Raising Awareness About ISTE NETS
The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) from the International Society for Technology in Education:
…have served as a roadmap since 1998 for improved teaching and learning by educators. ISTE standards for students, teachers, and administrators help to measure proficiency and set aspirational goals for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to succeed in today’s Digital Age.
It is very important that national and state legislators, local school board members, district and campus administrators, parents, teachers, and students know about educational technology standards and their importance in 21st century classrooms. The NETS can serve to not only focus attention on the importance of 21st century skills, but to also help educational constituents understand the specific skills as well as dispositions which learners today should possess in our digitally networked information society.
What do you think the most effect ways are to raise awareness at local and state levels for 21st century skills in general and the ISTE NETS specifically? When I was a teacher in the Lubbock schools in the late 1990s, the district hired a new technology director that helped organize a big “technology summit.” Alan November was our keynote speaker, and lots of good discussion took place that day about the need to focus on technology integration, digital literacy, and information fluency. It’s not true that all the conversations about 21st century skills ended after the summit was over, but I was personally disappointed we didn’t see more follow through and ACTION on the part of participants to both continue raising awareness about educational technology standards and CHANGE CLASSROOM PRACTICES to better meet these standards following the summit.
At a state level, Texas has the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Technology Applications. Other states have also adopted technology-skill specific standards. As far as I know, in Oklahoma we don’t have a separate set of technology standards for students or teachers, or have educational standards within content area standards which focus on digital literacy to the extent required by the ISTE NETs.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills is working to raise awareness this month about the importance of digital literacy skills as well as educational technology standards through its National Cyber Summit on 21st Century Skills.
Yesterday thanks to a Tweet from Jane Keyes, I learned about The iSchool Initiative. This project was created as a nonprofit by 18 year old Georgia student Travis Allen, passionate about raising awareness for the need to address and integrate 21st century literacy skills in our schools and promote CHANGED CLASSROOM PRACTICES which reflect this awareness. The initiative specifically seeks to catalyze support for 1:1 learning initiatives using small, mobile computing devices like the iPod Touch. According to the project’s about page:
Travis Allen formed the iSchool Initiative after coming to the sober realization that we can’t wait for government and school board bureaucrats to bring technology into our classrooms. This non-profit organization began with the simple idea that Apple’s popular iPod Touch just might be a solution for cost effective technology in schools. After sharing his iSchool concept with Teachers, students and eventually the principal of his high school, he realized this idea had tremendous potential to save schools money and at the same time dramatically reduce their carbon footprint on the environment.
Travis quickly realized there would be only one way to make this vision into a reality. He knew it would take a small army of people demanding cost saving, environmentally conscious solutions in our school systems before School Boards and companies like Apple, Microsoft and their developing teams would take on such an ambitious project. He began working on a PowerPoint presentation to make his case. This was soon after turned into a Youtube video that quickly began to build global public support for his idea. Next, he created a Facebook Group along with the iSchoolAdvocate, twitter page and finally this website.On May 11th of 2009, the day after Travis turned 18 years old, he registered the iSchool Initiative with the Secretary of State of Georgia as a non-profit corporation dedicated to bringing technology solutions to classrooms across America.
Travis is right, we CANNOT “wait for government and school board bureaucrats to bring technology into our classrooms.” We need local and state-level initiatives to both raise awareness about the importance of 21st century literacy skills and national educational technology standards, and also CHANGE CLASSROOM PRACTICES through collaborative projects. Personally, I think the focus of these projects should be on Creation, Communication, and Collaboration. These can be considered the “3 C’s” of digital literacy in the 21st century. We need more of all three in most of our classrooms, to effectively meet the expectations of the ISTE NETs as well as other frameworks for 21st century skills.
If you want to follow Travis Allen and the iSchool Initiative, you can follow @iSchoolAdvocate on Twitter. This is Travis’ YouTube video about the iSchool initiative and the iPod Touch. Travis provides an excellent overview of many compelling educational applications available TODAY for the iPod Touch and iPhone.
Digital literacy initiatives do not have to focus on Apple products or the iPod Touch specifically. There are a wide variety of technology solutions, including netbooks and other portable devices, which can be used effectively to operationalize the NETs. Travis correctly highlights the fact that the iPod Touch IS capturing the imagination of many educators and students, however, particularly given the proliferation of creative and powerful applications like those he highlights in this video.
What are leaders doing in your local community and state to promote awareness of and action on the ISTE NETs? Are there ways you can empower students to speak out and become local catalysts for change for digital literacy? Perhaps sharing Travis’ story and video is one way to begin.
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