is not naturally intuitive to try and integrate technology in their teaching.  I too am in this category (the majority) of educators.  It is for us that TPACK was developed and I am positive that I will be implementing TPACK in my teaching curriculum.  

     Since this is a reaction, and not a summary, I will try my best to state TPACK in my own understanding and not how it was defined.  This concept was developed so that those educators with a technological understanding [technological knowledge], a confident knowledge of the content of their field and in their curriculum [content knowledge], and a well-developed familiarity with the ways in which it is taught, learned, and retained [pedagogical knowledge], can productively integrate technology into their class without losing clarity and precision or demotivating anyone or making it more challenging for kids.  Basically, TPACK is the knowledge needed for a seasoned music educator to teach their same class more conveniently with the use of certain technologies without losing any aspect of the educational experience.  

     This was an appropriate and useful reading to prepare us for this semesters' upcoming hardships.  Clark spelled out to us all that we would have to be "adaptively intelligent" in order to built our TPACK, relinquishing "cherished beliefs and [educational] practices that "need to be changed."  This idea is what I have taken the most strongly from our reading.  I am going to do my best, throughout this semester, to remain adaptively intelligent, incorporating all new technologies as best I can into my philosophy and methods of teaching.