Chapter+11.

**Darlene, Lisa, Melody**
The opening quote by John Dewey (1859-1952) set the stage for the content in Chapter Eleven, Guiding perservice teachers in developing TPCK. The manner in which we taught a previous generation is not sufficient in educating today's students for the future. The teachers of today must not only have knowledge of the content and an understanding of the learning process; they must now have knowledge of technology. A challenge for preservice teacher preparation programs is to persuade future teachers "to develop new ways of learning their subject with appropriate new and emerging technologies so they are prepared to teach the children of tomorrow." Working with the TPCK framework promotes the development of strategic thinking which involves planning, organizing, critiquing and abstracting. Enhancing methods course instruction with the TPCK way of thinking will assist preservice teachers in developing the necessary skills of understanding their students, planning and designing instruction, developing effective instructional strategies and acquiring effective classroom management strategies, all in a technology-mediated classroom.
 * Abstract:**


 * Synthesis:** **Similar beliefs**
 * Quote "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow."
 * Many pre-service and in-service teachers lack skills in technological pedagogy, this problem needs to be addressed.
 * Pre-service teachers must have the skills essential to breading successful learners, when they enter the classroom.
 * Teachers must continue to learn, be open to new methods and expand their teaching knowledge.


 * Synthesis:** **Contrasting points**
 * Hard time finding sources that strongly support teaching and curriculum with technology.
 * Governor LePage commented on the radio about how teachers need to go back to the basics and focus more on content, which goes against everything the TPCK book is about.
 * Pre-service teachers are required to learn to teach in a different way then they were taught, incorporating new technologies.
 * PLC's with a focus on technology.
 * Directed observations of technology use in the classroom with followup discussions.
 * A critical component of improving teaching and learning is observing and discussing best practices.


 * Hyperlinks:** (Due to the emphasis these two chapters placed on seriously reevaluating teaching strategies, I find these three links to be very beneficial**.**)

Mt. Blue High School's Literacy Hub (Literacy strategies/interactive templates)

[|Quizlet] (SAT Vocabulary Prep; good for studying but fun like a game!!)

[|Capzles] (Multimedia Storytelling at it's BEST!)

__**Darlene:**__ The opening quote by John Dewey (1859-1952) set the stage for the content in Chapter Eleven, Guiding perservice teachers in developing TPCK. The manner in which we taught a previous generation is not sufficient in educating today's students for the future. The teachers of today must not only have knowledge of the content and an understanding of the learning process; they must now have knowledge of technology. A challenge for preservice teacher preparation programs is to persuade future teachers "to develop new ways of learning their subject with appropriate new and emerging technologies so they are prepared to teach the children of tomorrow." Working with the TPCK framework promotes the development of strategic thinking that involves planning, organizing, critiquing and abstracting. Enhancing methods course instruction with the TPCK way of thinking will assist preservice teachers in developing the necessary skills of understanding their students, planning and designing instruction, developing effective instructional strategies and acquiring effective classroom management strategies, all in a technology-mediated classroom. I agreed strongly with the idea of providing preservice teachers with opportunities to experience the diversity of students by engaging with them. In my undergraduate program, I participated in a course, which allowed me to meet with a student with special needs weekly, and I was provided regular feedback from my instructor. I’ve always believed this to be the most helpful prep course for my work as a special education teacher. I also support the concept of learning as a cohort or collaboration teaming.
 * Posts:**

**__Erica:__** When reading through these two chapters, I think that the quote on page 223 really sums up what is wrong with the current type of teaching as well as what needs to be done to increase the level of knowledge and education in our students. It says, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow.” I feel that this is absolutely true. If teachers do not look into the future as to what our students should know and be able to do, then we are not serving our students the way we should. Introducing technology is a way to integrate and apply the otherwise unattainable material and content to real life situations and applications and the experience of using technological resources will familiarize students with the real world. “Tomorrow’s teachers must be prepared to rethink, unlearn and relearn, change, revise, and adapt” (pg. 225). I feel that all teachers need to display this philosophy in order to be successful. One way to assure this happens is through differentiation of content matter. This will allow teachers to reach all learning styles and abilities. Technology can help to aid this bridge among content gaps and learner abilities. With teaching ELL students, we are definitely trained and emerged into classrooms, which require us to differentiate in order for our students to understand and be successful. I feel that the area that we lack would be our technological pedagogy. We tend to have a hard time with finding sources that strongly support our teaching and curriculum, that are not either to low or to high for our students. This would be the area that I would need to work on to become a better teacher.

Chapter 12 offers us a utopian idea of what professional development could and should be. The line in the chapter about how professional development should ‘promote autonomous and collaborative instructional decision-making while simultaneously encouraging open-minded consideration…’ is fantastic. Being a specialist, the professional development and in-service days are especially grueling. The focus now in our district is math standards. Very little is done for anyone that is not a classroom teacher. And finally, I just have to say that when reading the first paragraph in chapter 11, I immediately thought of Governor LePage. I heard a comment that he made on the radio about public schools and test scores. He said something like: pre-service and new teachers need to go back to the basics and focus more on the content. This seems to be the opposite of what this book is trying to say. If our Governor is not advocating for enriching and expanding on a student’s whole education, do we have much of a chance?
 * __ Leigh: __** When reading these two chapters, I can’t help but reflect on my undergrad education. I know I received a very good education, yet when I read the chapter about the pre-service teachers and what the author suggests, I am feeling a little lacking. I wish I could have had more experience with technology and teaching. My methods class was heavy in content and classroom management, which is great. However I do believe that there could have been room for technology also.


 * __ Lisa: __** Chapter 11 is all about technology integration (PCK & TPCK) and the need for it to be developed into pre-service teachers methodology so it will carry over into their classrooms. It is true that if teacher preparation programs (those other than UMF) continue teaching pre-service teachers the same methodology as in the past, with 20th Century direction "the children of tomorrow will be robbed" of a solid education and will not become college or career ready.

With the integration of technology and 21st Century tools pre-service teachers need to be taught to be 21st Century teachers. They need to be TPCK trained and ready to enter a classroom with the skills essential to making them successful teachers and turning over successful learners. We have all learned that lessons need to be engaging, effective and stimulating to students. We do, however, need to keep in mind some of the essentials of teaching, such as; differentiated instruction, the diversity of all students and effective classroom management skills. These will always need to be an integral part of a pre-service training program.

I was not fortunate enough to have TPCK training before becoming a teacher. I have had the opportunity to be taught these essentials through my masters degree courses and I do use these skills and try to better my teaching with all I've learned everyday.

What do preservice teachers need to develop TPCK? In a nutshell, these “teachers must be prepared to rethink, unlearn and relearn, change, revise, and adapt” (p. 225). Preservice teachers need actual and varied experiences to relearn, rather than lectures alone. For example, in this course we had a presentation about intellectual property and now we are incorporating these concepts into our designs. The question “What strategies support students in learning about the technology as they are learning with technology?” (p. 240) is something to be reflected upon continuously. Only on certain occasions as required by an IEP does an assistive technology consultant come to our classroom, assess a student and give (invaluable) guidance. This type of consult is very expensive, not necessarily focused on typical technology and may not be ongoing. Otherwise, our students are at the mercy of what knowledge the teacher and ed techs have learned on their own about technology. To remedy this deficit at my school I think professional learning communities should be focused on technology for special educators (teachers and ed techs). In this way some of the methods suggested for teaching preservice teachers could be employed for learning and practicing technology. Research teams could be created to investigate “what accommodations are needed for the various diversities of the students—physical, cognitive, personal, cultural, social and technological” (p. 231). What a luxury this would be.
 * __ Lynda: __** The focus of this chapter is on preparing preservice teachers as they develop TPCK. One of the major challenges for preservice teachers is not having learned their particular subject with the use of technology. Consequently preservice teachers are required to learn how to teach in a different way than they were taught, incorporating new and emerging technologies. This is difficult because “how a person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which a person learns, become a fundamental part of what is learned” (p. 224).

As I read these two chapters, many quotations really hit home about the state of education today. One I enjoyed in particular was, “If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow” (223). Such a true statement! Our students will need very different skills in their future and teachers cannot just rely on how they themselves were taught to get the job done. Technology alone faces teachers with endless content they never had when they were in school, but MUST expose their students to now. This brings me to another great quote: “Tomorrow’s teachers must be prepared to rethink, unlearn, and relearn, change, revise, and adapt” (225). Bottom line, if teachers are not open to this idea they will never be successful with preparing their students for the future. I work with so many teaches who just go through the motions during technology workshops, but never really consider how it’s all relevant for their content and their students. (Granted, we are also don’t get to experience these technology workshops in content directed sessions which could help with this.) Why is it when fellow teachers try and share new ideas and practices with their colleagues there are always so many who feel as though their own teaching quality is being questioned??? And what if it was? Is it a bad thing that we are expected to evolve? Change? Better ourselves and our teaching? I have to agree with Sammie’s post about seeing the benefits in observations in other classrooms and other schools. I also wish this was done more frequently. I’d certainly love to get out there and see other teachers and how they’re adapting to these ever changing times. If more teachers were open to ideas like this then teaching strategies would be improving at a much more rapid rate.
 * __ Melody: __**

**__Sam:__** Chapters 11 & 12 of the TPCK handbook both focus on modern teaching practice and the progression of the teaching profession. The chapters are split by pre-service and in-service, but much of the content is similar. The first chapter is introduced with quote from John Dewey that really sets the tone: "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, then we rob our children of tomorrow." From this idea a brief history follows, arguing that teaching used to be all about content. If a teacher understood the content of what they were teaching- they were considered to be qualified. However as the teaching professions progressed, it became clear that pedagogy/teaching methodology was also important. Then in 1986 Shulman introduced PCK, which considered content, pedagogy AND the interactions between content and pedagogical knowledge. Now with TPCK, teacher need to take the craft a step further and expand their teaching skills to integrate use of technology, and thus meet the needs of today's students.

Both chapters make extensive use of quotations. In the pre-service chapter there are proverbs and quotes are from great educators and great thinkers. I feel that these quotes serve well to inspire, and to give the reader a sense of larger purpose. Teaching is important, and becoming a good teacher requires the teacher to be a good learner. The in-service rely's on quotes from Jazz musicians, and the Jazz analogy is extended into the discussions. The idea being that great Jazz and great teaching are achieved with improvisation, innovation and creativity, but also require a solid basic structure and a lot of skill and practice.

For teachers to constantly re-invent the way they teach (and thus not rob our children of tomorrow), it is suggested that they must engage in changing the mindsets and behaviors established from their own personal learning experience. They must also continue to learn their art, and be open to new methods, and to expand their teaching toolset.

**__Sammie__**: As I read this chapter of TPCK, I kept thinking about how critical it is that as instructors we are competent and confident using 21st century skills ourselves. In all of the literature we have read throughout our masters program at UMF, the emphasis has been on teaching our students these skills. In a perfect world, this would be a natural objective, but when we have in-service and pre-service teachers who consider these areas frightening or overwhelming, this creates a huge problem. A problem that needs to be addressed at different levels. The speed that technology is changing at is ever-increasing and this creates a dynamic and powerful world in education if we are equipped to use it well. The focus of our pre-service and in-service teacher technology training needs to shift away from stagnant instruction on how to use specific programs step-by-step and toward how to be a technology problem solver. Teachers need to learn how to explore all types of new software, how to become familiar with tools and menus, how to use "help" and how to trouble shoot on their own. Along this same line of thought, I could not agree more that the quote on p.225 presents a perplexing problem, "How can programs prepare future teachers for teaching in ways that incorporate unlearning and relearning their content with appropriate new and emerging technologies so they are adequately prepared to teach the children of tomorrow?"

One powerful idea that I left this chapter with was the possibility of doing directed observations of technology in the classroom with follow-up discussions to determine what types of technologies should be informing our instruction in content-specific classrooms. I have always felt that we miss out on a huge amount of potential and knowledge that other teachers demonstrate on a daily basis in their own classrooms. A critical component of improving teaching and learning, particularly in this day and age as we incorporate more digital tools and techniques, is observing and discussing best practices in the classrooms of our colleagues. I feel so strongly about this that I absolutely believe that teachers should be enabled to visit other schools on a regular basis for the purpose of observation. Teachers that are well-known for their successes would no doubt welcome visitors and be happy to share what has been working in terms of the implementation of TPCK in their classrooms.

Chapter 12 TPCK
 * __ Sue: __**

For what it’s worth, I chose to skip Chapter 11 in TPCK and respond to Chapter 12. Written by Judith B. Harris, titled “TPCK in in-service education: Assessing experienced teachers’ planned improvisations”, this article creatively uses “jazz” as a metaphor for implementing technology, pedagogy and content knowledge in classrooms. Specifically for experienced teachers, altering classroom strategies for delivery content and meeting student needs must be re-created, improvised much like a jazz performance. One of the comments that I appreciate hearing and that we have touched on in class, is that teachers are intimately bound by their personal history in the classroom. Harris cites Polman (1998), “…dominate activity structures are cultural tools that perpetuate and standardize interaction patterns and therefore interaction norms and expectations primarily according to teachers’ memories of dominant discourse patterns from their own school-related experiences.” (p. 257) In order to continue effective teaching, as the years go by, in-service training must acknowledge this cultural context of the teachers. Harris describes teachers’ attempting new pedagogical approaches, like that of a jazz musician “…as an additive, recursive, and expansive process, rather than a linear series of replacements of “old” with “new”. And I think John Dewey would agree.