Wow, I never would have been able to think of all of those things on my own… especially since about 85% of the technology presented in the chapters is new to me. Throughout the reading I highlighted quite a few methods I could make use of in teaching an athletic training curriculum. Games, like jeopardy, are great with athletic training students, as most are former athletes who are competitive at heart. Concept maps would be great to map out exercise physiology concepts or the injury response. Presentations with PowerPoint are always helpful as they provide students the opportunity to collect their thoughts and present professionally to their peers. The systems model would be great for exercise physiology and how the body’s systems change from normal when under stress. Model thinking with expert systems would be great to help students create a differential diagnosis for pathologies. The Pro/Desktop design will provide students with the opportunity to be creative and invent something to benefit daily life in the athletic training room. Sketch Up and architectural design programs can take the usually cut-and-dry, lecture based organization and administration class to a whole new level, allowing students to design their own athletic training room within a given budget. Video would be a great tool for students to watch themselves and self-evaluate their own skills. Creating an electronic portfolio can be a capstone or senior project for the students, compiling all of the projects they have completed. And finally, but certainly not least, clickers can be incorporated into classroom lecture to really keep the students interested and actively involved, while also providing me with feedback on how well they’re learning the material.
The same goes for Educause’s 7 things site. So many tools I could use to enhance a lecture that I had a ton on my potential list… collaborative editing, clickers, haptics, presentation tools, live question tool, lecture capture, zotero, Wii, multi touch interfaces… just to name a few. Preliminarily, I’m thinking that clickers and the Wii are at the top of my list, but that change as I spend more time exploring!
The Learning Activity Types Wiki was helpful to synthesize information and organize some of the technology into types of activities with which it would be most useful. Since there obviously wasn’t an “athletic training” wiki, I looked at the science information and still found many parts of it useful because the same concepts, learning information, simulations, quizzing, taking notes, etc. still apply.
It bothers me a little that learning has to be qualified as “meaningful”. My hope is that learning itself is meaningful and purposeful; so the fact that we have to clarify it as such can be disturbing. However, I also understand where Jonassen, Howland, Marra, and Crismond (2008) are coming from- meaningful in that the student must take an “active, constructive, intentional, authentic, and cooperative” (p. 2) role in his or her learning activities. By the student taking on a role in his or her learning, he or she becomes engaged and involved in the process, allowing learning to become meaningful in a variety of ways. To allow the students this opportunity, technology can be incorporated in the learning process in many ways, from using it to present information to the students, to provide them a means to express their knowledge, to partner with the students as a means of obtaining and knowledge.
Joyce, Weil, and Calhoun (2009) suggest many methods by which a teacher can make learning meaningful and useful to a student. Joyce et al (2009) discuss several methods, each with a different approach to creating learning communities and involving the student in the process. Some of those models include inquiry training, inductive thinking, jurisprudential model, and the group investigation model (Joyce et al., 2009). Throughout chapter two, various models of teaching are presented within the information-processing, social, personal, and behavioral families, which focus on enhancing a student’s desire to understand things through problem solving, creating a learning community, focusing on the individual, and self-correcting via a task and feedback, respectively (Joyce et al., 2009).
It is in the combination of these models and the concept of meaningful learning with technology that teachers can apply the TPACK concept in their classrooms. Each teacher can sift through the various models and methods to find the most effective means of combining pedagogy with the appropriate technology for the concept so that students can actively engage in the learning process to make it meaningful.
Joyce et al.’s (2009) third chapter enlightened me to many topics brought to the surface in educational research, like the rising percentage of women enrolled in college and its link to gender differences in elementary learning and the connection between those who graduate high school and their family income. It also reminded me of the types of research designs found most commonly in the literature including descriptive research and intervention studies and how the results have been applied in the schools. Chapters four and 19 started to pull together how different models and methods of teaching can be brought together in different styles, on the part of both the teacher and the student. Chapter 19 revisits the concept of the optimal mismatch, where growth in learning and learning in different environments can only occur in an uncomfortable environment where students are challenged to adapt and find new ways to deal with the situation.
A few items in this week’s readings made an impression on me as I began to process the information and put it all together…
The example given by Joyce et al (2009) in chapter one regarding the teacher who began the first day of class with an assignment is how I would like to begin my first class. I think it truly sets the tone of the classroom and defines your purpose through actions instead of words. I believe it shows the students that you are confident, competent, and challenging. I also fear it walks the fine line of intimidation, but I believe that can be managed by a pleasant and excited tone of voice and by taking time during the first assignment to personally meet each student and learn something about them, showing them you truly have an interest in them as a student and as an individual.
Next is to makie sure to include a variety of teaching models to accommodate many different learning styles. When one student learns best by visuals, the next by reading, by scenarios, by role playing, by problem solving, etc., you can easily keep yourself busy making your instruction varied and exciting. Not only by incorporating various models of teaching in your teaching style will you reach different types of learners, but you will also put each learner into at least one environment in which they experience discomfort. By doing so, you can create that optimal mismatch to challenge your students to grow in their learning capabilities and allow them to create new skills to deal with new challenges.
Joyce et al (2009) also write that each student will come into your classroom with his or her own experiences, emotions, motivations, and behaviors. Just like learning styles, these differences among students will influence the ways in which they learn. Again by incorporating various techniques and models of teaching into your personal style, you will be able to reach each student to help them make a valuable and meaningful connection to the content.
And finally, one of my goals when teaching will be to establish a productive learning community in my classroom. I’ve been in several classrooms over the years that turned into hostile or uncomfortable learning communities, for a variety of reasons, and in each of those classes, I felt as though I learned considerably less than I expected. Each day I was focused more on the distracting atmosphere of the community rather than the material I needed to learn. My goal in the future will be to employ models of teaching that foster positive community development where each student works together to help each other achieve common and individual goals so that each student has the ability to be both a student and a teacher. How exactly I will do that… I have no idea yet, but I’m sure experience, research, and advice will help me figure that out in time. And yes, I’m sure I may be showing my limited classroom teaching experience with that goal, but regardless, my hope remains the same.
References
Jonassen, D., Howland, J., Marry, R. M., & Crismond, D. (2008). Meaningful Learning with Technology (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Joyce, B. R. Weil, M., & Calhoun, E. (2009). Models of Teaching (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
As I am very new to the role of an educator, and an atypical educator at that (as I am a clinical instructor for undergraduate athletic training students and teach them while providing care for my athletes), these readings gave me a great deal of insight into the research, history, and opinions regarding the knowledge of educators as well as plenty to digest and reflect on. Additionally, most of my role as an instructor at this point in my career involves mostly hands-on and informal teaching in the clinical setting, which changes my perspective somewhat regarding the necessary knowledge of a teacher, or at least the knowledge required a an educator in my position.
From the readings I have identified and defined the following types of knowledge.
Shulman (1986) felt that teaching required more than only yesterday’s emphasis on the specific content to be taught or only today’s standards of having the conceptual ability to teach. Because of that, he began to design a new framework for teaching that included three types of knowledge: subject matter content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge. He defined subject matter content knowledge as knowledge of the subject matter a teacher is expected to know and understand. Educators should know the facts of the content, be able to explain them, and be able to explain why they are valuable. Shulman also believed teachers should possess pedagogical content knowledge in which the educator has knowledge of the subject matter for the purposes of teaching. Teachers should know the common concepts and the best ways to demonstrate, represent, and explain those ideas to help their students understand. The third type of knowledge he defined was curricular knowledge; this required educators to be knowledgeable of the programs and relevant instructional materials available for teaching a specific content to a specific group and how to use them to effectively educate their students.
Peterson (1988) believes that not only are the students’ and teachers’ behaviors important to learning, but also the cognition and self-awareness of their knowledge, which is important for effective teaching by the teacher and learning by the student. With respect to his discussion of teachers, he finds that they should have knowledge of general cognitive processes as well as content-specific processes and both cognitional and metacognitional knowledge. In this case, teachers should have knowledge of the mental processes of students that allow them to learn as well as the ability to reflect on that cognitional knowledge to allow self-assessment. Teachers also should be knowledgeable of means of facilitating the students’ general and content-specific strategies of learning.
Mishra and Koehler (2006) offer yet another perspective on knowledge educators should possess. In this article these authors introduce the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework. According to this plan, content, pedagogical, pedagogical content, technological, technological content, technological pedagogical and technological pedagogical content knowledge are necessary for educators to know. Similar to other authors, Mishra and Koehler define content knowledge as knowledge of the specific subject matter and pedagogical knowledge as knowledge of the methods of teaching. They also introduce technological knowledge, which encompasses knowledge of standard and advanced technologies used to teach. Each of these individual types of knowledge are then overlapped and combined to create knowledge types that are influenced by one another so that teachers are expected to know how to best teach a concept, choose the best technologies to teach a concept, know of various technologies that can be used as a method of teaching, and ultimately, know how to represent concepts using technologies to create the most effective lesson.
These readings do compare to the knowledge I expect an educator to possess. I believe that of the three readings, my goal is that my techniques align most closely with those of Mishra and Koehler (2006) and the idea that content, pedagogic, and technological knowledge can occur independently as well as in various combinations. I believe that content knowledge is extremely important as insufficient content knowledge may prevent a teacher from effectively educating students, which ultimately may prevent students from fully understanding a concept. Additionally, pedagogical knowledge is necessary so that the most appropriate and effective teaching methods are employed, and technological knowledge may be used to augment the most appropriate means of representing or teaching a concept.
In addition to being competent in the subject content, the teacher also may need to be competent in the practical or field application of the content. This type of knowledge may be more applicable to some subject than others, but is especially true for educators in athletic training. Only by working with the subject matter clinically can one develop a more complete grasp of the content and obtain better and more complete perspective from which to educate the students.
Knowledge of policies and expectations also is necessary for the teacher to provide a comprehensive lesson to his/her students. Knowing exactly what must be taught, as well as any regulations on how and when it is to be taught, may help a teacher plan his/her lessons more appropriately.
And finally, I believe it is imperative that an educator has knowledge of his/her students’ motivations and goals as well as from where they have come. Understanding students’ pasts may provide the educator with insight into the students’ lives and provide a foundation on which to build additional knowledge. Knowing the students’ current motivations and future goals also may help the educator find the best means of relating the concepts he/she is teaching to the students so that they may make a personal attachment to the material that enables them to retain as much of the information as possible.
References:
Mishra, P. & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.
Peterson, P. L. (1988). Teachers’ and students’ cognitional knowledge for classroom teaching and learning. Educational Researcher, 17(5), 5-14.
Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4-14.
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