At the beginning of last year, I quickly mentioned a new model of teacher knowledge. It is called Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK).
Upon the concept of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), scholars developed an action theory of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). PCK recognizes the importance of considering approaches to teaching in particular subject. Beside PCK, this framework also defines Technology Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) and Technology Content Knowledge (TCK). Obviously, TPK recognizes the integration between technology and approaches to teaching, while TCK emphasizes the relationship between technology and teaching methods. The integration of all the three is TPACK. This TPACK framework provides an explanation about how content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge form a foundation for the implementation of educational technology.
Now that we just completed a very special online semester, technology was one unavoidable element of teaching and learning in the time, therefore, the concept of TPACK seems extremely relevant to us when we reflect on our practice in the past semester.
“Effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter requires developing sensitivity to the dynamic, transactional relationship between these components of (teacher) knowledge situated in unique contexts. Individual teachers, grade-level, school-specific factors, demographics, culture, and other factors ensure that every situation is unique, and no single combination of content, technology, and pedagogy will apply for every teacher, every course, or every view of teaching.”
When I talked about the TPACK model in January 2021, the 2020 COVID lockdown was past and we never had a clue for the coming of 2022 lockdown. I don’t know how many teachers remembered and got interested in the model after my talk. After experiencing another long period of online teaching, probably more teachers would be interested in considering questions like, “How technology can be integrated with my approaches to teaching?” or “How technology can enhance students’ understanding of certain topics in my subject?”. So, I think it is worth mentioning the TPACK model again before we go on to reflect on our online teaching stories today.
Online teaching during 2022 COVID Lockdown
Schools in Shanghai were asked to teaching lessons online from March 14 2022 with a quite short notification from the government. When teachers and students scrambled to enter a new mode of teaching, learning, and probably living, everyone had hoped the lockdown would last only a few weeks and the school would resume like what happened in the year of 2020. The cold reality smashed this hope and the lockdown kept most teachers and students working at home through the end of the second semester of the 2022 school year.
The 2022 COVID lockdown forced us again into a mass experiment with online teaching and learning. Regardless all the difficulties and frustrations associated with the online teaching, it was no doubt that we learned and improved technology integration into teaching, learning, and student assessments. Not only did our teachers deliver live online lessons over more than three months, but also, they prepared, organized, and monitored mid-term assessments for most grades and final assessments or examinations for all grades.
When it comes to teaching, especially teaching online during the COVID, like the quote above says, every situation must be unique. Although the leadership team tried to observe some classes, spoke with teachers, students, and parents to learn progresses and concerns in our online classrooms, it is impossible for us to capture all situations. We already learned many touching stories in which teachers spent hours to learn and prepare technologically integrated lessons, for example using a range of interactive tools such as Padlet to engage students more. Teachers were creative in using new online tools and resources, for example integrating Online Classrooms provided by Shanghai Education Commission. Teachers were also persistent in delivering high quality live teaching regardless lack of resources, for example painting materials in Arts.
We were impressed and touched by all the stories that we learned during the past three months and a half. But we know there must be more unique situations and stories among our teachers. These situations and stories are worth to be shared with other teachers in the community and probably others in the larger teacher community in Shanghai and China since we all faced or could face the demand of online teaching. Learning from these experiences could make us more prepared and confident when we will have to walk into another time of online teaching at some point in the future. Also, as you will see, many of these skills can be very useful even when you teaching normal classes in real classrooms. You must have observed that at least technology and online resources broadens the choices of teaching and learning resources and enable student understanding.
Strategies and benefits of online teaching and learning
The high school teacher librarian Miss Tiffany Zhan became a star during the online teaching. She used her knowledge and skills in information technology not only in her own classrooms but also observe and summarize practices among high school teachers.
Tiffany put together recommendations and resources and share them with all teachers in the SABS community. Obviously, her expertise and efforts heightened the awareness of technology integration for our teachers and her recommendations possibly improved some classes. She went deeper based on what she learned and tried to examine what she observed from a theoretical perspective. She said in one reflection, “Despite the fact that I do not believe that technology can solve all of the problems in our education system today, I do believe that it can aid us in engaging students, connecting with families, helping students find their voice, preparing students for the future, and inspiring students to discover new talents and interests and possible careers.” I think these words provide an excellent summary of technology integrated teaching and learning in the just past special semester.
Tiffany also made a list of ten main strategies for technology integrated teaching.
1. Use digital classrooms and learning management platforms;
2. Create student centered and personalized learning experiences;
3. Use technology to increase student engagement;
4. Flipping classrooms and uses technology to do away with textbooks;
5. Give students opportunities to share their knowledge in differentiated ways;
6. Use technology to teach 21st century skills, including Critical Thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication;
7. Bring abstract experiences to life through augmented reality and virtual reality;
8. Extend classroom walls using technology;
9. Teach digital citizenship;
10. Using technology to promote social sharing.
Managing online teaching and learning
When teachers and students faced unprecedented time of online teaching and learning, managers in the school also had to learn how to operate this organization online. Although technology made almost everything possibly to be done remotely, the efficiency and quality of the work is worrying because of both the sense of out of touch and control in the completely online environment and true loss of effectiveness of teaching and learning due to restrictions associated with working remotely.
The leadership team did not stop at the worries. We came up with a few key strategies to make sure online classes were in order, teachers performed well, and students kept learning. We believe the following four strategies really helped us maintain a relative high quality of online teaching and learning in the school.
1. Form a special leadership team and task force for online teaching management
A leadership team met every afternoon when the lockdown started and later met every two days when teachers and students all got used to working online. We discussed everything matter in relation to online classrooms, including teachers’ performance, technology issues and support, students’ engagement and behaviors, and parents’ complaints. All division heads, General Principal, the Executive principal, IT director, Psychology teacher are all on the team. We created a temporary Wechat group to share notifications, meeting minutes, and emergencies.
2. Create and apply uniform and consistent standards of online teaching
We used the same Standards for online teaching, that we used in 2020 COVID Lockdown. Also, we created the same survey tool to gather feedback from students or parents. The survey was also used three times in 2020. We asked divisional principals to discuss with teachers about the standards and implications. By all these methods, we hope to bring every teacher on the same page and up to the same speed when we continued teaching online.
3. Organize teacher trainings and sharing
At the beginning, IT dept organized a few technology training, user guides and instructions were shared with all teachers, In the middle of online teaching, more training and teachers’ sharing about the use of online tools and effective online lessons were organized.
4. Provide teachers with timely feedback
The special team met frequently to learn progresses and concerns out of online classrooms, feedback and advice were given to divisional principals at the meetings, the principals went to communicate with teachers or others and make sure all matters were addressed and followed through. The three surveys on quality of online teaching provided the leadership team and teachers with client feedback. Divisions reflected on the results and make changes in their practice.
I want to share the results of the three surveys on the quality of online teaching. Clients’ feedback commended our effort and achievement. In addition to the survey results, I also learned from each division that no parent refused to pay tuition because of the online learning and no student left our school because of the quality of online teaching. In the face of this result, I think we should be proud of ourselves.
Every situation is unique
We already learned many good practices over the past a few months when I worked with teachers in the school. To prepare today’s report, I sent a request to curriculum leaders in each division, hoping to collect several more stories of good teaching practice. I received many more images, video clips, and stories that I had expected. These materials that I collected lent me an opportunity to see what happened in more subjects and classrooms, which I could not have time to visit as they happened. I had more profound understanding of the observation that every classroom and every situation of teaching and learning is unique. I also found some common attributes out of these good examples of teaching with technology, for example the importance of creativity and persistence. As a result of this learning from those collected stories, I would like to share my observation with all the teaching staff. In doing so, we can not only recapture the creativity and persistence that we all exercised during the lockdown, but also learn from each other’s practice and experience. I believe you will be greatly impressed by the creativity, persistence, and the pursuit of high quality of teaching and learning of our teachers.
1）Large online events
Semester closing ceremonies
At the end of each semester, schools would organize closing ceremonies. Students are expected to meet teachers and classmates before they begin the holidays. The middle school and the high school both organized online ceremonies to summarize students’ achievements. Especially, the high school semester closing ceremony was design under the theme of celebration of learning, the students anticipated to receive praises and awards from the Principal, Group leaders, and teachers. The high school regards this ceremony as an important educational event for students because it is an opportunity for teachers to emphasize our standards and expectations to students. The HS admin team creatively used the technology, overcame a couple technological difficulties, and made the ceremony an engaging, meaningful, and memorable event for all students and teachers.
Online concert
The music department held an online concert on April 2, 2022.This concert invited students from the KG to the HS to showcase their musical performances online. The show was received by parents and the society extremely well and warmly. The live broadcasting of the concert broke the playback record of the platform and the recorded concert was watched by a record high 5500 people altogether.
2) Homeroom meeting and activities
Teaching online was already extremely frustrating, to manage a Homeroom with 30 something teenagers became even more devastating, if not possible, as the Homeroom teachers lost almost all regular methods that they could ‘manage’ the group of students under supervision. You can’t check if students are studying; you can’t see if students are fooling around; you can’t even know if students’ get up in the morning! To make it worse, some students as well as parents became upset and even depressed because of the long period of isolation.
I know homeroom teachers in all divisions tried their best to beat the limitations of online management. Homeroom meetings were moved into Tencent rooms, engaging team building activities or physical exercises were organized by the teachers, and extra one-on-one consultation sessions were offered when students or parents needed. For example, the MS homeroom teachers discussed topics of safety education with students, while one HS homeroom teacher organized cooking competition in the class to enrich students’ lives at home.
PS school teachers used a variety of technologies to engage students and involve parents, including the Reading Record in DingTalk, ordering favorite songs before classes, getting chances to share works in online groups, meeting one student a day, etc. These techniques brought the students closer to the homeroom and the teacher, and better engaged students in learning when they had to be alone at home.
3) Kindergarten lessons and interactions
Young kids couldn’t sit still for more than 15 minutes in real classrooms when the teachers were jumping and singing for them. Now the kids were at home and the only control the teacher had was your sound. How could kindergarten teachers managed to engage kids in online learning? It appeared that our excellent teachers had magic force with them and the technology made them even more powerful. They used Classdojo to encourage and praise participation, online talent show really engaged every kid, some small incentives made kids experience rewarding learning, and self-assessment tools linking with IB Learner Profile were also designed to improve kids’ self-management skills.
Reading online interactions utilized the combination of PPT and video/audio clips, integrating picture book stories, children's songs, and ancient poetries. These activities not only improved the fun of learning, but also strengthened children's understanding and expression of the picture book content. Also, some interactive themes are in line with traditional Chinese culture. The assessment of this type of activities required kids to answer questions, sing songs online, or submit recorded videos. Obviously, children loved these online interactions and learned knowledge and skills from them.
4）Assessment and examinations
Online assessment is an unimaginable area for teachers before the lockdown. How do we give out exam papers? How teachers invigilate? How students submit after completion? How teachers mark the papers? Tons of questions could be thrown at you if you dared to propose online assessments at school. The pandemic changed everything. You had to face this fact that you could only see your students on screens when they took the exams. You figure out what to do in order to ensure the fairness and integrity of assessments.
The HS had to tackle this problem, and the administration team and teachers collaboratively made it happen. Many of the exams were even high-stake assessments such as DP2 Mock Exam, which would largely determine their university application results. Please take a look at the statistics. During mid-term alone, the high school organized 125 exams, with only several minor technological and behavioral incidents. 63 teachers participated in online invigilation, 29 inspectors supported and monitored the exams. The regulations and procedures for online examinations were created and all teachers and students were carefully trained. Two devices, including one computer and one smartphone, were required when each student sat for an exam. An invigilator had to take eight steps to start a session of exam, including turning on recording and setting “Chat with host only”.
Similarly, the mid-term and final assessments in the PS and MS were carried out in an online format too. These assessments created significant challenges to teachers and the staff in the Curriculum and Teaching Department. It turned out that we successfully conducted all the tests and exams and all teachers involved gained valuable knowledge and skills in terms of the organization of online assessments. I learned that some assessments were paper-and-pencil based, while some others were interactive or conversational. The pandemic pushed our teachers to be more creative in terms of student assessment. For example, the PS Science group used a range of creative ways to organize online assessments, including the use of Talk Ring in Ding Talk, live question-and-answer sessions, and assessment of students’ group discussion by prepared rubrics. In MS, mind map was used as tool to assess students understanding. Formative assessment tools can be used for the purpose of summative assessment, whereas summative assessment can also be design in the form of formative assessment. At the end of day, supporting continuous of students is the purpose of everything we create and carry out in these online classrooms.
5) Online Classrooms in various subjects
I received examples from various subject groups in all the four divisions. I was deeply impressed by good practices of online classrooms and especially technology integrated teaching. Teacher creativity in using technology seemed to be unleashed by the lockdown.
In PS Sciences, virtual simulations were conducted and demonstrated to replaced real experiments in labs. Powerful technology enabled teaching and improved students’ understanding. For example, PS Science teachers used Physics Lab and The Human Body Lite to engage students in deep learning.
While the most popular online learning management platform in the PS was Ding Talk, I learned the English teachers in PS also used ClassDojo and Tencent to diversify students’ learning experience. For example, one G3 lesson focused on topic of Sky. The teacher chose a special mode that was related to the topic to attract the students. Kids could see themselves in a spaceship, which made them very excited. The use of Classdojo helped connect the teacher and the students. It has proved to be an excellent class management tool to help her keep track of students' progress week after week during the online learning
Two PS Class of Rose teachers also provided me with good examples of using technology. The teachers used appealing pictures and other media to bring kids into the context of learning. Students were required to share their writing in Dingtalk so timely feedback could be given out. In an IPC Science-based lesson the students inquired about which shapes can hold the most weight. This required the teacher to carefully plan to consider what materials learners could easily access at home during lockdown and careful scaffolding to ensure the learners can complete the task remotely with no direct/ in person teacher support. The lesson turned out to be success. Students not only completed the task but also managed to showcase their works through screen.
Many good examples of online teaching from the MS and HS too. In the middle school, some teachers use Groups and real time commenting tools in Tencent in order to increase interactions among students and between the teacher and students. Student engagement was improved by these methods. One Humanity Science teacher used a range of multimedia tools, such as voting machine, random wheeling, anonymous messaging to activate learning and improve participation. The groups in Ding Talk were also used to observe and assessment students’ learning achievement. In the Sciences group, teachers used NOBOOK to conduct virtual lab to help students practice lab skills and enhance understanding. The math group even created an online drilling tool to provide 10-15-minute short exercises for students. The tool would provide immediate feedback after completion so students could correct and learn on their own. The data generated by the tool also helped math teachers to know the progress and problems in students’ learning. Perhaps, this was the math group’s first contact with the so-called Big Data implication in teaching. In foreseeable future, I believe Big Data will be used more and more in the education system, as well as in our school.
Many good examples emerged from the HS too. Perhaps the HS teachers experimented with most online tools than the teachers in any other divisions of the school. As I mentioned earlier, the HS teacher librarian observed the tools that were use the HS teachers. Virtual lab, Padlet, Slido, Classdojo, Class123, Quizzie, Wechat groups, Nearpod, Canva, Mentimeter, Name Wheel, Midi Keyboard, Magmastudio, Pro Create, and Artsteps. Just looking at this long list of tools so you know HS teachers are risk takers and life-long learners who strived to provide engaging and quality teaching to students during the COVID lockdown.
Music, Sports, and Arts
Music teachers insisted on teaching violin and flute online in PS during the lockdown. Online musical instrument course is very difficult to teach because students were hard to see the teacher’s demonstration and the teacher was hard to correct students. The teachers still overcame the difficulties so that children could keep learning and practicing at home.
In the high school, the DP music teacher also marched on theoretical and practical teaching regardless limitations of teaching online. Not only did the teacher demonstrate different musical instruments but also students were asked to share their musical experiments using composition software.
Probably PE was the most difficult course when students and teachers were locked at home. No enough space, no facilities, lack of motivation of students, all made the lives of PE teachers unbelievably tough. Our PE teachers tried the best to design and lead lessons that motivated and engaged students. The teachers required kids to practice activities following their demonstrations; they set clear class rules and give specific instructions so kids wouldn’t fool around when the class was on; they also used interesting APPs and programs to create a community of physical exercises.
Arts is also a difficult area to teacher when it has to be done online. Remember students and students were asked to go home with a very short notification when the Omicron broke out in the middle of March. Either the teachers or the students didn’t bring home sufficient materials and tools to use for learning and practicing in Arts. Teachers in our school made the best use of their creativity and guided students to use all types of available tools and materials so that students wouldn’t lose learning in Arts. The Arts department also organized lectures and exhibitions to enrich students’ learning experience during the lockdown.
Conclusion
Hearing and seeing all the stories that I presented above, you must have a better understanding of the line ‘every situation is unique’. Every class is different, every student is different, under COVID lock the same class and students could be more different than what they used to be. So, teachers must be adaptive, they also must be creative. I didn’t mention many teachers’ names in this report, because the purpose of it is to share exemplar practices. I want to highlight the practices instead of praising individual teachers. Yet, behind every story of teaching there are teachers’ persistent effort. I keep all the evidence associated with this report. Under pandemic and home quarantine, every one including teachers had the right to be unhappy. However, because we are teachers, we know we must keep up and happy when we open our camera in front of students. This kind of professionalism and persistence made us resilient and stronger. In pursuing high quality of our work, teachers must be persistent even in the face of adversities like the COVID lockdown, pandemic couldn’t stop quality teaching and learning.
Finally, let me mention the concept of Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) again. The teaching stories that I shared above all demonstrated how our teachers integrated technologies in their using some pedagogical methods to teacher certain content. Virtual experiments were used to organize group activities in an online Physics classroom, for example. Tools in one learning management system were used to engage students in responding to English questions. Although we were probably forced to use so much technology in teaching due to the COVID lockdown, the TPACK we learned and practiced became part of our wealth that can be used by us from now on, be it teaching online or in real classroom. Everything has its positive side, this experience is also a good example of it. When teachers are creative and persistent, high quality of teaching and learning is promised.
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