I, unfortunately, spent the first two weeks back from reading break ill. It was disappointing to miss so much class time but I was grateful to have my peer’s blog posts to look over. Missing class is always stressful and as grateful as I am to professors who post slides for me to reflect on, there is something helpful about being able to look at not only what was taught but what my peers got out of different lessons. After reading my Pods posts (as well as the slides and some googling) I feel I have some sense of what I missed in class.

It seems like people’s highlights from class week 8 were mainly about the SAMR and TPACK frameworks. Both of these frameworks highlight how tech can and will influence education. It is really interesting to think of how technology impacts teachers and how important/challenging it can be to keep up with technology. SAMR stands for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition, and TPACK stands for The Integration of Technological, Pedological, and Content Knowledge. I appreciate that both of these models are trying to make something very complex more palatable for teachers, specifically teachers who don’t have a tech background. I also enjoyed how the TPACK model focused on integrating the different areas, and acknowledged they could stand alone.

To get a sense of the similarities and differences of this model I looked at the Aspen School District website. They also had this helpful diagram.