TPACK & Creativity at Cedar Rapids

I had a wonderful day at the Grant Woods Area Education Agency at Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I was invited there by Andy Crozier and his team as a part of their 21st Century Learning Institute. I spent the day with 50+ teachers, library media specialists, and administrators talking about TPACK, creativity, technology integration and other fun stuff. This was a great group of people and I had a great time (and I hoped that they did too).

A wordle of some of the ideas that we touched upon can be found below (thanks Nick Sauers)

You can find a PDF document of my slides as well as a PDF of the demotivational posters created by the participants. (Even if you don’t see my slides, you MUST see the posters… they are funny and worth a moment of your time).

A couple of participant took notes during the day and have kindly made them available:

• Nick Sauer’s Notes | Blog posting
• Matt Townsley’s Notes (Incidentally Matt and I have known each other for a while now but had never met. It was great to finally meet up with one of my online buddies. Matt blogs at MetaMusing)

The participants also created (as a part of the workshop) some poems. I am including them below:

Creativity Haiku
by Karry, Michelle, Kathleen, Beth, Todd, Kathy
technology is
creative innovation
tpack makes us think

Limerick
by Deanne, Ruth, Jason
Administrators, librarians and teachers
Came to learn about “teachnology” features
TPACK is the focus
Dr. Punya is the “mostest”
They came out of there much wiser creatures

Untitled
by Joe, Kay, and Jessica
While spoon feeding our students in class
We focus on the Total PACKage
As we use, integrate, and innovate
To help them Know-Act-Value
We find-Everything is NEW

Deja Who?
by Amy, Christopher, & Mike
There once was a man from MSU.
He Déjà Vu’ed and Veja du’ed.
TPACK was his shared view
of all that was NEW!

Poem
by Melva, Cathy, Jan, Kim, Dianna
Acronyms, acronyms, here’s what we found
TPACK is where teaching hits the ground.
Technology, Pedagogy, Content and Knowledge
Will take teaching beyond the cutting edge.

NEW stands for Novel, Effective and Whole
And if something is meant to roll, it should roll.
We’re learning how in our classrooms to apply
All of this information which is in great supply.

Team TPACK
by Tony, Mary, Kelly, Jodi
There once was a teacher from Marimac
Who wanted to teach with his Mac
His friend said now Jo
Just take it slow.
Remember to think about TPACK

Poem
by Mary, Brad and Jan
Teaching 3 knowledge bases
Providing framework for technology integration
And
Creativity
Keeping learning déjà vu and veja du

Creativity
by Brian, Lisa, Seth, Julie, Stacy
There was a smart man from MSU,
who defined creativity as N-E-W.
He effectively did present
technology, pedagogy and content
and it all started with veja du.

Thanks to Andy and his team for this wonderful opportunity.