Reflective+Journal+for+the+week+of+January+18th

This week is week #9 in our course of study and in addition to finalizing my video of instructional strategy philosophy, our middle school team met yesterday to complete the team assignment for required for this week. We discussed the Teachers Needs Assessment Survey and our Student Needs Assessment Survey and created our "GAPS" document to examine the "gap" in what we thought we would find and what information was actually discovered via the surveys. This will help us to focus on our plan to implement for our building and students for next year as part of the ARRA Grant.

[|The following link] I discovered while reading some of the information regarding TPACK - Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowlege. One of the quotes within the article -

"The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as todiscover new ways of thinking about them." —Sir William Henry Bragg" could also be used to describe the main idea conveyed via the entertaining powerpoint presentation I viewed on the "Thinking Creatively Teachers as Designers of Content, Technology and Pedagogy videos provided within our course assgnment. The main idea I perceived after reading and viewing the material is that creativity is the answer or key to making the difference in teaching and learning in the 21st Century Learning Environment. One of the presenters on the video said that it wan't how many new toys and tools we learn to operate in technology but it's "how" we use them in the classroom and make "connections" with the technology. Once a new tech tool has been introduced to a teacher - then it's important that the teacher practice and become comfortable with using the tool and finding new and innovative ways to connect it to the content being learned. Instead of just getting comfortable with learning one new idea to use a tech tool - an effective teacher will create many new and innovative ways to teach and differintiate instruction.

The acronym "NEW" was introduced via the video presentation as an idea being 1.novel, and surprising for the students; 2. effective and valuable and useful; and 3. whole or having the ability of finding a new idea that is integrating and complex. The example given was demonstrating all the different "Rubric Cubes" that have been designed with different shapes and sizes.

In other words - the key ingredient is the teacher - who must be the designer or creator of the "Total Package" in cordinating and integrating Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge.