Mentoring Report

By Elise Brady

The following report shows my progression in the development of my TPACK

knowledge based on my previous action plan. This report shows areas of success and
areas that need further development, and how I intend to progress my understanding
and knowledge of TPACK.

For my mentoring of others in TPACK, I mentored in the use of Microsoft Office,

Microsoft Outlook and managing social media profiles. I ran four separate sessions that
covered Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook and website navigation. In
all of these sessions only the very basics were covered as I was mentoring young
people who had either never used any of these programs before or only had limited
experience. For Microsoft word I covered how to change font size/style/colour and page
layout, as well as inserting pictures, tables and bullet point or number lists. In Microsoft
Excel we explored simple formulas and functions of the program such as sum, average
and count on as well as creating smart art and graphs/tables. In Microsoft Outlook I
covered most functions, from opening and reading unread email to sending/forwarding
new individual and group emails, creating groups and adding new email accounts.
Website navigation covered the basic types of websites that exist, the sections of
different websites, and the basic navigational map of a website. These mentoring
sessions were approximately one hour each in length and ran over four weeks.

Mentoring others has had a massive impact on my own professional development. I

was forced not only to better understand the programs I was mentoring in, but to also
effectively communicate to others how to use the programs and get the most out of
them. It is very important that a mentor/teacher not only knows the content of their
lesson but also knows how to teach it to others effectively. This experience helped me
to hone my skills in verbal communication as well as refine my knowledge of these
programs and ways that I can use them to enhance the learning of my future students.
My mentees enquired about functions that I had never used before, forcing me to
investigate and learn these new functions. There were also many suggestions made of
ways that these and other programs could be incorporated into the learning experience
of a student, which has given me a broader understanding of how to effectively
implement technology into the classroom. For example, digital animation has completely
changed the way science is taught and understood. Students can now watch a
simulation of what is happening in the human body, or the relationship between
molecules or the reaction of chemicals. This helped me to expand my technological
pedagogical content knowledge, which was one of my goals of this mentoring process.

Elise Brady 1080734 EDU103 Task 3

In my TPACK action plan, I identified three specific activities and two general areas of
TPACK that I would like to improve in. These were the management of multiple social
media profiles, website management and resizing files, as well as improving my
understanding of technological content knowledge and technological pedagogical
knowledge. During my time being mentored by others I was able to further develop my
skills in all of these areas. I learnt how to effectively navigate multiple social media
websites and manage a number of profiles from each different site. I also learnt how to
create and manage my own website that could be an effective tool to use to create an
online community for my classroom. I was also taught how to resize files, including
jpegs. During this mentoring process, I was mentored by a social media analyser who
also has a history in education. This mentor helped me to understand what
technological content knowledge and technological pedagogical knowledge really mean
and how it effects the classroom, my teaching and the learning (and possible learning)
of my students.

There are many areas of TPACK that I feel I will always require further development in
because technology is always changing, and as a result the ways we use technology in
our classrooms and incorporate it into the curriculum and pedagogical approaches is
always changing. In particular, however, I would like to continue to further my
understanding of technological content knowledge and technological pedagogical
knowledge. Understanding how technology can be used to provide new ways of
teaching content is very important to my teaching philosophy as I believe it is imperative
that students be exposed to a range of technology often in order to be prepared for the
real world. This is also one of the professional standards for teachers Standard 2.6
Information and Communication Technology Implement teaching strategies for using
ICT to expand curriculum learning opportunities for students. I have organised with one
of my mentors to continually (on a monthly basis) mentor me in TPACK and new
technologies that emerge. He will mentor me in the use of new technologies as well as
how these new technologies align with TPACK.

Bibliography
Australian Institue forTeaching and School Leadership. (n.d.). Australian Professional Standards for
Teachers. Retrieved from Australian Institue forTeaching and School Leadership:
http://www.aitsl.edu.au/australian-professional-standards-for-teachers/standards/list

Howell, J. (2012). Teaching with ICT: Digitial Pedagogies for Collaboratiob and Creativity. South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Elise Brady 1080734 EDU103 Task 3

Elise Brady 1080734 EDU103 Task 3