Welcome to the second edition of the TPACK Newsletter. If you are not sure what TPACK is, please feel free to surf over to www.tpack.org to find out more.

Gratuitous Quote about Technology
This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us –Western Union internal memo, 1876

In this Issue:
-1. Gratuitous quote about technology
0. In this issue (-> You are here)
1. TPACK at SITE, 2-6 March (SIG Meeting)
2. Update on Newsletter
3. TPCK.org is now TPACK.org
4. New and improved TPACK graphic now available
5. ASU wins AACTE Award: TPACK plays key role
6. Playing the TPACK Game
7. Journal of Teacher Education, Editorial discusses TPACK
8. Recent TPACK Publications & Presentations
9. Coming up: TPACK at AERA
10. Learning and Doing More with TPACK
–. Un-numbered miscellaneous stuff at the end

1. TPACK at SITE, 2-6 March, Charleston SC
The big news in the TPACK front is the upcoming meeting of the Society of Information Technology in Teacher Education at Charleston. There are over 31 papers, posters and sessions devoted to TPACK. Here are the links to the session by day: Presentations on Tuesday March 3 | Presentations on Wednesday March 4 | Presentations on Thursday March 5 | Presentations on Friday March 6

Also, the TPACK SIG meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, March 4 at 12:15 PM. If you are going to be in Charleston we would love to meet with you. We are looking for ideas to make the SIG more useful to you, so be there if you can and help us build this together.

2. Update on Newsletter
The TPACK newsletter currently has 276 subscribers! This includes 172 members of the TPACK SIG plus 104 more who subscribed themselves in the past few weeks. We are off to a great start and we look forward to hearing from you with your ideas, suggestions and items to be included in this newsletter.

3. TPCK.org is now TPACK.org
A year or so ago, the consonant heavy, tongue-twister of an acronym TPCK became the more user-friendly TPACK. However, the TPACK wiki was still located at www.tpck.org, which made it, like, you know, so out of touch.
Readers will be pleased to learn that we have moved along with the times and that the wiki can now be found at www.tpack.org as well. Though both addresses will be available for a while, the plan is to gradually phase out the www.tpck.org address. Please update your bookmarks.

For those who think that this change from tpck to tpack does not mean much don’t realize just how important vowels are to human communication. Just read this news story from the erstwhile news-source the Onion: Clinton deploys vowels to Bosnia.

4. New and improved TPACK graphic now available
If you need to include the TPACK graphic in a paper or presentation look no further than www.TPACK.org The website provides absolutely free of charge two versions – at 72 and 300 dpi. Each image is hand-crafted and constructed from completely free-range organic electrons. Avail of this unlimited time offer as often as you like.
[Thanks to reader Ian Marsden, from Queensland Australia for catching an error in the earlier version of the image.]

5. ASU wins AACTE Award: TPACK plays a role
Teresa S. Foulger, from Arizona State wrote to let us know that The College of Teacher Education and Leadership at ASU received the AACTE Best Practice Award for Innovative Use of Technology. The application for the award was based on the TPACK framework, with the factor of “implementation knowledge,” which they discussed as the enablers that have allowed TPACK to progress in their college. You can also view the application turned in by ASU, AACTE’s press release about ASU winning the award, and an article in ASU news providing more local context

Congratulations to the entire ASU team.

6. Playing the TPACK Game for professional development
Karen Work Richardson (karen@ivyrun.com) sent us this email from Virginia:

Here in Virginia, each school has an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT) who is responsible for working with teachers to help them use technology effectively in their classrooms.  As part of the workshops I conduct with ITRTs, I often play the TPACK game, which I read about on the TPACK wiki.  The rules for the game are pretty simple:  choose some combination of technology, pedagogy, and content and think about what it might look like in a classroom.  What kind of lesson could be structured around this particular combination?

Sometimes, we’ll play the game by choosing a combination of two: pedagogy/content, pedagogy/technology, or technology/content.  Then we’ll brainstorm ideas for what the third element might be in order to create a successful activity.   When I played the game with my pre-service teachers, who are early in their education career, I provided a list of possibilities for all three areas from which they could choose…sort of like a TPACK “matching” game in that iteration.  I have heard from many of the ITRTs with whom I work that the game was beneficial to them and that they have used it with their teachers as a way of helping develop their knowledge about all three areas of the
model.

7. Journal of Teacher Education, Editorial discusses TPACK
The Journal of Teacher Education just came out with a special theme issue devoted to innovative uses of technology for teacher learning. The editorial for the special issue frames the issues strongly in terms of the TPACK framework, building on the original TCRecord article (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), as well as the chapters in the TPACK handbook. The complete reference is as follows:

Borko, H., Whitcomb, J., & Liston, D. (2009). Wicked Problems and Other Thoughts on Issues of Technology and Teacher Learning. Journal of Teacher Education. 60(1), 3-7.

8. Recent TPACK Publications & Presentations
Here are a few recent TPACK publications that we know about. If you know of others published within the past several months, please let us know (tpack.news.editors@wm.edu)

Papers
Two publications that caught our attention are given below. Please send us any other items you would like included in this.

Wetzel, K., Foulger, T. S., Williams, M. K. (2008-2009). The evolution of the required educational technology course. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 25(2), 67-71.

Lee, H., & Hollebrands, K. (2008). Preparing to teach mathematics with technology: An integrated approach to developing technological pedagogical content knowledge. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [Online serial], 8(4).

Presentations
As described above there are over 30 presentations related to TPACK in the SITE conference.

Punya & Matt recently presented about the TPACK framework at the EdTech2009 (Ashland Virginia). A copy of the slides and an MP3 of the talk can be found here

9. Coming up: TPACK at AERA
We could find the following presentations related to TPACK scheduled for presentation at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego. We may have missed some, so if you know of any others please let us know.  This is the list we have at this time:

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) in Action: A Descriptive Study of Secondary Teachers’ Curriculum-Based, Technology-Related Instructional Planning, Judith B. Harris, College of William and Mary; Mark J. Hofer, College of William and Mary

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK): The Development and Validation of an Assessment Instrument for Preservice Teachers, Denise Ann Schmidt, Iowa State University; Evrim Baran, Iowa State University; Ann D. Thompson, Iowa State University; Matthew J. Koehler, Michigan State University; Tae Seob Shin, Michigan State University; Punya Mishra, Michigan State University

An Empirical Examination of the Development and Assessment of Preservice Teachers’ ICT-TPCK: Advances in Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK): Part 2, Charoula M. Angeli, University of Cyprus; Nicolaos C. Valanides, University of Cyprus

Examining Epistemological and Methodological Issues for the Conceptualization, Development, and Assessment of ICT-TPCK: Advances in Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK)—Part I, Nicolaos C. Valanides, University of Cyprus; Charoula M. Angeli, University of Cyprus

Lessons From Third-Year Secondary English Teachers’ TPCK and Teaching With Technology, Sara Kajder, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

10. Learning and Doing More with TPACK
Interested in learning more about TPACK or getting more involved in the TPACK community?  Here are a few ideas:

1. Visit and contribute to the TPACK wiki at: http://tpack.org /
2. Join the TPACK SIG at: http://site.aace.org/sigs/tpack-sig.htm
3. Join and contribute to the TPACK Google group at: http://groups.google.com/group/tpack/
4. Review and provide feedback on the TPACK Learning Activity Types at: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/

Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested in its contents. Even better, have them subscribe to the TPACK newsletter by sending a blank email to sympa@lists.wm.edu , with the following text in the subject line: subscribe tpack.news FirstName LastName (of course, substituting their own first and last names for ‘FirstName’ and ‘LastName’ — unless their name happens to be FirstName LastName, in which case they can just leave it as is).

If you have a news item that you would like to contribute to the newsletter, send it along to: tpack.news.editors@wm.edu
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Standard End-Matter
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Hope to see you at the TPACK SIG meeting at SITE 2009 (on Wednesday, March 4, 2009 at 12:15 PM) in Charleston, SC!

– Judi, Matt, Mario, and Punya

Judi Harris , Chair, College of William & Mary
Matt Koehler, Vice-Chair, Michigan State University
Mario Kelly , Futon, Hunter College
Punya Mishra , Recliner, Michigan State University