TPCK Chapter 6 Reflections

Margaret Nerney
EDU 583- Cohort 1
Chapter 6: Toward democracy: Social studies and TPCK
Due: March 11, 2009

Although this section focused on the social studies content area, I found it considerably applicable to my own English content area. Many of the ten pedagogical actions fit naturally in the English classroom. I made great connections, found some helpful resources, and gained a new appreciation for my colleagues in the social studies arena
Right away I could relate to the difficulty of finding specific lessons or resources online due to the unstructured quality of my own content area. There are so many disciplines within the English content area that it does take time and scrutiny to find those that are most appropriate to your aims and goals. I did, however, question how this would be unique to any content area. Isn’t that the nature of the beast? Technology offers us so much more than we have ever had before in exchange for time and effort in discovering it.
I can certainly appreciate the idea that technology requires new literacy skills. I love how this chapter referenced the blurring of roles of reader and writer through the advent of hypertext and hypermedia. Further explained, the chapter highlighted the new level of interaction now available to the reader. The writer offers paths that lead the reader astray, but only at the reader’s wishes. You are allowed to make your own experience from a text through the materials relevance and importance to you as a consumer of information. My AP Language and Composition students are often analyzing the organization of a piece. This new element confuses the intent. When viewing the rhetorical triangle, we have to view these new articles with the understanding that they won’t be read the same way or even intended the same way depending on the path that is chosen.
My students are also encouraged to view resources with a critical eye. I can see the importance of being able to discern fact from fiction and maneuver the cornucopia of information that technology grants access to. However, I wonder which specific skills I should be teaching them. As technology tends to change rapidly and skills are always evolving, it seems that we, the educators, are faced with an impossible task. I have heard it mentioned in various educational readings that the teacher should act as expert and cull the necessary information for the students. What is that teaching them? I do see the need for better technology based research skills, and I do my best to provide that training, but I question the long-term use of those skills. Even I, a relatively young teacher, must constantly learn new ways and adapt to new databases or search engines.
I agree with the chapter’s main point, that it is important to communicate and connect in a democracy, which is why I too try to work with my students to be effective communicators with the aid of technology in English class. I encourage my students to create the authentic intellectual work that was so praised in this chapter and even try to model it myself. Only this week, I received a box with enough posters and bookmarks for every kid in the middle school and five Fablehaven T-shirts because of technological communications. The local bookstore owner asked me to send him some digital images and a write up about the work my students had been doing in my classroom with the novel Fablehaven. As a result, I was put in touch with the book’s promoter and offered some free promotional materials for my student’s as a reward for their hard work. I would not have been able to do this on my own. It was the use of my social network and supplementary technology that earned me this great new opportunity. As was suggested, I am also trying to get wikis going in my middle school. I am starting with the 6th grader’s Fablehaven book trailer. We are going to try to start a blog about he book and get feedback on the trailer through our district only blog. Then I hope to move to a more widely viewed wiki with them next year during my integrated Wabanaki unit. I understand that it can’t all happen over night, but I feel I am heading down the right road on this technological super highway.
Finally, I walked away with some great resources. I made note of some of the cross-cultural communication supports such as iEarn, KidLink, and ThinkQuest. I also intend to check out the student published resources that the chapter highlighted, including the Cherokee Digital History Project, which might aid in the improvement of my integrated Wabanaki unit.
Overall, I have some new resources to explore and some new concepts to ponder, but most importantly, I have a newfound respect for the magnitude of content that the social studies teachers are suppose to explore. It is true that much of what they must cover centers on democracy, but the content itself winds in and out of every other content area. So, my hat is off to my colleagues in the social studies area.