I may not really have my own cooking show, but while filming this assignment I felt like I was on the public access television version of Cutthroat Kitchen. On this show, Alton Brown offers up sabotages (cooking all your food in a play kitchen, making pasta in an espresso maker, using golf clubs as your cooking tools, etc.) for auction to four competing chefs all making the same dish. Each chef is given $25,000 to spend on the sabotages which they dole out to their competitors. The food is taste-tested by an unbiased judge through three rounds of cooking until one chef reigns supreme. I wasn’t being judged, nor was I competing against anyone, and I definitely was not given $25,000, but I was assigned my own “sabotage” in that I had to let someone else pick out the only three cooking tools I was allowed to use and select the food I had to prepare by picking one of five pre-determined choices out of a hat. While I am pretty sure I will never actually be on Cutthroat Kitchen, or have my own cooking show, it was fun to at least pretend for a day.
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So what does this have to do with technology, let alone education? Well, the “Cooking with TPACK” assignment is a metaphor for teaching with TPACK (Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge). As I say in the video, it is the “take what you got, and give it your best shot” approach. Very often teachers are not provided with enough/the right technology and therefore they have to make do with what they have. This often involves repurposing something in order to make it appropriate for the lesson you are trying to teach. In this activity, cooking tools were the technology, fruit was the content, and my knowledge of fruit salad and how it is made was the pedagogy. Just like in the classroom, I did not have a say in the technology or content I had to work with. However, using my pedagogical knowledge in relation to these two domains allowed me to successfully complete the task at hand. Teachers use TPACK to make informed decisions regarding how and when to integrate technology every day. Similarly, while making fruit salad I made decisions regarding how and when to use a vegetable peeler, bowl, and plate.
Just as I repurposed the peeler in this activity, I have also repurposed technology in my classroom. For example, last year I used FaceTime to give directions to a student with autism even though he was in the same room as me. He could not decipher voices from environmental sounds and therefore missed directions frequently; conversely, he was attuned to anything on a screen no matter what was going on in the background. I used my knowledge of the technology available, my student’s needs, and my teaching skills to find an unconventional use for FaceTime as an instructional tool.
I learned a lot about making do with what you have in this e̶p̶i̶s̶o̶d̶e̶ assignment. Whether it be a new curriculum you aren't familiar with (bananas), insufficient technology (vegetable peeler), the situation created by the interaction of these two things (slippery and messy hands), or pressure from administration to perform at a certain standard (no reshoots!), teachers must be able to adapt their approach by adding a dash of this, or a smidgeon of that, in order to produce a consumable lesson despite limitations. After this experience, Cooking with TPACK is my new "go-to" recipe for student success.
I learned a lot about making do with what you have in this e̶p̶i̶s̶o̶d̶e̶ assignment. Whether it be a new curriculum you aren't familiar with (bananas), insufficient technology (vegetable peeler), the situation created by the interaction of these two things (slippery and messy hands), or pressure from administration to perform at a certain standard (no reshoots!), teachers must be able to adapt their approach by adding a dash of this, or a smidgeon of that, in order to produce a consumable lesson despite limitations. After this experience, Cooking with TPACK is my new "go-to" recipe for student success.
P.S. I have had this song stuck in my head ever since I was assigned fruit salad.