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The internet is bustling with wonderful infomation, well-crafted instructional materials, and avenues to create and collaborate. It is also filled with a lot of suspect information. By creating a useful class website (hub), you can pick from the very best that the internet has to offer you and your students at the click of a mouse (or trackpad). 

 

This page has two sections (click to jump to each section):

- TPACK model of technology in relation to teaching

- SAMR model of technology application

Your website can act as a hub to bring many disparate tools together for your students to use.

Technology to Empower Your Teaching

Two models that pop up a lot when you look into technology teaching are the TPCK and SAMR models. Here is a very brief introduction to each model with some comments about how each can inform your teaching and hub creation. 

  The Hub      

TPACK

TPACK is founded on Shulman's idea of Pedagogical and Content Knowledge. Koehler added the technological element to Shulman's idea to express what teachers need in order to effectively make use of technology. Koehler notes: 

 

"Effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter requires developing sensitivity to the dynamic, transactional relationship between these components of knowledge situated in unique contexts. Individual teachers, grade levels, school-specific factors, demographics, culture, and other factors ensure that every situation is unique, and no single combination of content, technology, and pedagogy will apply for every teacher, every course, or every view of teaching."

 

- from http://www.matt-koehler.com/tpack/what-is-tpack

 

 

Why it matters: TPACK calls our attention to the interplay between our content, pedagogy, and technological knowledges in modern classrooms. Rather than simply add technology, a teacher needs to consider the content and pedagogical implications of a piece of technology as they deepen their own understanding of how to use it. TPACK is a way of conceptualizing technology's place in our teaching. 

 

image reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org

 

SAMR

Puentedura (2011) crafted the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition (SAMR) model as a means of interpreting the use of technology, in general, or a specific technological tool in an educational setting. An individual tool's placement in the SAMR model depends greatly on you, your classroom, and your students. What might be augmenting for some could be redefining for others. 

 

Enhancing:

  • Substitution: Replaces something you already do with no change to the action or thinking.

    • Ex. Teacher uploads visual aids and worksheets to their website.

 

  • Augmentation: Replaces something you already do with some enhancement in the action or thinking involved.

    • Ex. Students use notation software like Noteflight to compose or dictate. Here, the application allows students to hear their work played the way it is written. 

    • Ex. Students respond to a listening log through the use of a googleform. The form provides students with choices, visual supports, and a different way of responding.

 

Transforming:

  • Modification: A substantial change in the action and thinking involved when accomplishing a task. The actual substance of the task is changed with this tool.

    • Ex. Students comment and critique a recording of their own performance directly to an audiofile using Soundcloud

    • Ex. Using Soundation to collaborate in creating a new piece of music. 
       

  • Redefinition: A new way of acting or thinking  that would have been inconceivable without the tool.

    • Ex. Students play together online and in real time using JAMwithChrome.

    • Ex. Students create a musical videogame, instrument, and/or animation using Scratch.

 

Why it matters: SAMR offers teachers a way of evaluating technological tools and discover the tools' usefulness for their students. It also encourages teachers to uncover new ways of being musical and understanding music, moving beyond using technology to replace what they already do. 

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