Equity and Technology - the impact of thoughtful selection.

It was a wild and humbling ride this week!

With schedule changes, additional duties added and a pop-up of outside events I perused my online coursework to find out that we were learning about TPACK. Excellent, I thought! Something I am familiar with for a week that is already busy, should be a lighter load then. How wrong I was.

While I was familiar with Mishra and Koehler's (2006) TPACK framework, their article Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge was a longer more thorough read than I had given time for. Combined with Winner’s (1980) article Do artifacts have politics? It made for a very interesting and thought-provoking read, even if it was more time-consuming than I had planned for.

This “Interesting eats” video (Cooking with TPACK) helped me to think more deeply about how TPCK can be fluid in helping us as teachers ensure that technology in the classroom supports learning for our students. For this task we were asked to have someone else choose a plate, bowl and cooking utensil with no other information as to their purpose. Then we had to blindly choose a product to create... mine was a fruit salad. A thought provoking task indeed.

I think I was left with more questions than I started with:

• How can I be sure to align my technology selection with the appropriate pedagogical approach for my content?

• Winners (1980) discussed the implicit politics of technology. How can I be sure to be reducing bias and marginalization in my classroom. Are my selections telling a story I don’t intend or feeding forward a bias I don’t want?

• This Blooms taxonomy pyramid has organized some digital technologies, will this be a useful approach in helping support my technology selection and implementation? 

How do you feel about implementing technology into your classroom?

Change Image

• Overwhelmed - don't know where to start.
• Like a pro - crushing it!
• Working on it...
• Not sure :(

Note. Image generated using Canva. The image was generated in response to this prompt: 'Create an image of a lady with medium length blonde hair in a thinking pose'. 

References

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.

Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus, 109(1), 121-136.

Bullock Elicia. (2024, Sept 15). Cooking with TPACK [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6qb5dFqDjo

Washburn, Brittany (2023, April 20). Apps and Online Tools That Help Kids Master Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy. Technology Teaching resources with Brittany Washburn. https://brittanywashburn.com/2020/09/apps-and-online-tools-that-help-kids/?srsltid=AfmBOopmjEwGR0KSpOuf7ABxWWEkwhzpn4zVH9P4n7Bi9c0qmtx6B1VE