This week’s reading on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge was very

informative. One question that Dr. Wu asked us to consider was where we felt we
were in regards to our ongoing development in technical knowledge, content
knowledge, and also pedagogical knowledge. My background is one that is unique,
as my undergraduate degree was in secondary math education, but I am now
teaching within the finance department at Ohio University. Saying this, I feel like my
development in pedagogical knowledge is strongest. Over the past 10 years
teaching both at the high school and collegiate level, I have implemented multiple
methods of delivery and assessment of my material that I continuously evaluate to
better serve my students. These methods build upon what I learned during my
undergraduate classes in regards to different learning styles, different methods of
delivery, etc.

I find my development in content knowledge to be an area that is consistently

improving. When I first started teaching finance at the collegiate level, I had a basic
understanding of corporate finance, but found that there were often times questions
from students that I wasn’t always able to immediately answer. Over the past few
years, my content knowledge has increased substantially and I feel much better
equipped to answer some of these higher-level questions.

This brings me to the reading by Punya Mishra and Matthew J. Koehler. The initial
framework for teacher knowledge for technology discussion covered just these two
areas – pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge. With my background
coming from secondary math education, I always felt very strong in pedagogical
knowledge but felt like I needed improvement in content knowledge. I am now
much better equipped to join these two knowledge areas to reach my students.

The third component of technological pedagogical content knowledge is

technological knowledge. This is the area of knowledge that I feel I am lacking most.
Although I have been able to implement in the past the use of apps and a
Smartboard at the high school level and Kahoot! at the college level, I feel like there
is still a lot of room for improvement within technological knowledge. One example
in the reading of learning-technology-by-design was developing an online course. I
have been fortunate over the past few years to actually be able to design and
implement an online course for my introductory corporate finance class. This
method of learning by doing has been very beneficial towards increasing my
development in technological knowledge. Additionally, I really took to heart the
comment that Dr. Wu made in his lecture video regarding that technology must be
integrated appropriately, not just used. I feel that often times instructors use
technology just for the sake of using technology, but that it is not being used
appropriately to ultimately increase student learning. That is something that I am
constantly striving to improve through each passing semester.

Overall, this reading over TPCK has motivated me to better work within the overlap
of the three knowledge areas to better improve student learning and understanding.
Being strong in only one of the three areas isn't enough to best reach students. It
takes continuous improvement in all three areas of knowledge to be the best
instructor I can be for my students.