As many educators are starting to figure out, NCLB has a section requiring technology integration and implementation. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has been out in front in articulating standards and performance indicators for educational technology. These standards have been articulated for students (NETS-S), administrators (NETS-A), and teachers (NETS-T). Like any model educational practice, these standards are periodically evaluated and refreshed on a timely basis. In fact, the newest version of the NETS-T are to be unveiled at this year’s NECC 2008 this week.
I just finished a session entitled “NETS-S in Action in North American Classrooms”. The workshop was put on by Bob Choquette of ISTE and Susan Brooks-Young. The centerpiece of the program was a collaborative look at four videoclips of students at work. These videos portray students -usually groups of students- working on a myriad of projects in classrooms across North America. In a group with two of my fellow attendees, I spent an hour collaboratively assessing each video for their alignment to the standards and indicators of the refreshed NETS-S standards (2007).
One really fantastic aspect of this session is the fact that all of the media we used during the course of the workshop is found online for further review. I hope we can get a great deal of good out of these little clips in terms of evaluation and alignment of technology standards for our kids. There is a really nice little “course” within the ISTE site that is already prepared to assist in facilitation of this learning.
I must end now in order to pay attention to my next workshop starting now entitled: “Professional Development: Models Integrating 21st-Century Tools”.
