TPAK Model

Today I read a really interesting article titled “Too Cool for School? No Way! Written by Punya Mishra and Matthew J Koehler. This article explains how modern day technology and gadgets and phenomena such as Facebook, iphones, flickr, blogs, smartboard, Google earth etc can be repurposed to be educational. This article explains how as educators if we want to use technolgy to teach we require knowledge known as TPACK- Technological pedagogical and content knowledge. The TPAK model in very simple terms is the idea that teachers must combine content, pedagogy and technology for teaching to be effective when integrating technology into the teaching equation. Some of the key quotes for me in the article were:

·      “ As individuals we see a new technology and can appreciate its coolness but as educators we wonder how these tools can be used for teaching. The fact that a technology is innovative and popular does not make it an educational technology (2009, p. 15)”.

·      “Teachers need to develop a willingness to play with technologies and an openness to building new experiences for students so that fun, cool tools can be educational (2009, p. 17)”.

Overall I found this article to be of great interest. I find it fascinating how rapidly technology is evolving and I constantly wonder how teaching changes and continues to change as these technologies evolve. The main point that I took from this article was that these cool gadgets can be repurposed to be both cool and educational at the same time as long as the teacher ensures they keep up to date with the content that they are teaching, pedagogy and pedagogical issues and keep up to date with the never ending advances in technology.


Mishra, P. & Koehler, M. J. (2009). Too cool for school?  No way! Learning & Leading With Technology, 36(7), 14-18.

Martinez, E.( 2008) Technology 2008 [ photograph]. Retrieved from ttp://www.flickr.com/photos/91612584@N00/2946280569