ICT and the Curriculum... Everything can change!

This experience took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A teacher from a private school analyzed feedback from teachers and students, and felt that something needed to be changed in the way English was taught. She said that the problem began on the reliance on a course book when it came to deal with the subject. After a lot of reflection about this and consensus, the course book was abandoned and teachers began to design their curriculum and materials, taking into account the students' needs and interests.  This change was also aimed at integrating technology in the curriculum. The teacher implemented a project about digital storytelling that then was published online. Different web tools were used in order to carry out this project. For example, students selected some famous paintings and wrote a narrative "that linked the stories together." Then, with Windows Movie Maker, they created an animated slideshow and recorded the soundtrack for it. Another example is the recreation of part of "Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare using different tools, such as animated movie-making software Zimmer Twins.

In this case, TPCK was applied to change the curriculum. The topics (content knowledge) did not change; some of the activities (pedagogical knowledge) did change because of the addition of technology (technological knowledge). When it comes to SAMR model, we will see that the Redefinition level was achieved since the tasks that are given can only be accomplished by the use of technology (the teacher maybe thought of them before implementing this curriculum – she encouraged the use of technology in class - but because of the total reliance on the course book, they could not be put in practice.