TASK 1: TPACK AND ACAD

INTRO

In the first week we began to inform ourselves of the new roles that we had not played before. Our task was to create a presentation on two educational frameworks: TPACK and ACAD. After that, the entire group got together and participated in a version of "speed dating" that was adapted to the classroom format, called "speed learning." The stars had 7 minutes to present our work to all the groups. Meanwhile, the other members of the group were completing the tasks of their roles and paying attention to the other presentations, taking notes.

Our stars this week were Carmen and Rosalía and they presented the project in class to the rest of the groups, using the ``Information Map´´.

1. What is TPACK, and What is ACAD exactly?

       TPACK, a technological pedagogical content knowledge, is an understanding that emerges from interactions among content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge. 

TPACK is the basis of effective teaching with technology, requiring an understanding of the representation of concepts using technologies; pedagogical techniques that use technologies in constructive ways to teach content; knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn and how technology can help redress some of the problems that students face; knowledge of students’ prior knowledge and theories of epistemology; and knowledge of how technologies can be used to build on existing knowledge to develop new epistemologies or strengthen old ones.

It is a model that identifies the types of knowledge that a teacher needs to master in order to integrate ICT effectively in the teaching they teach. 

This process requires teachers to adapt to technological change and work on these skills so that, in combination with their pedagogical, disciplinary and content knowledge, an educational environment that effectively integrates Information and Communication Technologies is achieved. 

ACAD: Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) is a meta-theoretical framework for understanding and improving local, complex, learning situations. Explaining what this means requires some shared terminology.

It is activity-centred, this is because learning is about what people do. Goodyear and Carvalho state that this doing might involve thinking, feeling, perceiving, talking, making, moving and so on. 

2. Which are the essential TPACK elements, and how do they interact with each other? 

TPACK consists of the interaction between three types of knowledge: content, pedagogy and technology.

Content knowledge is related to the mastery of information, factors, theories, ideas, that teachers must have about the subject matter they teach.

Pedagogical knowledge refers to the techniques required to teach and learn correctly. It includes the understanding of which strategies or methodologies are more useful to use in one case or another, in order to achieve the maximum development.

Technological knowledge does not refer only to the management of a few basic technological skills, but becoming fluent with information technology, allowing the teacher to know when it is effective to use technology or not to carry out any task and in which ways he can do it.

These elements interact with each other and, as a result, 4 different relationships emerge:

- The first combination is Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), that relates teachers' pedagogical knowledge (this means what they know about teaching) to their subject matter knowledge (what they know about what they are teaching).

- Technological Content Knowledge (TCK) consists in how to use technology within a specific content area so that the integration of ICTs is effective during a lesson.

- Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) is the understanding of what technological skills can be useful to support and improve teaching methods for better results in students' learning.

- And, finally, the combination of all of these elements creates Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK).

3. Which are the essential ACAD elements, and how do they interact with each other? 

There are 3 key dimensions to the framework that are open to alteration through design:

Set design: How we arrange the physical or virtual learning environment. And any artifacts, tools and resources we introduce to support learning. All these things physically situated learning activities.

Epistemic design: Involves proposing tasks (make suggestions about good things for students to do). A task is a suggestion about something that is worth doing, and that sometimes involves subtasks.

Social design: Is how we propose how people work together. For example, working alone, forming dyads, groups or teams. Also the roles that we want them to play and the division of work between them.

They interact with each other to support the design of complex learning environments by thinking about what productive learning activity would look like in relation to the intended learning outcome, what environment and tools will best support students with the task and what social configuration is likely to further facilitate students’ learning. 

In other words, it is necessary to focus on achieving a strong alignment between the different elements, since the stronger the alignment, the more likely it is that the emergent activity will be productive and lead to the intended learning outcomes. 

4. How would TPACK be useful for you? 

- The knowledge of the subject or discipline that the teacher teaches makes him an expert and is capable of resolving the doubts and problems that arise in the classroom during the learning of the subject.

- The technological skills of a teacher allow him to be autonomous and independent to implement TIC in the classroom

- The teacher has a range of useful tools for students. He knows the digital tools that he will be able to make available to students so that they can work in groups, he will be able to dynamize these collaborative experiences and thus stimulate learning through new tools that allow him to present theoretical concepts in a practical way.

- Teachers have to be aware of the new technologies to be able to share that knowledge with the students.

5. How is TPACK related to ACAD? 

Both TPACK and ACAD are complementary, TPACKrelates all the technology used in class and ACAD refers to the design of these technologies and how to use them in class, for this reason the two are related. Technology is an essential element today because it allows solving problems in a simpler and faster way. It is also important that children become familiar with this type of technology because it will be useful in the future and they will be able to solve their own problems themselves. Of course, these technologies need to be organized in an efficient way to make good use of them and to know how and when to use them. ACAD is in charge of this. TPACK covers several areas of knowledge, it is important for teachers to use them because they better develop the abilities of students. In this way the two have to be related since they are complementary and crucial for a school today.

ROLES: 

JOURNALIST

Here we were steaking our cardboard on the wall, getting ready for the presentation.

This is how our project looked the day of the presentation. Rosalia and Carmen, our stars, explained to the rest of the groups what TPACK and ACAD are and why it is useful for us.

Here we can observe them exposing the project.

Meanwhile, Lucía, Laura and Marta saw the presentations of the other groups and analyzed them. They noted what they did well and ideas of things they could improve to make them look better. In our opinion, all the groups did very well.

We are See u on tuesday. We need to improve yet, however, we have motivation and interest and we aspire to do the best that we can. This content is related to technologies which is really important in this degree due to the importance of technologies in education nowadays.

TRANSLATOR

TPACK: Technological pedagogical content knowledge is an understanding that emerges from interactions among content, pedagogy, and technology knowledge. 

ACAD: Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) is a meta-theoretical framework for understanding and improving local, complex, learning situations. Explaining what this means requires some shared terminology.

CONTENT KNOWLEDGE is related to the mastery of information, factors, theories, ideas, that teachers must have about the subject matter they teach.

PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE refers to the techniques required to teach and learn correctly. It includes the understanding of which strategies or methodologies are more useful to use in one case or another, in order to achieve the maximum development.

TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE does not refer only to the management of a few basic technological skills, but becoming fluent with information technology, allowing the teacher to know when it is effective to use technology or not to carry out any task and in which ways he can do it.

Is there any critical part of the Teacher's action that hasn't been included in the TPACK-ACAD model yet? Is TPACK-ACAD sufficient to understand a teacher's job?

From our point of view, teachers also teach about economy, so maybe it is perfect to include economy in the TPACK-ACAD model, as this way students can relate the economy with technology because both are obviously crucial nowadays. It is also a fantastic way to teach this course because teaching with technology is always a funnier method to learn.

We think so, It is an interesting teaching by this method and also efficient for students, because It make them feel engaged and motivated at the same time that they are learning

CURATOR

ANALYST

The best thing about this job was when all the members of the group got together and colored and drew on the cardboard. On the other hand, the worst thing was having to organize ourselves because each one lives in a different place and it is very difficult to get together, so we tried to finish the work in class.

The best moment of the week was when in class we talked about how to do the work, how to divide the roles and learn about new concepts that we did not know.

The worst time doing the work was when we got overwhelmed because we couldn't come up with ideas or because we thought we didn't have time, but in the end with effort and work we got it.

We´ve learned what TPACK and ACAD is and why it is useful in our future lives as teachers.

We need to conserve our motivation because we are a group that likes to work together and we aspire to do the best we can. However, we need to improve our organization because sometimes we are not sure what exactly we have to do each one, but we are already working on it. This content is related to technologies which is really important in this degree due to the importance of technologies in education nowadays.

The purpose of an article that we found is to examine how elementary school teachers integrated technology into their mathematics teaching in classroom settings that were one-to-one computer environments for most of the day. 

This study involved classroom observations of two-third grade teachers. Findings indicate that teachers use Chromebooks in one-to-one classrooms to provide students with extra practice on computational skills. There is a need for future studies to look at teachers’ use of technology and its influence on student learning. Teacher education programs and school leaders should provide opportunities for current and future teachers to learn about technology with content specific examples. This study provided an examination of all of the third grade teachers in a school who all were teaching mathematics in one-to-one classroom environments.