PART B - Application of TPACK

I have chosen Google applications, specifically Google Docs (documents, presentations, and forms), to help me teach my courses.  Google is a great technology for many reasons.  It stores everything online, so there will be no more excuses of lost flash drives or no printers or lost papers, etc.  Students can work together on projects.  I like this idea because I like to have my students do presentations, and often it turns out that one person has done all the work, yet both get the credit.  Using the revision history feature of Google Docs will create some ownership for all parties of a group to contribute.  As the teacher, I feel that I'll be able to comment on more students' work using Google because I can comment on their progress.  I can just go to the document or presentation or whatever, and comment instead of having to track down students to show me their work.  It will help me be very proactive in my students' learning.  Using Google forms will allow me to go paperless and create a more organized and productive setting, which will, in turn, help me become a better teacher.

Using Google to create my own presentations and documents for students will allow me to create a more interactive environment for students.  For example, I'll be able to create a lecture that could include video, audio, and text, and students could choose what path they'd like to follow.  I could make a presentation that shows a video of mitosis, so students could see a three dimensional representation of the process.  Hopefully that would make it easier to understand what it happening and how it looks in a cell.  Students could create presentations or documents where they make their own drawing or animation, which would help me figure out if they're really understanding the concepts being taught.

Using Google presentations will allow me to create a more flipped classroom.  Instead of me lecturing to the students, they could view lectures at home, then bring in questions during class.  I'm hoping to have students use this in order to experience the cell cycle or genetics in a more active way.  I can do more problem based projects for students and they'll be able to do more research on their own, then bring in questions to me, so I can help them during class.  I want to have a more active class and I think that flipping the classroom will let me get more interaction with the students on a personal level.