Tuesday, March 8, 2016

TPACK & SAMR: Similarities & Differences?

TPACK and SAMR
       
      The 21st century has brought us many great technological advancements. One huge thing that has changed for the better, with technology, is the way we educate our students. Without technology, most teachers now would struggle to get their lessons across to their students. Young people today always have their face shoved into a laptop, cell phone, gaming system, and other electronic devices. Implementing technology in the classroom allows for students to use their technological understanding to help educate them to the best of their ability. TPACK and SAMR are two methods that help us to couple technology and education together the best ways we can.
      TPACK and SAMR are two very similar things but also are two extremely different ideas. In this blog I will explain the similarities and differences.

       TPACK is Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge and this is what shows teachers how to improve their teaching with implementation of technology. Technology could be the use of a SMART board, iPads in the classroom, laptops, chrome books, cell phones, and more. Pedagogy is how you teach. Every teacher has a certain way they like to teach or how they think information is best retained and that is their pedagogy. Content is what you're teaching whether is be out of the book or found online, you have to be teaching some sort content. All of those combined create TPACK, a great way to incorperate technology into learning. 


        SAMR is also a way to put technology in the classroom in hopes to improve learning. It stands for substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition. Substitution is putting a technological system into education that could be done equally as well without technology. An example is Microsoft Word. Augmentation is still technically a substitute but it allows for slight improvement in learning. A google doc being shared between students could be an example of this. Modification is a significant change for the better with technology. Google docs being used to see what people change as they do it is a great example of this. Lastly, redefinition. Redefinition is a complete change, making it a completely new task. This could be thought of as D2L, where we can see every assignment a teacher has and also make comments on a students post. 


      These two things are both ways technology is implemented in the classroom. These help improve students learning and should be used by more teachers everywhere! 


Cited sources:
Schrock, Kathy. "SAMR." Kathy Schrock's Guide to Everything. N.p., 9 Nov. 2011. Web. 06 Mar. 2016

Koehler, Matthew J. "TPACK Explained." TPACKorg. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Mar. 2016.

"SAMR/TPACK." IPad Bootcamp for Teachers. Web. 09 Mar. 2016

images: 
http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html
http://www.ipadbootcampforteachers.com/samrtpack.html