Pre-Service+Teachers

=Abstract= Chapter 11 focuses on[| developing TPCK skills] and knowledge in preservice teachers. The chapter begins with the quote “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow.” from John Dewey. Applied to this chapter, this quote outlines the concept that the learning environment of most classrooms has changed and will continue to change with the introduction and adoption of new technologies, and how to successfully integrate these technologies needs to be a focus of preservice teacher training. It is no longer enough for teachers to know simply content knowledge, or even content and pedagogical content knowledge, but rather teachers must be adept at using technological pedagogical content knowledge in ways that enhance their classrooms and improve learning. The chapter emphasizes that there is no particular technology that teachers need to know, but rather that they should be prepared to “rethink, unlearn and relearn, change, revise, and adapt.” Chapter 11 recommends that these skills be developed through existing methods course, and be integrated into the process of designing lessons. The chapter outlines several [|techniques] for developing these skills for preservice teachers, but ultimately these teachers need to become strategic thinkers, capable of planning organizing, critiquing, and abstracting in ways that will allow them to implement current and future technologies in beneficial ways in their classrooms.

=**Synthesis**= //Similar thoughts...// 1. Our undergraduate students today have grown up during a time when technology is at their fingertips and they are already very [|familiar] with how to use technology.

2. Consequently, pre-service training needs to change it's focus from how to [|use]the technology tool to how to integrate that tool successfully into the classroom.

3. In order to successfully train preservice teachers in technology, they must [|understand] and have experience with the technology itself AND the pedagogical knowledge of how to use that technology in the classroom.

4. When educating preservice teachers on how to use technology it is important that they understand that pedagogical knowledge as well as knowledge of student diversity all has an affect on[| how] students learn with technology.

5. Technology education for preservice teachers can be best taught by [|integrating] it into methods courses. Undergraduate programs must not only "talk the talk, but also walk the walk."

6. Some of the best knowledge that teachers can gain on how to use technology in the classroom does not come during their undergraduate work, but from other [|colleagues]that they work with.

7. Teachers must be [|strategic]with how the use technology in their classrooms.

Donald Ferrara EDU – 583 November 22, 2012

** TPCK Chapter 11 **

There is no question I am one of those who came out of college without the proper training in technology. All that was required of me was to take one course in technology, and in that course I was not rained to teach anything about technology, just be able to create a product using it. This chapter talks about how important it is to possess the ability to teach students how to use technology to learn more and in a easier and deeper way. Simply making students create PowerPoint, or do web quests is not teaching them how, it just takes the place of one way of showing knowledge. I feel very fortunate to have had great teachers of technology in the schools where I have taught and worked as an administrator. I have learned a tremendous amount of the teaching techniques surrounding the use of technology both as an instructional tool, and a learning tool for my students. The ways I have been able to help students show me what they know through technology has greatly improved the success of my teaching and my students’ achievements. I fully believe there needs to be a more concerted effort to teach teachers how to not only use technology in the classroom, but instruct their students in the proper, safe, and meaningful ways they can use technology to enhance their own learning and understanding of concepts. In this way students can also more fully show the deep understanding they have gained through the technology lessons they have learned. Everyone comes out in a better position.

=**Jason L.**=

Part III: Preservice Training

Summary

Chapter 11 provides advice on how to develop a methods course (and other training) for pre-service teachers. Much of what one would expect is there, from the importance of scaffolding to collaborative processes for professional development. The added caveat is that at all phases, we need to challenge new teachers to think about how to prepare students to be comfortable with advanced technology and the culture/environment that comes with it. While remaining culturally sensitive and avoiding assumptions, we never the less need to strive to prepare our students for a very digital reality (or as the book says, "tomorrow"). While dynamic strategic thinking is the goal, much of the journey looks familiar at this point in our course. The UbD paradigm is embraced, technology constantly used to solve/address wicked problems, and then the basics are emphasized. For example, one really learns by doing: "The preservice teachers learned about students through teaching in this electronically mediated environment." Furthermore, the grand conclusion is that reflection is a key factor as well.

Reflection

This chapter clearly informed the design and intent of EDU 583. My biggest frustration with the course work is thus perhaps by design, as strategic integrated thinking needs to be able to jump through a lot of hoops and respond to a lot of different contexts all at once. Our work, especially Stage 3, seems to demand that. We have to wiggle a way to fit everything for every learner and make it web 2.0 all at the same time. One some level, the Stage 3 work forced us to leave reality. On another level, I see your instructional intent to challenge us outside of the box and see how we react to about a million things coming at us at once - part of TPCK views the wicked problem of teaching in the first place.

=**Heather F.**=

As I read this chapter, I quickly realized that I fall into the "old" style of pre-service teacher education. Although I only graduated from college 6 years ago, my education only required one course for technology and it wasn't necessarily focused around pedagogy, but more around technological content knowledge. Most of what I've learned about technology are things I've gained from workshops or from colleagues. I think the book has a very valid point that it is not enough to just "know" something in order to teach it. You must know specific instructional strategies that really help your students learn it. My husband is a great example. He is a whiz at math, but he would in no way be equipped to teach it to someone else. The same goes for technology, you can be really knowledgeable about computers and programming, but if you don't know the strategies to teach it to students, then your knowledge is not effective. I have this concern often in my district. There are multiple technology integration specialists that are intended to be used in classrooms to teach students, but they do not have teaching certificates and therefore their instruction ends up being mostly ineffective. It seems to me that money would be better spent sending existing teachers to conferences or allotting more professional development time with technology. As I read the conclusion of the chapter, I found that much of what we expect teachers to do in their practice is what we want students to do each day with their learning: have the ability to rethink, unlearn, relearn, change, revise, adapt, and most importantly, **reflect** (225).

=Jessica W.=


 * TPCK Chapter 11 **
 * Guiding preservice teachers in developing TPCK **

In order for teachers to be prepared to teach today's students they need an "integrated knowledge base" (223). When I hear some of our leaders discuss that teachers don't need to major in education but need to be experts in their fields, I would argue that that is not necessarily true. In order to get students to learn the content, teachers need to be experts in their fields but they also need to experts in teaching pedagogy. Teachers must know their content, but just because a teacher knows the content doesn't mean the students will, teachers must be able to "translate the content in ways that students are able to grasp," (223). Unless they have some teaching pedagogy knowledge that may hard to do.

Teachers are expected to teach many more skills to students than they have ever been before. In order to prepare today's student for tomorrow's workforce a teacher must teach "prepare their students with the skills of a twenty-first century literate citizen" (225). Teachers must also be prepared to "rethink, unlearn and relearn, change, revise, and adapt" (225) if they are going to teach in this diverse learning environment where they will integrate technology, with content and pedagogical issues and concerns. I think that the quote from the book sums this up perfectly; "To teach is to learn"(Chinese Proverb, 227). This is especially true when it comes to technology. In my classroom, I learn a lot from my students and with my students when it comes to integrating technology.

The chapter discussed ways in which to best prepare preservice teachers to teach in todays complex learning environment and I thought that many of the suggestions would be appropriate. For instance, "Having preservice teachers conduct observational case studies is a useful strategy that helps them examine and learn about both students and teachers" (Good & Brophy, 2003). I remember in my student teaching there was a lot of observations that had to be done but incorporating action research and case studies into this type of situation would of probably been more useful and meaningful.

Preservice teachers need to be prepared to develop the "strategic thinking involved in TPCK - the thinking that involves planning, organizing, critiquing, and abstracting for specific content, specific student needs, and specific classroom situations"(248). Therefore, in todays complex teaching environment, teachers must be MUCH more then just experts in their content area.

 // Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) for Educators //** Chapter 11 Reflection **
 * Tanya N.**

The focus of Chapter 11 is all about providing pre-service teachers with the proper knowledge that they need to be successful in their professional future. They discussed how the expectation of what teachers are to know has been redefined from knowing only the content that you are going to teach, to knowing the content, along with many other features that are essential to student learning. Things like pedagogical knowledge, student diversity, and technology all have an affect on student learning and it is important that preservice teachers get exposed to how to handle that as much as possible throughout the methods courses.

In a traditional undergraduate system, pre-service teachers are exposed to how to teach the content specific to the course. As we have evolved into a technology based world, what it means to teach these content areas has changed. Teaching literacy no longer means that you teach your children to read and write. It also means that they are aware of digital media and how to analyze those resources to get the information that they need.

When designing a methods course and the information that your pre-service teachers are going to be exposed to, college level professors need to now consider how technology changes the content that they are delivering. The more experience that these pre-service teachers get in actually seeing the content being delivered in technology-based manners, the more effective they will be in implementing it in to their own pedagogy. Pre-service teachers also need experience working and studying in real-life classrooms so that they can work to develop skills necessary for teaching in the 21st century.

Teaching and learning is not just about content but how to teach that content and translate it in a way that students can grasp and also need to help guide students with appropriate technologies. TPCK is more than multiple domains of knowledge and skills but how we think them. We need to be asking declarative, procedural, schematic and strategic questions to solve problems. “How a person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which a person learns, becomes a fundamental part of what is learned.” Thus it becomes a challenge for teachers who were schooled in the old ways of teaching and learning. Teachers need to be strategic thinkers in their planning and design so they understand the diversity of students and their learning needs. They need to be strategic in their choices of technologies and classroom management. Methods courses need to integrate this new way of thinking and give teachers the opportunity to develop their understanding of these new methods. Sensitivity to cultural difference provides avenues to expand literacy by showing students different ways of understanding the world. An understanding of how digital natives access information and use technologies is also important for lesson plans and meeting various differences. In backward designing a unit, teachers learn how to think critically about their plans. It allows them to deconstruct their goals and clarify their objectives. It allows teachers to scaffold and make choices about the affordances and constraints of the technologies and strategies that they integrate. Study groups help teachers get peer feedback. Teachers also need to align their assessments and reflect continually as they experience and think and design. To be a transformative teacher includes constant reflection, creation, construction, self-criticism, sensitivity, expanding literacies and so on but schools themselves do not provide adequate support to nurture and support this metamorphic process. Not just in time but structurally schools need to metamorphize to meet the needs of 21st century teaching and learning.
 * Maryam Emami**
 * Guiding preservice teachers in developing TPCK**


 * Eleni Margaronis **
 * Guiding pre-service teachers in developing TPCK **
 * TPCK Chapter 11 Review **

Reading the first page of this chapter I remembered experiences from school where teachers had such vast knowledge of a subject but were only able to teach one way, lecturing from memory. A person can know everything there is to know about science, math, history, art, etc, but to understand and know how to teach in addition to content knowledge is what makes them a teacher. I feel there is a lot of importance in knowing and understanding a subject well, and this chapter highlights that importance stating that knowing the content well allows teachers to grasp the concept in multiple ways in order to support the student in learning. However, teachers are not all knowing and are learning as the students learn, so emphasizing pedagogy is more critical to having good teachers than having people who are masters of a subject. This statement of course is very general and I do not feel it applies to all levels of education, but in at least the k-8 teaching levels, I feel teaching skills should be focused on in greater ways. To be able to teach students how to learn and the process involved can be much more meaningful and long term when taught combined with foundational knowledge of the subject. The other important aspect of being a teacher is having the desire and ability to learn, so when a question arises in the subject area you are teaching, you are able to demonstrate lifelong learning for your students and join them in the process. This is also important to show students that learning never ends and that it is a constant process for all.

When it comes to technology education for teachers, technology is its own beast. Pre-service teachers (and in-service teachers) need to be given the opportunity to experience working with technology that supports education. I feel that the two colleges I have attended for teaching course (UMF and WWU), have done a very thorough job in preparing me to integrate technology easily into the classroom by building the curriculum with technology activities and assignments.

It was interesting that this chapter highlighted the importance more than the other chapters of teaching to the individual students needs, but still this book did not prioritize integrating chapters on ELL or Special Education…

Karl Matulis ** TPCK Chapter 11: Guiding Preservice Teachers in TPCK **

Chapter 11 deals with teacher education, and how to effectively integrate technology education into preservice teacher education programs. The chapter suggests that this could be done in an integrated way, within existing methods courses. Methods courses already involve helping teachers learn to plan lessons, so integrating the additional step of planning for technology would be natural. These courses would also need to plan on significant time for reflection on how teachers are using these technologies.

Overall, I felt the chapter was a little behind the times. I think that most preservice teachers have a strong grasp of what educational technology is out there, and many of them have had personal experience with that technology from the students perspective. There are few college students these days that don’t carry around a smartphone and a laptop with them to every class, and it is likely their experience with current technology is close to being equal to that of the professors. As a result, I think that less time needs to be spent exposing preservice teachers to technology, and more time spend on the pedagogical aspects of using the technology. Getting teachers to try new technology and learn from these experiences, to reflect on the positives and negatives and ways to improve the experience, and to ultimately make an informed decisions about when, where, and how they will use that technology in the classroom should be the ultimate goal of these programs.