October TPACK Reflection

This month I still haven't seen much technology in my fieldwork classroom.  Just the usual use of the projector and computer.  I however, found some activities that can mimic technology use to get the students excited.  I did fake tweets and Fakebook profiles with my students during their lessons.  For the twitter assignment, I taught them about American Imperialism, the purchase of Alaska, and the annexation of Hawaii.  When we were done, I told the students we were going to write up some fake tweets about how it felt to be in Hawaii at the time of the annexation.  I told them to take a important person from that time (Hawaiian sugar grower, American sugar grower, President McKinley, President Cleveland, Sanford Dole, Ambassador Stevens, Queen Liluokulani, etc.) and then write a tweet about Hawaii.  I showed them to examples, and they had a good time with it!

The fakebook profile I did after teaching them about the Filipino Rebellion after the Spanish-American War.  I gave them a blank profile template with either Filipino Rebel or U.S. Soldier at the top and had them fill out the important information, such as biography, status, recent activities, likes, dislikes, time line, etc.  I did this on in a group setting because after seeing some of the lesser creative students struggle through the twitter activity, I figured if they grouped up they would have two heads working on it.  The students had a good time.

I think while using these is not as good or as fun as using the same thing with technology, it still does a good job of working with what I have and trying to utilize the TPACK idea.  It certainly combines the pedagogy, the content knowledge, and the technology (to a certain point).  I hope that others can use what I did in my fieldwork class as inspiration if they see little technology in their classrooms as well.  I was inspired to do this assignment because of the group presentations we had in spring semester of Dr. Harvey's tech class.  My group did twitter and another did fakebook so it inspired me to use it in real life, but in paper form to work around the school's rules.