Ped Tech 5220 Activity

By completing this online discussion, students should be able to:

  • apply your understanding of TPACK, SAMR and your current experiences with wise integration to analyzing a particular lesson
  • Discuss with you peers how to characterize this case of technology integration.

Where have you gone, Ms Robson? (and not Robinson, though she gets that ALL the time)

Ms. Robson teaches at a “laptop” magnet middle school.  All her 6th grade students come to class with laptops that they keep with them all day and can take home. Ms Robson has decided that her students should document the history of the local area surrounding their school.  The student learning outcomes include: knowledge of historical documentation; community awareness; interviewing skills; and 21st century communication (reading/writing online) skills. So she has created a lesson designed to obtain an “oral history” of their area.

Each student has reviewed online biographies of community volunteers and officials (elected officials, business owners, local news reporters, school officials) and selected a person to interview (including the mayor, the local historical society chair, the Chamber of Commerce president, and an elderly couple that has lived all their lives right next door to the school).

Ms. Robson has asked her students to draft interview questions using MS Word, exchange them for peer review with tracked changes with revisions and comments, until she approved each student’s final copies. Final consensus is created by working on the smart board to create the final interview questions.

Ms. Robson asks students to digitally record their interviews so students can edit audio clips using iMovie into Google slide presentations.

Ms. Robson has scheduled a day for students to present their work and have it broadcast on public access cable for the community to view, with a compilation published on the class website and an associated podcast.

Ms. Robson has arranged for their “sister school” in China to complete the same project and exchange presentations using iSight webcams and classroom projection. Prior projects of this sort have been completed with the sister school and the students have done videoconferencing with their sister classroom once before this project began.

Activity Guide:

This module’s activity is the analysis and discussion of Ms Robson’s lesson. Apply the ideas from the Resources section to Ms Robson’s lesson… is it learner-centered, engaging like video games, taking advantage of social networking, addressing the digital divide? How might the technologies chosen be supplemented or replaced with those in the spirit of TPACK or the lesson be better adapted with technology as described by the SAMR framework? Is personalized learning going to push us further toward learner-centered principles?

Here are some addition questions to help guide your analysis (note, no one personal needs to answer all of there, but our discussion should get to most of this):

  • Is Ms. Robson’s lesson representative of novice, beginner, proficient or advanced example of a technology-based “learning environment” from your understanding of what is “good pedagogy.”
  • Could the money be spent better than on technology in this classroom to further the education of the students? 
  • How might these same technologies support core practices or habits of mind?
  • Is this application saving the teacher time and making her more productive or is it adding to the complexity of teaching and learning?
  • In this instance of technology integration enhancing the teacher’s domain understanding or pedagogical skill?
  • Is there scientific proof that technology is “working” in this instance?
  • Is technology in this instance preventing students from having a more authentic real-world (vs virtual world) experience?
  • In this instance, is there a danger that students might become addicted to media and less social in real life? 
  • Is there an ethical, legal, or social concern with using technology in this instance? 

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