The Oregon Education Technology Standards

Creativity and Innovation

Communication and Collaboration

Research and Information Fluency

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Decision Making

Digital Citzenship

Technology Operations and Concepts

http://www.iste.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=NETS

For thirty years, educators have been trying to define the duty of the schools regarding technology--specifically computer technology.

Initially, everyone thought we would have to teach children to become computer programmers--that in the future, educated adults would all know how to write code for their computers. As a result, many kids learned how to type in lots of gibberish letters, numbers and punctuation marks they hadn’t even known existed, just so they could make their computers draw a rose or a bell.

Later, folks decided that computers would soon replace books, pencils, notebooks, worksheets--even teachers--in the classroom of the future, and that students would learn everything they needed to know through “interactive” exercises. In response, schools invested in reading games, punctuation games and math games and children sat at classroom computers “practicing” their skills.

Rich schools (or poor schools with deep-pocketed benefactors) computerized their classrooms. The new “a-chicken-in-every-pot” fantasy was “a computer for every student.” Some schools installed terminals on every desk--no room to write or read a textbook--everything a student would need would be online! No need to interact with other students or a teacher--the computer was expected to fill every educational need.

At every step, schools have invested in hardware, software, training and ideologies that were always only a few months away from obsolescence.

The 1998 NETS are available on the NETS site illustrate the evolution of thinking about computers and kids. The first one is “understand the nature and operation of technology systems.” People still thought kids needed to know how computers worked. I don’t have to understand how my car works to drive to Kansas City!

The current NETS and OETS, with their broad, thematic scope and higher-order cognitive demands could be talking about any academic discipline. Finally, we’re beginning to understand that the technology is a tool to learning. Creativity, communication, critical thinking, citizenship--these are educational goals that can be reached in many ways--and technology is recognized as a means, not an end.

We don’t have to teach kids how to use the technology--we have to teach them how to use the technology to LEARN.

The big picture of what these standards are now trying to accomplish is to prepare students to live and learn in a technological world.

The best strategies for teachers that connect to these standards are simple, natural, imbedded and can’t be done another way better. For example, for my unit on the rainforest, I’m setting up a skype session between my classroom and my son who lived in the Amazon Basin for two years. Students can ask him themselves--since he lives in New York, we will use technology to bridge the distance. (Communication and Collaboration)

When I was a little girl and I asked my dad a question, he often said, “Look it up!” He meant in the encyclopedia, which he had taught me how to use. He didn’t show me how to use the index, or teach me about alphabetized entries, so that I would be an expert on encyclopedias, but so I could find stuff out. The same is true with the “Research and Information Fluency” standard. We don’t have to teach kids how to use computers so they can be experts on computers--we have to teach them the same attitude my dad taught me--you want to know something, look it up. And we need to teach them to compare, discern and judge the answers they find (that’s part of “Digital Citizenship”).

A strategy for teaching this kind of research fluency (and digital citizenship) might be to send several kids to the internet to find some specific information: “What was Shakespeare’s wife’s name?” “What was the name of the theatre where his plays were produced?” Then have them bring back what they learned and where they found it and compare their sources and answers with other students. Perhaps each student could try to find the information in five different places, then see if anybody found better--or different--or more complete information than their classmates--and where they found it.

The key is taking what we know is important about learning and education and ENHANCING it through the use of technology. Not everything works better when it is done technologically--but when technology broadens and lifts learning, that’s when we use it.