TPCK Tournament: March Madness in EDU 451

March Madness is my favorite time of the year, so I've decided to bring it into my Technology in the Classroom lesson today. This afternoon, my students and I are hosting a TPCK tournament. I designed a bracket with 32 technology tools. These 32 tools are going to compete against one another until we're left with one champion. To advance through the rounds, we're going to use two dice I designed in the free app Make Dice Lite. One die contains 6 different content topics (i.e. fractions, current events, photosynthesis). The other die contains 6 different pedagogical techniques (i.e. peer teaching, problem-based learning, role play). For each round of the tournament, a student will shake the iPad, I mean roll the dice. As a class, we'll determine the most appropriate technology tool to teach the specific content with the instructional technique (both determined by the dice). The tool that is the best fit for the content and pedagogy will advance to the next round, at which time we'll roll the dice again to see who advances further in the tournament. For the championship match-up, students will work in small groups to design a teaching scenario using the tool they think is the best match for the content and pedagogy on the dice. Groups will share the scenarios they design, and the class will vote on their favorite scenario. The winning tool will be the TPCK Tournament champion and will get a shout-out on Twitter from EDU 451.

You can download my TPCK Tournament bracket here.

Content and Pedagogy dice created in Make Dice Lite

Note: I only had about an hour to put this idea together, so the bracket isn't as pretty as it could be. I'll work on making it prettier for next year. (That's for you, Cindy Geddes.)