To PD or not to PD - that cannot be the question!
Jan MacNamara
Presentation on Friday, 30 September 2011 11:50 - 12:50 in room CG01
Our teachers need a comprehensive and supportive professional learning programme that recognises their individual pressure points in embedding ICT into everyday classroom practice. Staff need the how, what, when and why of harnessing the tools to enrich the learning experiences for their students.
This presentation shares the Professional Learning from a 1:1 notebook school where personalised professional support takes on a myriad of faces – whether it is targeted group instruction; customised online learning; participation in virtual Professional Learning Networks or good old fashioned team teaching.

Jan MacNamara
eLearning Facilitator
John Paul College
TPACK, NETS, policy and practice
National Technology Leadership Summit: Connecting TPACK and NETS via Research, Policy, and Practice
The TPACK Framework
To help us understand how technology fits within good teaching.
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Relating TPACK to the NETS*T
and NET*S - these are what can be the desrciption in the centre.
http://punya.edu.msu.edu/research/tpck
Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) for educators
Putting the theory into practice
At a summit, which brought together representated different professional associations, they looked at linking digital video with pedagogical goalds in different content areas.
The example shared in the NECC session was with the egg in the bottle experiment - using digital video and graphing as the technology.
TPACK and Legislation
This framework implies that the regime of testing and structured teaching of content is not an effective provision of learning. Policy needs to expand the notion of what it is important to measure. Associations have different perspectives on issues and it is difficult to get a concise voice to government in order to influence and create policy - they will respond to educational groups unless we have the same vision (and consistent jargon). It is also important to understand how we differ.
I wonder how much of this is true also in an Australian context? I think we are a bit luckier in terms of the connections that we already have between professional associations (eg. through JCQTA) but we could always do more. Also the fact that our government is not as reliatant on national testing as the main measurement of learning (well not YET).
Professional Associations and TPACK
There was an interesting discussion about how to embed the idea of TPACK across different content areas through publications and conferences of content (aka discpline) professional associations. Perhaps there is something that QSITE can take from this with regards to how we collaborate with other professional associations to challenge practice and inspire meaningful ICT infused learning.
Some Reflections
Comparing this session with the last one - I think that while a useful way of thinking about the interactions of pedagogy, technology and content knowledge it's perhaps not as useful as the UBD (Understanding by Design) processes from a planning point of view. The differeniating between the elements of technology, pedagogy and content may mean it is more likely for these areas to be thought of in a separate rather than an embedded way. Although... maybe these element are part of what is considered after already building the goals, understandings and essential questions.


