The Tech Savvy Teacher-TPACK

The content that I am focusing on in my lesson is the 3rd Grade standard in the Utah Core Curriculum that deals with the geography of Utah. Third grade science standard 5 states, "Students will understand the physical characteristics of Utah's wetlands, forests, and deserts and identify common organisms for each environment." The objective under the standard that we decided to focus on had students locate examples of areas that have characteristics of wetlands, forests, or deserts in Utah. In the lesson students were able to apply the knowledge that they had about the geography of Utah through identifying a variety of landforms.

The pedagogy that this activity used allowed for many teaching methods and practices. Students were given the opportunity to work together in small groups, talking with one another and sharing ideas with each other. The students were not limited to one correct answer, but were able to use their knowledge to investigate the many possibilities of landforms. I was able to assess their knowledge by viewing the pictures that they found and captured from Google Earth. The students also were able to share their images with the class and show more examples to their classmates. This is a good use of technology because students can teach and learn from one another, and it is a quick and easy way for teachers to gauge the students' understanding of the subject, by assessing the picture found by groups.

The technology that was used in this lesson is the Google Earth and screen capturing. This a wonderful program to use because it allows students the opportunity to search for and observe pictures of real landforms within the comfort of their classroom. They can view landforms from near and far. This is also a good program for pedagogy because it allows students to work in groups and share the different place that they found with their classmates. The screen capturing aspect of the lesson is good because it is what allows students to share their findings easily with the class in a future presentation.