TPACK Questions

After the last post about doing a science activity involving technology I now reflect on my experience and how I feel the activity achieves TPACK.

• What is the content you are focusing on in your science lesson?

The content I focused on was from Utah's state core curriculum for 2nd grade students. It was standard three which states "students will develop an understanding of their environment" and objective 1b, "investigate relationships between plants and animals and how living things change during their lives" by describing "the life cycle of local plants and animals using diagrams and pictures."

• What is the pedagogy you are using and why is it a good fit with the content?

The pedagogy I used was strategies that are important for teaching science. I thought that students would learn inquiry process skills such as observing, predicting, acquiring and processing data, describing relationships and analyzing data through this activity. This is a good fit with the content because the content wants students to investigate relationships of plants and how they change during their lives through describing the life cycle of local plants and animals using diagrams and pictures. Through this pedagogy of describing relationships students can see the relationships between each of the steps in the life cycle of plants.

• What is the technology you’ll be using and why is it a good fit with the content and pedagogy?

The technology I used to teach the content and pedagogy was Kidsperation. Kidsperation supplied a concept map that was able to be filled in and students could see visually how the life cycle of a plant progressed and what intermediate steps were involved. Students could predict what would happen next in the life cycle and they could describe relationships they see through the diagrams and pictures. Kidsperation also allowed students to explore the content of plants themselves by choosing which words to look up in the word finder and then which words or concepts to expand upon. Students would do most of the learning and exploration on their own and I feel like this affords them a great opportunity for self-growth and self-discovery. Since they are finding the information out for themselves it will be more pertinent to them rather than having a teacher stand at the front of the room and dictate information to them.