Using Technology in Science and Math

TPACK is a really interesting concept. It makes me think back to my Child Development days. Just like children develop cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally, TPACK is composed of technological, pedagogical, and content components. As children grow in all their developmental domains, it makes them into a whole person. All the domains are important and interrelated but some children develop better in some areas than they do in others. If children make good progress in all their developmental domains, the value of their being will equal more than just the sum of their parts. And so it is with TPACK. Some teachers will be stronger in content areas, some stronger in pedagogical areas, and other is technological areas. But as we grow and develop in all three, we will give our students an exponentially better learning experience. It's not enough just to teach content, to foster a natural and interesting learning environment, or to integrate useful technology in the classroom. We need to let all these areas enhance one another to make our classrooms that much better. It will make learning more meaningful.

One of the technologies I explored this week was Stellarium. I loved it. I don't know how early we can start using it in schools but once kids start learning about constellations, stars, the night sky, etc. I highly recommend using Stellarium. It allows you to see what the night sky looks like anywhere in the world at anytime. It looks just the same as if you went to a planetarium or went camping and looked at the stars outside. But it has some really cool features. My favorites had to do with the constellations. First I went to the current night sky conditions for my hometown. Immediately I felt happy because I felt like I was close to home. Then I used the feature that outlines the constellations so you can see what stars make up each of the constellations. You can also get it to put the names of each constellation on the screen. But my favorite was adding the artwork. After looking at the weird stick figure shapes and seeing the names of each constellation, it was really neat and helpful to see the artwork that showed the picture behind the stick figure. It really helped the constellations pop out and I could see the image conveyed in the name. It was really cool.