San Diego Unified School District embraces TPACK

by | Tuesday, September 22, 2009

I had written recently about TPACK being the top story on eSchoolNews (see TPACK is top story on eSchoolNews or go directly to the article: TPACK explores effective ed-tech integration). What I didn’t realize at that time is that there were actually three stories about TPACK, one in August that I had blogged about and two in Septmber. The two that I had missed were actually more interesting to me personally since they dealt with the manner in which the TPACK framework was actually being used in schools. Both these stories deal with the manner in which the San Diego Unified School District is embracing the idea of TPACK as a key piece of their strategy to transform how their students are taught.

These two other articles (also written by Senior Editor Laura Devaney) are titled (a) San Diego explores effective ed-tech integration through TPACK: New professional development model focuses on the intersection of technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge; and (b) Reinventing education: As schools nationwide examine new federal priorities, San Diego unveils a five-year plan to transform the way students are taught

This news makes me extremely happy, for the simple reason that this means that our ideas have moved beyond graduate school curricula, beyond research articles, beyond doctoral dissertations into actual practice. This is every educational researcher’s dream. Here are some key quotes from these articles.

The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) has embraced a concept called Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) in its professional development model, to ensure that the smart use of technology drives every aspect of classroom teaching and learning.

As technology becomes an increasingly important tool for teaching and learning, this relatively new concept, which focuses on how educators can integrate technology effectively into their instructional practices, is making its way into pre-service and in-service teacher education programs.

TPACK is based on the work of Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, both associate professors of educational technology in the College of Education at Michigan State University.

Here’s another:

“We worked closely with the [district] Educational Technology department to design a professional development program that is all-encompassing,” LaGace said. “When you look at the TPACK model, it gets around to improving the whole classroom experience. … It puts the focus not on teaching teachers how to turn on a Promethean Activboard, but why to turn it on.”

Why turn it on? What a profound question, and one that hopefully will be asked by every teacher in San Diego.

Can you guess why I love my job? 🙂

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Blast from the past: Technology, representation & cognition

Blast from the past: Technology, representation & cognition

I published my first academic article (a book chapter) in 1996 when I was a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. My the advisor, Rand Spiro, had been invited to write a chapter for an edited book and asked me if I would be willing to join him...

Truly grasping 4-D

Understanding 4D while living in a 3D world. A stunning series of videos (freely available for download or online viewing) that teach you how to to visualize four dimensions. Titled Dimensions, these videos were created by a French professor of mathematics in...

TPACK goes Chinese… virtually

Matt Koehler and I had been asked to provide the plenary address at the Annual Meeting of Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education (GCCCE) at East Lansing. As Jack Schwille said in an email to the College: Our Confucius Institute is hosting the 12th Global...

TE150 wins MSU-AT&T Award

Matt Koehler and I just arrived in New York, 3 hours late, checked into our hotel, paid 14.95 for internet - and guess what it was all worth it. One of the first emails I had received informed us that we had won the 2008 MSU-AT&T Instructional Technology Awards...

Embodied Thinking: New article

Photo: Punya Mishra; Santiago, Chile, 2014 Rethinking Technology & Creativity in the 21st Century is a series of articles we have been writing for Tech Trends. The latest article in the series has just ben published. This article focuses on Embodied Thinking as a...

Street Use

In blogging Kevin Kelly's piece on "Better than free" (read that post here), I came across another site that he maintains, titled "Street Use," self-described as follows: This site features the ways in which people modify and re-create technology. Herein a collection...

Bringing sensory richness to bleak scientific texts

A while ago I had written about how we use language to capture intangible ideas - and the risks associated with not paying attention to these intangibles. I had said (though you can read the complete post A different language): For instance wine connoisseurs have...

The story of stuff

Check out Story of Stuff or watch the movie... [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucMJ32-xp64] For the new version of CEP817 or maybe even CEP917

What is this thing called text?

Steven Johnson has a great essay on the future of text title: The Glass Box And The Commonplace Book. I recommend reading the full thing but here is a quote that sort of captures his vision (though there is more, much more). Here is a great quote: WHEN TEXT IS free to...

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