The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has standards for teachers and students to help guide technology-related education. These standards are inter-related, which may be obvious, because the teachers must develop a particular level of technology skills in order to teach students to develop some of the same skills for the 21st century workplace they will be entering.
The NETS for students are creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making, digital citizenship, and technology operations and concepts. The NETS for teachers are facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity; design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments; model digital-age work and learning; promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility; and engage in professional growth and leadership (http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx, 2010).
The major connection between all of the standards is that the teacher is modeling and promoting the lifelong skills, so that students can see them on a regular basis and apply them to their learning and technology-use. I think a great way to encourage students to grow in the standards outlined by ISTE is for them to be aware of what they standards are and allow them to set their own goals for growth. There are six categories, which can even be divided into smaller subcategories of skills, that students can explore and use to set goals for accomplishment. At the beginning of each quarter, students can develop their own GAME plans, based on their strongest and weakest standard. Each student can have a small journal to record their plan: goals, actions, ways to monitor, and evaluations/extension. At the end of each quarter, students can evaluate if they have strengthened their area of weakness and extended in their strong area.
Reference:
International Society for Technology in Education. (2010). NETS. http://www.iste.org/standards.aspx.
I agree modeling is so important in the classroom. Students are always looking for examples of real life situations. How would the students identify their strong and weak standards? How is this measured?
ReplyDeleteAshlee, I believe that the standards need to be incorporated as part of the learning outcomes for students- the content outcomes and skills outcomes. This is a way to ensure that students meet all the required standards assigned to a course before they move on to the next course.
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