Week 9: Lesson Planning & Digital Technologies

Week 9 Question.

Where do you think you are situated in the TPACK diagram? Which areas do you need to be building on?

Response.

Tondeur et al., (2017) advise that there are several factors influencing whether or not new teachers integrated digital technologies into their classroom (pp.158-159).  These include but are not limited to; poor ICT infrastructure; a conventional school culture; the quality of technology training pre-service teachers receives (Tondeur et al., 2017, p. 159).  Specifically, pre-service teacher training is not focusing on how technology intersects with curriculum knowledge and pedagogy, the concept known as Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge or TPACK (Tondeur et al., 2017, p.159).  As Roblyer and Doering (2014) noted technology is changing the way we do things so rapidly, in contrast slow way governments move, it is impossible for teachers to know what students will require in the future, technologically speaking (p. 63).  They therefore concentrate as on requiring students to problem solve, utilising digital technology as a way to incorporate it into their practice (pp. 63-64).  

I feel only moderately prepared for integrating meaningful technology use into my practice, as I have found it difficult to find the time to explore the relevant technologies while studying, as well as not having the financial means to pay for them.  Having said that, I have not yet been in a classroom and will only do so later this year.  I will be interested to see how teachers navigate this area, especially since it is one of the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority (ACARA, 2017) general capabilities (2025) and should be embedded into school curriculums.

e-portfolio task  Lesson plan

I do not have a lesson plan readily available as I have not yet done my practicum.   I can only utilise a plan from my curriculum method subject for history.  The topic for this lesson was the Australian civil rights movement.  It already utilises a lot of digital technology in the form of playing a song, showing a video to students, and asking students to research specific events online.  To engage students from the start of the lesson I would show the song with the video on the whiteboard using Youtube with the subtitles on so they could see the words.  Apart from that I believe this lesson is utilising the TIP model quite well.  As I have said, history can utilises digital technology well, providing students can understand the difference between a good and bad source.