TPCK Chapter 1 Reflections

Margaret Nerney
EDU 583- Cohort 1
Chapter 1: Introducing TPCK
Due: January 21, 2009

‘Technology integration’ has been at the forefront of my district’s professional learning goals at least since I was hired in 2004. It is the buzz phrase at all of our professional learning days and an essential agenda item of every faculty meeting. I know that it must be a real problem somewhere, but I have never really seen great resistance in my district. It is never “somebody else’s job.” People seem to be fully aware that we live in a digital age with new and continuously changing demands. What I found interesting is the way that the book suggests the small ways in which faculty limit themselves or the technology by the idea of “functional fixedness.” I think that is the real issue in my world.
We try to categorize the new technology in the same ways that we departmentalize all other tools. We try to identify their function and put them in the right place. The smartboard quickly became the math department’s toy, while the digital video cameras were reserved for the humanities folks. Just as the white board was said to be limited in its use only by teachers, we started limiting or technologies by their use in one department. That is slowly falling by the wayside, but we are still trapped by those subconscious constraints.
My district’s attempt to integrate technology effectively makes me so proud. We have one-to-one laptops 5-12 with a cart of brand new macbooks K-4. Our district sports strong administrative support and a great technology department. At times, I worry that our district’s focus on technology has caused a technology overload. Some assignments and tasks that could be done more efficiently by a more traditional means are forced awkwardly into the digital age in the name of technology integration. That focus on the TPCK model is the struggle in our lives. How do we achieve that balance of content, pedagogy and technology without tipping in the name of integration?
So much of what the chapter mentioned hit home with me, especially the need to integrate technology not as a stagnant content but as a complex skill base. Our school’s focus on literacy needs has also forced the staff to look at the technology literacy, what the authors refer to as technology knowledge, that the students must have to be successful in post-secondary ventures. Each student must learn the ways in which to incorporate these new technologies into their daily lives effectively. Students must become savvy in the interpretation of the vast amounts of knowledge that wash over them on a daily basis through those technological advances. Technology has changed the way the world works. Most everything is connected and available at the click of a button. Ultimately, we are trying to prepare students for a world that hasn’t even been imagined yet.