What is TPACK and what does it mean for Saline?

Yesterday, along with our High School and Middle School faculty, I had the opportunity to listen to presentation from Dr. Punya Mishra, the Director of the Master of Arts in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. Dr. Mishra discussed a variety of topics related to embracing technology as a tool to engage 21st Century learners and provided a framework for us to consider as it relates to the skills needed for teachers today.  He calls this framework TPACK, which stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge – as he stated…. they “bought a vowel” to get the A in there…

Effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter requires developing sensitivity to the dynamic, transactional relationship between all three components. A teacher capable of negotiating these relationships represents a form of expertise different from, and greater than, the knowledge of a disciplinary expert (say a mathematician or a historian), a technology expert (a computer scientist) and a pedagogical expert (an experienced educator).

In more basic terms, the master teacher of tomorrow must possess not only a deep understanding of their subject area and strong teaching strategies, but also high level of technological proficiency.  It was a nice presentation to lead into summer – we were able to frame our own areas of strength and the areas we need to work on within the TPACK model.