My integrated unit lesson plan was shared with classmate Anne Murphy. We did our lesson on the Civil War. As part of our lesson, we decided to play a brief video for our 4th grade class as a refresher on our previous lessons throughout this unit. Anne and I also decided that a PowerPoint game of Jeopardy would interest our students as well as challenge their knowledge on the subject matter.
From my prospective, I would say that our successes were: (1) the class was interested in participating because of the competitive game we selected for them, (2) the students were able to test their knowledge and work collaboratively in regards to the game, (3) to the best of my recollection, we did not encounter any problems with the technology we chose to use.
Reflecting back, some areas which we could have worked on are: (1) the execution of the game/players - I'm referring to when we began the game we probably should have thought of which team would go first in choosing a question and then whether or not that team would answer the question or if it would then be the next teams' turn to answer, (2) also I think that a clicker would have been helpful for this activity so that both Anne & I would have been able to walk around during the game as opposed to one of us having to stay by the computer to click to the next question, (3) lastly perhaps some neat buzzards or some other technological device to buzz in with the answers - that would've helped with our technology integration as well.
I believe that content and pedagogical domain worked well with the technological domain in this particular lesson. The way our lesson was set up was that our students would utilize the web for research in order to learn more about the civil war, either via videos or websites, etc. Then once we played the jeopardy game they could still continue to utilize these technological tools, or they could test their knowledge and do it from memory. When Anne and I were deciding on our unit/lesson, the TPACK model guided us because we analyzed which lessons would work best utilizing technology versus those that would be a bit more difficult to incorporate technology. As Judith mentioned in her blog, "TPACK really does serve as a road map for teachers".
I enjoyed learning about TPACK as well as executing our lesson. It was fun and Anne and I were content and surprised that our students were so enthusiastic about the Jeopardy game!
I agree with your observations. The game definitely added to the level of engagement. One thing to consider is how you use the game beyond something to engage the students. It does serve as an assessment tool, but there's a danger of the quieter students holding back, and in the hectic-ness of running the technology, some students can be overlooked. But definitely some potential there.
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