TPACK+-+Harris+and+Hofer

Instructional Planning Activity Types Vehicles for Curriculum-Based TPACK Development by - Odd Man Out - Kalyn Harper, Kristen Motooka, Cheyenne Nall, James Pak, Vivian Yeh

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=Introduction= TPACK is specialized knowledge whose application aids in the integration of technology in the curriculum. It is the intersection of three larger categories of knowledge: technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content knowledge, in addition to being the intersection of the other three categories depicted below: pedagogical content knowledge, technological pedagogical knowledge, and technological content knowledge.


 * **Category of Knowledge ** || **Application ** ||
 * Pedagogical Content Knowledge || How to teach specific content ||
 * Technological Pedagogical Knowledge || How to use technology in teaching ||
 * Technological Content Knowledge || How to select and use technology to communicate specific content ||

TPACK is a complex type of knowledge because it then draws from each of seven interdependent aspects of a teacher’s knowledge. Harris and Hofer argue that the successful integration of technology needs to be based concurrently on curriculum and a learner’s learning processes. They propose that development should involve an activity-based approach to instruction planning with technology playing a supporting role.

=Instructional Planning = A teacher’s knowledge consists not only of their body of understanding but also the pedagogical skills they possess to be able to implement effective and meaningful instruction in different classroom contexts. In this way instructional planning is: Instructional planning using TPACK is not all that different from traditional planning; it just calls for integrating digital technology. When a teacher is planning they are making decisions regarding the selection, organization, and sequence of activities. While adding digital tools and resources can be a complex task, there are five basic instructional decisions that create any teaching unit:
 * Situated: instructors need to consider the classroom’s social environment, particularly the interactions of students that support learning.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Contextual: instructors need to consider the background of the students, including prior knowledge, language ability, and cultural background.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Activity-Based: instructors need to select appropriate learning activities that support learning goals.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Routinized: instructors need to plan learning activities in the context of the norms and routines of the classroom.
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Choosing learning goals
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Making practical pedagogical decisions about the nature of the learning experience
 * 3) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Selecting & sequencing appropriate activity types to combine to form the learning experience
 * 4) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Selecting formative & summative assessment strategies that will reveal what & how well students are learning
 * 5) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Selecting tools & resources that will help students to benefit from the learning experience being planned.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Therefore, in order to develop TPACK instruction teachers should “use curriculum-specific, technology-enhanced learning activity types as the building blocks for instructional planning.”

=<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 18px;">Developing TPACK Using Learning Activity Types =

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Learning activity types are utilized by teachers as means of planning and designing lessons, projects, and units for classroom instruction. The activity type selected is intended to correspond with the curriculum-based content that is being studied, and to help enhance the action or experience of what the student is learning. It is important for educators to develop the curricular objectives and goals before choosing the type of activity they will use along with it; this insures that the focus remains on student learning and the content, rather than the technology or activity. Thus far, TPACK is being implemented in K-12 schools in the following subjects: elementary literacy, secondary English, mathematics, science, social studies, and world languages.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 18px;">Sample Activity Types Taxonomy
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">In order to illustrate the TPACK development strategy, Haris and Hofer provide sample activities utilized in social studies, which are classified into three sets of activity types: knowledge building, convergent knowledge expression, and divergent knowledge expression.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Knowledge building learning activity types involve building content and processing knowledge. A sample knowledge building activity could be taking a field trip and the corresponding technology involved could be using Photo Story to develop a virtual tour.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Convergent knowledge expression activities are used when teachers want their students to reach a similar conclusion about a certain course topic. An example of this could be completing a review activity in which the technology used is Jeopardy on powerpoint.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">When teachers wish for their students to come to their own understandings of a certain course topic, they can turn to divergent knowledge expression activities. Haris and Hofer categorized these activities into five subgroups: written, visual, conceptual, product-oriented, and participatory learning activity types. For instance, a product-oriented divergent knowledge expression learning activity could be making a film using technologies such as Photo Story, iMovie, or Moviemaker.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5;">**Combining Activity Types**
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Activity types can activities can be used individually, combining them can result in more varied and engaging lessons, projects, and units. In addition, such combinations may cover a greater amount of curriculum standards. Greater numbers of activity types combined usually yields higher complexity, and less structure, which helps teacher in the selecting the activities.
 * **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Number of Combined Activity Types ** || **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Time/Structure ** || **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Description (Learning Types) ** ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">1 to 2 || * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Class time-efficient, highly structured
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Easily repeatable experience.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Often completed in 1 or 2 class periods. || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Comprised primarily of convergent learning activities. ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">2 to 3 || * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Class time-efficient
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Longer duration learning activity
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">More flexibly structured || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Comprised often of more divergent learning activities. ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">3 to 5 || * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Medium length
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Somewhat structured || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Both convergent and divergent exploration of curriculum-based content and process. ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">5 to 8 || * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Variable length,
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Somewhat structured, yet flexible || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Usually mostly divergent exploration of content and process. ||
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">6 to 10 || * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Flexible duration, structure, and content and process goals || <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">The longest and most complex of these combinations, and therefore would be planned relatively infrequently for use in most classrooms. ||

=<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5;">**Example Unit** = <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;">An example of a successful unit which employed TPACK learning activities took place in the sixth grade social studies classroom of Julie Bray and Darlene Russell. The history teachers decided that their unit on the Civil War would benefit from the integration of several of these activity types. They designed a project, The Civil War Voice Wall project, that required students to create short documentary-like films about individuals or events relevant to their Civil War studies. The teachers helped their students develop this project over time and broke the process up into stages: research, writing, and production. The students employed various methods; both technological and traditional, in their research, writing and development, and creation of their films. These activities ranged in use from utilizing the Internet to research and collect images, to creating sections of script in their notebooks, as well as developing paper-based storyboards, and editing their ideas using Microsoft Moviemaker software. In total, the instructors incorporated eight different activity types into this project including reading text, viewing images, researching, answering questions, historical weaving, creating a diary, engaging in historical role play, and creating a film. A combination of formative assessments throughout the various stages, and a summative assessment of the final films, was used to gauge learning success.

=<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 18px;">Conclusion =

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Harris and Hofer warn against a “technocentric” view when planning instruction. The focus should always remain on the specific learning goals and the learners themselves, which means that the goals and activities must necessarily be chosen before the technologies are chosen. Technology based planning rarely results in the attainment of learning objections because these objectives were not the primary focus of the instructional planning but rather an afterthought to a sort of technological demonstration. The goal is to align curriculum-based learning activities that support well-chosen learning goals and contextual realities with appropriate educational technologies.

=<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.5;">**Article Citation** =

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 16px;">Harris, J., & Hofer, M. (2009). Instructional planning activity types as vehicles for curriculum-based TPACK development. In C. D. Maddux, (Ed.). Research highlights in technology and teacher education 2009 (pp. 99-108). Chesapeake, VA: Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE)