Nov
20
Written by:
Instructional Technology
11/20/2009 3:02 PM
About a year ago, I was part of a group, the Technology Leader’s Forum, who was challenged to stop talking about the stuff of 21st century education, and to start describing what the learning looks like. Since then, I’ve discovered the TPaCk framework and its emphasis on the alignment of technology, pedagogy, and curriculum. This framework has been profound in changing my thinking, and provides a glimpse of what a 21st century classroom should look like. Now, I pay much closer attention to the false positives that technology in the classroom can produce. A classroom equipped with an interactive whiteboard is not suddenly a 21st century learning space if students never demonstrate their learning with it. A teacher who uses laptops/netbooks hasn’t de facto differentiated his lesson plans. And a student wiki is not necessarily an example of an essential learning, although the content in it could be.
About a year ago, I was part of a group, the Technology Leader’s Forum, who was challenged to stop talking about the stuff of 21st century education, and to start describing what the learning looks like. Since then, I’ve discovered the TPaCk framework and its emphasis on the alignment of technology, pedagogy, and curriculum. This framework has been profound in changing my thinking, and provides a glimpse of what a 21st century classroom should look like. Now, I pay much closer attention to the false positives that technology in the classroom can produce. A classroom equipped with an interactive whiteboard is not suddenly a 21st century learning space if students never demonstrate their learning with it. A teacher who uses laptops/netbooks hasn’t de facto differentiated his lesson plans. And a student wiki is not necessarily an example of an essential learning, although the content in it could be.
Ok then, so what does a classroom in which these three domains, technology, pedagogy, and curriculum, come together look like?
I plan to challenge myself by painting five pictures over the next couple of months of what the nexus of the TPaCK model looks like in public education. For balance and perspective, I’ll choose different content areas and grade levels. Regardless, it should be clear that the interconnection of the TPaCK domain, and by extension, student achievement, is the goal of the lesson.
Class #1. High School Social Studies, American History II, Sophomores.
Using the LPS Curriculum Guide as a starting point, our hero has decided that the learner objectives of:
- Gather, analyze, and reconcile historical information, including contradictory
data,
- Analyze and categorize the relationship between economic factors and social and political policies as they influence historical events,
- Use both chronological order and the duration of events to detect and analyze patterns of historical continuity and change
will be the focal points in the World War II unit. His class begins with students filing past the teacher, who greets them all by name. Students glance to the whiteboard and see that a “netbooks out” note is penned in. They grab their assigned computer and boot up while waiting for the bell. The teacher fires up his projector, and there, on the whiteboard, is a TinyUrl pointing to their day’s reading assessment. The teacher uses a Google Form to pose a series of questions from last night’s reading. The questions cover a range of question types, from recall questions to sequencing of events, allowing students to show their comprehension. It takes just a couple of minutes for the kids to respond to the questions, especially the multiple choice ones. Students know that this is a formative assessment, and will be used by the teacher for grouping and re-teaching purposes. The last question in the form is an open ended response designed to be a quick write/ writing to learn opportunity. This teacher has previously used clickers, and believes that while they are effective, they are too limited in the range of responses available to the students. Besides, he’d prefer to use fewer pieces of hardware, and the netbook computers will be in use the rest of the period.
Next, he breaks the kids into groups to continue their projects. One group of kids is analyzing the speeches made by world leaders for rhetorical elements. They are doing this by getting .mp3’s from various sites , downloading them into a sound editing program like Audacity, and providing analysis and commentary within the speech itself. The final products, if they are good enough, will be posted to the class wiki. Another group of kids is getting historical newspaper headlines and articles from June 1944 and comparing the coverage in them of D-Day. As needed, kids are translating the articles from French, German and Russian using Google Translate. They quickly note the difference in the amount, accuracy, and tone of the event’s coverage, sparking debate, analysis, and hypothesis. They capture their notes in an EtherPad , and must come to a consensus on their notes before the end of the period.
Other students are writing first person diary entries of key world leaders, referencing textual support from their class materials, primary resources from academic databases, and their textbook. They use a writer’s workshop model in moving toward publication on the class wiki.
The final group of students has taken over the teacher’s projector and is proposing alternative landing sites for the D-Day invasion. To punctuate their theories, students consult Google Earth, tide charts and moon phases from Wolfram Alpha, and historical maps. They gather the Google Earth image projected on the dry erase board, and like high school football coaches, draw arrows, plot movements, and project victories. These students are making .kmz files of their proposed battle plans, and supporting their theories with links, citations, and textual references. Files are posted to the wiki for review and feedback.
The teacher? He’s circling the room, having individual conversations with students on the results of the formative assessment. He banters with kids, asking clarifying questions to groups and providing feedback on their progress to date. With a few minutes to go in the period, he asks the students to consult their project rubric and complete an online exit slip in the form of an email to him, analyzing progress to the learning goal. These, in conjunction with the formative assessment, he’ll use to revise tomorrow’s lesson. With a minute to go, kids log out, power their machines down, and return them to the cart. There is a clear sense to the kids that the period went by too quickly, and students discuss how they’ll get on the wiki tonight to develop their work. One remembers that he has a great grandfather who was in World War Two, maybe he’ll call him tonight about Skyping into the class….