TPACKing for a Wonderful Educational Trip/Group 10

Our School:

Tri-State Middle School

Size: 180 students

Grade Level: Grades 6-8

Location: Rural Northeast Iowa

Student demographics: White - 85%, Hispanic - 8%, African-American - 5%, Other - 2%

Name: Tri-State Middle School

Number of teachers: 35 teachers

Number of students: 60 per grade level, 180 total.

SES level: Primarily middle class, a small minority are upper class, 15% free-reduced lunch

Size and distribution of other schools/students in the district: 2 elementary schools (K-5) feed into 1 middle school. The Tri-State High School, grades 9-12, has approximately 250 students.

IOWA CORE STANDARDS:
The following standards will be met throughout this lesson:

Social Studies: Behavioral Sciences

Understand the changing nature of society

Understand that technology is important in spreading the ideas, values, and behavior patterns within a society.
Understand the means by which individuals, groups, and institutions may contribute to social continuity and change within a community.
History
Understand how and why people create, maintain or change systems of power, authority, and governance.
Understand the role of culture and cultural diffusion on the development and maintenance of societies
Understand language, literature, the arts, architecture, other artifacts, traditions, beliefs, values, and behaviors have contributed to the development and transmission of culture.
Understand the role of individuals and groups within a society as promoters of change or the status quo.
Understand that specific individuals and the values those individuals held had an impact on history.
Understand the effects of geographic factors on historical events
Understand the role of innovation on the development and interaction of societies.
Understand the impact of new inventions and technological developments in various regions of the world
Understand cause and effect relationships and other historical thinking skills in order to interpret events and issues
Understand processes such as using a variety of sources, providing, validating, and weighing evidence for claims, checking credibility of sources, and searching for causality.
Political Science/Civic Literacy
Understand the rights and responsibilities of each citizen and demonstrate the value of lifelong civic action
Understand the importance of voluntarism as a characteristic of American society.

CONTEXTUAL SITUATIONS AND DEMOGRAPHICS
-Student knowledge level:
Students are in their 2nd semester of 8th grade social studies. The focus of first semester was early American history. Students have also studied a bit about prominent leaders and civilizations that had major impact throughout history. Many government and civics standards have been met, so this semester is focusing on history standards, with special attention given to those where students can reflect on a person or group that sparked change.

-Resources:
Social studies text book, online databases, library resources (print & eBook), grade level computer lab and mobile cart, iPads, digital cameras, video cameras, Google Suite Apps, video chat, Web 2.0 Tools, and local experts

-Time:
16-18 weeks, most of 2nd semester. Class meets once per day for 45 minutes. The technology teacher also coordinates to help with the projects, and one technology class period a week is dedicated to social studies work time.

Curriculum-Based Activity Type Taxonomies + Technologies
Please view our table here.

Our Individual TPaCK Lessons:
Ann: Inventors and Their Inventions
Tyler: A Day in the Life Of...
Marija: Honoring Our Inventors
Kirstin: Tooting My Own Horn

Group Reflection:
Our group found the TPACK process pretty smooth. As a group we selected social studies as we wanted a subject that would easily lend itself to incorporating technology. One of the group members suggested doing something a long the lines of inventors and how they changed society. We felt that this fit well with the Iowa Core Standards for social studies. Once we had our idea of inventors and how they changed society we read through the standards for 6-8 social studies and selected the ones that we thought may fit with this idea. We listed the ones we felt may fit and starting selecting our activities. We used the Taxonomies to help us come up with 10 different activities that we felt would fit into social studies lessons. Once we had 10 activities selected we allowed each member to select the ones they felt they wanted to work on. Each member created their lesson based on those activities and posted it back to the original Google Doc. We used Google Docs and Gmail/Chat as our main means of communicating during this process. Our philosophy was that we could accomplish more if we divided and conquered. We did set a few meeting times to collaborate as a team and discuss difficulties or clarifications.