TPACK & creativity

by | Saturday, December 20, 2008

Matt Koehler and I just submitted an article for Learning & Leading with Technology, the flagship journal published by ISTE. The journal features practical ideas for using today’s technology tools to improve teaching and learning. Our work on TPACK was recently featured in an article there (here’s a link). Our current article, our first for the magazine is titled Creative uses of cool tools for teaching, Considering the TPACK framework. Since this is in draft form right now, I am not posting a link here. However, here are some key excerpts, just to whet your appetite!

This is the age of cool tools. Facebook, the iPhone, Flickr, blogs, cloud computing, Smart Boards, YouTube, Google Earth, and GPS devices are just some of the most recent examples. New technologies bombard us from all directions. Often our reaction when we see a new toy is one of surprise and pleasure. These toys are cool.

As individuals we see a new technology and can appreciate its coolness, but as educators we also wonder how these tools can be used for teaching. We understand that just because a technology is innovative and cool does not necessarily make it an educational technology. We hear common refrains – “technology should not drive pedagogy” or “technology is just a tool, a means to an end, not the end itself.” We also can, however, sense that these emerging technologies have the potential to fundamentally change we think about teaching and learning and our role as educators. We wonder just how these cool tools, if used thoughtfully and creatively, can positively influence pedagogy.

Repurposing these cool tools for educational purposes, however, is not a trivial problem. In this article (and elsewhere) we have argued that for educators to repurpose tools and integrate them into their teaching, they require the creative application of a specific kind of knowledge that we call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (or TPACK for short). In this article we introduce the TPACK framework and describe just how it can help teachers become more creative and intelligent in their use of technology.

Topics related to this post: Creativity | Design | Learning | Publications | Research | Teaching | Technology | TPACK

A few randomly selected blog posts…

The brilliantly twisted mind of PES

I discovered PES a couple of years ago when searching for examples of stop motion animation on the web. One glimpse of his work and I was smitten. Combine a prefect sense of timing and shot composition with a whimsical and surrealistic point of view and you get some...

Robert Frost writes a paper

First it was Lewis Carroll and Jabberwocky and now it is Robert Frost and his poem Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening that receives the EPET treatment. Here is poem #2 in our series of famous poems rewritten from a graduate school perspective. Thanks to Diana...

Review of TPACK Handbook 2nd Edition

Review of TPACK Handbook 2nd Edition

Douglas Harvey and Ronald Carol, both at Stockton University in New Jersey have reviewed the 2nd Edition of the TPACK Handbook for the journal TechTrends. You can find the review here.  Complete reference and a link to the first chapter of the handbook...

TPACK videos: A few new ones

I have come across some new TPACK related videos/podcasts (either on youtube or elsewhere) that I feel may be worth sharing. The first of them came as an email from Matt Townsley. He pointed me to these two videos by Janet Bowers of San Diego State University. In...

TPACK Newsletter Issue #19, March, 2014

TPACK Newsletter, Issue #19: March, 2014Welcome to the nineteenth edition of the (approximately bimonthly) TPACK Newsletter! TPACK work is continuing worldwide. This document contains recent updates to that work that we hope will be interesting and useful to you, our...

Psychoanalyzing Bush

I picked up Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy from the library and finished reading it over the past day and a half. I have never been a fan of Bush, mainly because I was troubled, from the very beginning, by his lack of curiosity, and his unwillingness to learn....

Limerick on Math & Beauty

Image credit: eoliene_pe_campii Mathematical Beauty: A limerick Punya Mishra, Jan 27, 2010 Doesn’t it just gladden your heart to see These games we can play with infinity? How can one stay aloof From the elegance of a proof And remain immune to mathematics’ subtle...

TPACK Newsletter #21: September 2014

TPACK Newsletter, Issue #21 (September, 2014) Welcome to the twenty-first edition of the (approximately bimonthly) TPACK Newsletter! TPACK work is continuing worldwide. This document contains recent updates to that work that we hope will be interesting and useful to...

Best practice v.s. PGP

Best practice v.s. PGP

I was recently in a discussion with members of the AACTE committee on Innovation and Technology about the term "best practice." This search for best practice (or practices) is something one hears about all the time in educational (and ed tech) circles. We want to list...

1 Comment

  1. Anamika

    Hello Punya sir,
    I am Anamika Teotia, a phd student
    Working on modeling creativity in preservice teachers Tpack for English language.
    However need your suggestion whether I should choose social collaborative creativity or individual aspect of creativity.
    Regards

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *