Quickfire TPACK

CEP 810 Week 6 and who knew I would be cutting Gruyère with an ice cream scoop?

This week we studied Koehler and Mishra’s theory of TPACK – technological, pedagogical and content knowledge.  In a talk by Mishra at the 21st century Learning Conference in Hong Kong, he discusses technocentrism and reminds us that even the pencil and paper were new technologies at one point, and moreover, encourages us to think about how tools can be innovatively repurposed to learn creatively.

This week’s quickfire activity was to explore that idea of repurposing by having someone select any bowl, plate and utensil that we would use to complete a randomly chosen task.  My task was to cut hard cheese – I had some Gruyère left over from this week’s Chicken Cordon Bleu, YUM! – with an ice cream scoop.  In this case the plate was the cutting board and I didn’t need the bowl at all.  The outcome isn’t beautiful, but hey, it worked!

On a side note, this task reminded me of the time I was in graduate school and used a spaghetti scoop to make mashed potatoes….funny how limited resources can spark creativity…