The 21st C skills involve developing competencies such as collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking with our students. Some studies have shown that employers want their employees to also possess ICT skills. I am beginning to think this falls under the umbrellas of pedagogical and content knowledge areas as well as technological knowledge in the TPACK framework. 21st C skills can be taught and should be taught explicitly (King, 2014). As an example to develop students collaboration skills, teachers should give students opportunities to:
Practice empathy
Delegate and share responsibility for decision-making
Help others to succeed
Take responsibility for one’s own actions
Manage and resolve conflict and work collaboratively in teams
Build consensus
Make fair and equitable decisions
Listen actively to other perspectives and ideas
Encourage others to contribute
Exercise leadership and take on a variety of roles within groups
The strategies listed above should be part of teacher’s instruction- their pedagogy.
Technological skills are also more increasingly important snd desired by future employers.
I think the TPACK model aligns with 21st C skills and gives teachers another dimension to think about under the three knowledge areas.

I’m starting off as non-committal. It is probably due to my not being involved in my career with TPACK. As I recall from previous readings, TPACK was a theoretical framework designed to help integrate technology into classrooms and represented the knowledge necessary to use that technology in classrooms effectively. So, at the top level it is a framework, as described by Mishra, there are three 3 Frameworks that are evident in his meta analysis of 21st Century Literacies. So if nothing else they have the word “framework” in common. As you look further at the 21st C literacies, the three frameworks are subtitled: to Know, to Act, and to Value. I do not think these three overarching frameworks are directly analogous to TPACK wherein we have Content, Pedagogical, and Technological Knowledge respectively CK, PK, and TK. I think these three components fit best into the first framework from 21st Century Literacies, that being Knowledge (to Know). As we dig in a little further we find that the interaction of CK, PK and TK lead to four other areas of knowledge TCK, TPK, PCK, and TPCK (Mishra & Kohler, 2006). This interaction phenomenon does have similarities with the 21st Century literacies in that they do interact, beyond that I do not directly see a relationship particularly with the to Value as described by Mishra. Flat out, I could stretch it and make one for a relationship with Value but I do think it is a stretch. Where I do find a connection to the lecture is between TPACK and the creative process. I believe it is impossible to separate (for one who instructs), the person instructing for 6 hours a day from the person the remaining 18 hours of the day. I think the TPACK construct/framework and the various knowledge areas that it entails combined with the experiences and behaviors of the individual teacher are what will fuel/spark the creative processes that will lead to innovations in the application of the technology to learning strategies and environments. In many cases these innovations will be N.E.W. I remember starting this off as non-committal. I think I’m still 50/50 on this.

I feel like I may be simplifying this too much but 21st Century Literacies seems like an update of TPACK, which is appropriate. In my mind they are equal but different in terms of adaptation. TPACK could be adapted today’s education system but 21st century literacies probably would struggle a bit to adapt to education in the mid 1900s. For instance, the “to know” components of core content knowledge and cross-disciplinary knowledge could be used in the mid 1900s but digital/ICT literacy not so much.

I am going to continue to present the argument that TPACK is also creative and can develop creativity. Mishra defines creativity as a “goal orientated process of developing solutions that are Novel, Effective and Whole (NEW)”. This is something teachers can develop in our students by exposing them to situations that require solutions to be developed and encouraging NEW. In the technological knowledge area we can create many opportunities for NEW development and it is up to the teacher’s pedagogical knowledge and strengths to be able to do this effectively. In teachers’ content knowledge area there are many opportunity for NEW because for students- a lot of content is that have not be exposed to before! As an example I can think of problem based project in math where teachers present content which could be approached in a NEW way, integrate technology in a NEW way and employ pedagogical strategies to allow for the development of NEW.

I think I may have answered this or partly answered this in the last question. There are similarities, the TPACK Knowledges and their interactions with one another and with the experience and behaviors of the teacher. I don’t know that it is fair to say that TPACK = Creativity, but I do believe that one having the the knowledge constructs identified within the framework would be important to that individual being creative in the application of technology to learning.

I may be simplifying this again (my lack of K-12 experience is showing), however, what scale are we using to say that children are less creative now than 20 years ago? With the the new technologies we have, clearly there is creativity out there and there is risk involved. I am self-admittedly not creative, I am very black and white about things. To me, a framework like TPACK takes creativity out of the scheme and gives one way to do things and one way to use technologies. The 21st century literacies seems to do the same thing, 3 components with other ideas branching off that can fit into any way of using technology in the classroom. I do agree that somewhere, creativity is changing, but we need to know much more detail about this idea just explicitly say it is diminishing.

I did a quick Google to distinguish these terms which are often confusing:

According to Oxforddictionaries.com:
multidisciplinary is an adjective that describes, “combining or involving several academic disciplines or professional specializations in approach to a topic or problem.”

Interdisciplinary is an adjective that describes, “of or relating to more than one branch of knowledge.”

Transdisciplinary is also an adjective that describes, “relating to more than one branch of knowledge.”

I really like how Mishra emphasizes the need for discipline specific content knowledge (under the TPACK model) but that many creative thinkers exhibit trans disciplinary thinking. Now this idea is very challenging to fit into the TPACK model as it involves developing students in branches/ disciplines outside of a particular content area. I suppose this idea is why there are many different disciplines and experiences offered at school in order to develop the person as a whole.

I love the title he uses, “we teach who we are”, this relates to a piece of the other article from 2004 about biases in technology. We all have biases and teachers will have biases, as they should, they should not deny them because that is why certain students gravitate towards particular teachers. This idea seems a bit different from 21st century to TPACK but similar in some ways. The overarching concept that these 2 frameworks/ideas on how to use technology in the classroom seems counteractive to being creative. This may work for half of all teachers but not the other half, I think that is OK and teachers should not be forced to do things one way if it simply doesn’t work for them. Using TPACK and 21st Century Literacies as a basis or starting point are a great idea but being able to manipulate them and be creative with them is a great idea.