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TPACK

I could go into an explanation of TPACK and its importance. But you've already done a lot of reading, so let's just:

TPACK + The Empathy Project

At its root, my entire research project was about the power of optimizing our technological knowledge, skills, and tools to nurture very fundamental interpersonal skills. I'm taking skills like empathy and cultural competency, that I believe are generally consider extreme in-person skills, and trying to cultivate them in through virtual, online connections. We took classic pedagogical and content knowledge, and moved them to an online environment. In this case, applying technological knowledge wasn't a choice to be made. It was the point.

The shortcomings of pencil-to-paper activities when connecting with people living in different cultural contexts was obvious and inherent to the process. It was impossible to remove new technology from the equation even if the activity was one that could have been done without it. So the default was removed entirely. The question wasn't whether to use tech tools. It was which tech tools to use. Which is a good argument for making sure you have as many tools in your toolbox as possible. A hammer is great, but when the combination of content and pedagogical knowledge, and context, begs for a skill-saw, you really don't want to have to be hammering away.

Ultimately, my experience with TPACK is a reminder to make sure my ability to build and effective learning experience for my students isn't limited by, well, me. To make sure I'm constantly stuffing my toolbox with all of the content, pedagogy, and tech knowledge I can so when the time comes, I can combine them to make the greatest impact.

To learn more about my experience with TPACK and thoughts about its role, visit my blog post here.

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