TPACKing for a Wonderful Educational Trip/Group 4

The Fightin Fourth is a group of dedicated educators working together to establish resources for school looking to begin a 1:1 computing initiative. Panther High School (PHS) is a fictional school located in north central Iowa. It is a smaller 2A school consisting of a standard student population. The goal of this wiki book is to compile references for other schools to use to best accomplish a 1:1 initiative. This section deals with TPACK or the convergence of Technology, Pedagogy, and Content Knowledge. Converting lessons into a digital format for digital natives while not sacrificing a quality education.

written by:
Bill Lammers
Lance Lennon (page editor)
Evans Mudanya
Cathy Olson

A Brief Introduction to Our 1:1 Plan

Our Vision

We believe that 1:1 environment will allow us to approach education in a whole new way. We feel we must not just “add” computers to what we already doing. We need to re-evaluate and re-think how we can best prepare our high school students for their futures. We hope that students will see technology as they “see” their pencil: as a tool needed to complete their coursework. We see a digital world with little paper being handed in or handed out. We hope, also to see a large amount of project-based learning in each classroom. We see a greater interest in learning in students and a more positive attitude towards technology in class.

Our Demographics

• Majority of students currently have computers at home.
• School District has three computer labs available for class use with workstations in the IMC available for student individual use.
• Racial diversity--91% white; 2.3% Black; 1.4% Asian; 5% Hispanic
• SES--11.6% live below poverty level

TPACKing at Panther High

Iowa Core Standards

With our group consisting of two secondary Language Arts Teachers, a full time graduate student, and a district technology director, the literacy standards seemed the most relevant. So, we went to the Iowa Core website and looked through the literacy section for secondary education. We focused on the ones for English-Language-Arts and Reading-Literature. In these sections, the standards proved to be ones that needed higher-order thinking from students (not just memorizing).

English Language Arts - Key Ideas and Details

Standard RI.9-10.1 Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use a subscription database effectively to gather research for a paper. This will include logging in successfully, creating a folder in the database, using advanced search correctly, and using the citation feature to correctly cite the work in an Annotated Bibliography

• Activity/Technology 2: Students will use Diigo to bookmark web sites and other sources, correctly use tags, and save to the class’s Diigo group

• Activity/Technology 3: Students will use Google docs to write the paper so that they are able to work on the paper at home, on their phone, on their ipad, on their itouch, or with any other technology that can access the internet

Standard RI.9-10.3. Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will create a video using www.animoto.com to show the development of a theme in the text.
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will highlight the key ideas of a text in a Google doc and then use the comment feature to analyze its significance to the event described in the text.
• Activity/Technology 3: Students will create a podcast which summarizes the event described in the text just as a reporter would create for a news break.

Standard RI. 9-10.3 Analyze how the author unfolds an analysis or series of ideas or events, including the order in which the points are made, how they are introduced and developed, and the connections that are drawn between them.

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use http://voicethread.com to discuss the methods they find that the author uses to develop their ideas and respond to the Voicethread posts of others in the class.
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will use http://edmodo.com to create discussion threads related to the text.
• Activity/Technology 3: Students will use posts on a class www.wikispaces.com to create discussions related to the text.

Standard IA.1.Employ the full range of research-based comprehension strategies, including making connections, determining importance, questioning, visualizing, making inferences, summarizing, and monitoring for comprehension.

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use www.inspiration.com to organize notes from research
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will use www.blogger.com to blog once per week reflecting on their research work for the work. Writing prompts will be provided to key on connections, questioning, visualizing, making inferences, and summarizing.
• Activity/Technology 3: Students will use the comment feature on Blogger to make connections with the reflections of their classmates.

Standard IA.2.Read on-level text, both silently and orally, at an appropriate rate with accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use Garage Band to record readings, which other students with reading struggles can use to accompany their reading of the text
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will use www.voicethread.com to record their part of the text; as a class, they will record the entire article
• Activity/Technology 3: Students will use digital video recorder to tape a presentation of a text and post it to their blog about the text.

English Language Arts - Craft and Structure

Standard RI.9-10.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use iMovie to create a short video using only images and sound to show the meaning of an abstract concept.
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will create a Wordle from the text to discover any patterns in word choice
• Activity/Technology 3: Students use Google Docs to answer guiding questions and share it with their instruc

Standard RI.9-10.5. Analyze in detail how an author’s ideas or claims are developed and refined by particular sentences, paragraphs, or larger portions of a text (e.g., a section or chapter).

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use digital recording device to record a think- aloud as they read from a text.
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will use Glogster to illustrate how a concept is developed with the concept as the title and then surrounded by the portions of the text which develop it.
• Activity/Technology 3: Use bubbl.us to create a graphic organizer detailing author’s ideas or claims in a text.

Standard RI.9-10.6. Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text and analyze how an author uses rhetoric to advance that point of view or purpose.

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use a media presentation application of their choice to conduct and record a mock interview of an author of a specific text; one student will be the interviewer and one will portray the author of the text. Questions and answers will discover the author’s purpose and/or point of view.
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will use Xtranormal.com to create a news panel commentating on the author and his piece.
• Activity/Technology 3: Create a fake FaceBook fan page for the author using a Google Docs template; students will keep the focus on the specific text by the author.

English Language Arts - Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Standard RI.9-10.8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, assessing whether the reasoning is valid and the evidence is relevant and sufficient; identify false statements and fallacious reasoning.

• Activity/Technology 1: Students will use the comment feature on Google docs. They will highlight a claim, then in the comment discuss if the reasoning and evidence is valid and explain why or why not.
• Activity/Technology 2: Students will use Glogster to address the validity of arguments from a given text.
• Activity/Technology 3: Students will fact check the validity of specific arguments found in the text using online search engines such as Google, databases such as EBSCO, and online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.

Lessons

The TPACK Diagram.

Bill's TPACK Lesson Plan

Cathy's TPACK Lesson Plan

Evans' TPACK Lesson Plan

Lance's TPACK Lesson Plan

Conclusion

We are planning for 1:1 in a high school. As more and more emphasis is put on the basic communication skills that are served and taught in Language Arts classes - and because half of our group teach LA classes at the high school level - we decided to focus upon that area. In developing our 1:1 plan, we are planning that the school has an average battery of equipment already in place such as a Smartboards, desktop workstations, data projectors, digital audio and video recorders and so on. We will also plan that our teachers and students are enthusiastic and knowledgeable about technology.

The Fighting Fourth consists of two certified secondary Language Arts teachers, a technical coordinator who has Social Studies teaching experience, and a graduate student teaching assistant with teaching experience. Having decided upon Language Arts as our focus area, we sought the Iowa Core website and chose our standards from the sub-section “English Language Arts Standards » Reading: Informational Text » Grade 9-10”. In these sections, the standards proved to be ones that needed higher-order thinking from students (not just memorizing).

Using these standards allowed us to focus upon activities which helped define our content, or would allow for the enrichment of existing content. In the Language Arts world, there is an almost constant flow of reading texts and responding to those texts in a multitude of formats. Therefore, a Language Arts pedagogy of reading, writing, analysis, and synthesis instruction was the natural choice. Given the amount of technology that exists for those skills, many options to implement technology into specific activities exist.

The standards are organized on our Google doc essentially in the same way as they are on the Iowa Core website. Most of our activities were considered as a group using the resources provided in the RWLD. The Harris/Hoff article helped us establish some rudimentary ideas, and we found the William and Mary School of Education wiki - specifically the Secondary English Language Arts Learning Activity Types document - to be a very beneficial resource. Classroom activities that we had experience with were also used, needing only a modicum of tweaking as many of these have been developed or reworked as a result of UNI IT Cohort classes. These existing classroom activities already had technology integrated, which guided us through planning technology for the remaining activities. Our group members collectively have hands-on experiences with all of the planned technologies.

Because of our collective teaching experiences, we discovered that once we had our content and pedagogy identified, the technology was relatively easy to implement. This doesn’t discount the amount of planning that would need to be done to make the TPaCKed lesson go smoothly, but it provides the necessary framework for success. Certainly traditional Language Arts lessons required a bit more creativity. In the end, we developed what we feel are strong, engaging learning experiences that will provide learners with skills that meet established norms and goals. We also took a few steps closer toward the goal of making TPaCK an automatic practice when it comes to planning lessons. Or, to paraphrase Dr. Punya Mishra, “We got our TPaCK on, baby!”