Chapt 4 TPCK (E-TPCK)

In this chapter, the authors focus on the implications of emerging technology on the existing pedagogical and content knowledge of English teachers. For practical examples, the authors focus on preservice and novice teachers.

The first example of E-TPCK provided by the authors is that of a university in Minnesota where preservice teachers take content-area specific technology courses concurrently with content-based methods courses. In this way,like-content teachers are able to share practical ideas with colleagues. There are no math and/ or science teachers muddying the waters in this situation; it is purley for future English teachers. The university mentioned in this chapter goes even further to educate its preservice teachers in that it provides access to hardware and software that has been "purchased and upgraded" to promote the exploration and use of new technologies.

And yet, even with all of this exposure and access to technology, this model does not seem to produce technology-ready teachers. The authors point to several critiques of this program that point to its preservice teachers as unable to fit technology approriately into their planning and/or instructional schema. The auhors suggest that this may be due to the fact that these preservice teachers are meta-cognitavely unaware of their own understanding of technology and the relationship between technology (T) and pedagogy (P) and their own content knowledge (E-K). Therefore, these teachers who have taken a one-shot technology course and who've played around with some software have not yet realized how to accurately integrate technology and technological literacy into their actual classrooms.

This situation makes perfect sense to me. I remember my first year of teaching and the ways that I grew as a teacher during it. In that first year, I did not yet understand the realities of the classroom and the demands that teaching would put on me. Every year, I have come to realize and reassess new goals and objectives for my personal devleopment as a teacher. Technology was not initially at the forefront of my goal setting. It has now become a priority in my teaching, but there were so many other pedagogical and content related issues that took priority over technology during my first couple of years. Is that to say that I used no technology? Of course not. Webquests, CD making, videotaping, online research, and word processing were part of my teaching repetoire that first year. It was not until my third or fourth year, though, that I was able to set additional technology goals for myself and improve upon my skills.

I have to say that I completely agree with the authors' supposition that the number of veteran teachers who desire additional technology in their classrooms is a small number. In thinking about my own relationship with technology, I see that this is more than figuring out how to "add in" a few cool tricks here and there. If I'm not enhancing the learning experience for my students, who cares about the flashy new toy? I see veteran teachers all the time who siimply do not get this. They do not understand technology, are afraid of it, don't see value in it, make the wrong choices about where and what to add, and feel either defeated or falsely inflated about what their students have learned as a result of their efforts.

Could this be what is wrong with the university students in Minnesota as well? It seems like the instruction of all other literacies are done in a fairly purposeful way in most classrooms. English teachers have philosophies about the reading and writing processes, and yet some fail to see that technology is another type of literacy, albeit an emerging, ever-changing one. Just as we need to perfect our understanding of why and how we write and read, we need to be cognizant when thinking about the process of incorporating technology literacies into our classroom practice. Just as we push our students to interact with literature and to reveal themselves in their writing, we need to push ourselves to think about how we interact with technology and how it can enhance, not replace, the literacy learning in our classrooms.