iTeacher

Okay, it’s been a while since made a posting to iTeacher.  A long while.  I’ve spent the last year going through some major transitions.  I moved from Australia to the United States.  I also accepted a new job teaching instructional technology to 7th graders at Jackson Memorial Middle School in Massillon, Ohio.  I also enrolled in the School of Library and Information Science at Kent State University where I am studying to become a K-12 media specialist.  I hope to revitalize my blog again and re-join the conversation on e-learning and technology integration in schools.

I just read an article Technology: The Wrong Questions and the Right Answers by Ira David Socol.  I wanted to pass it onto you because it raised some excellent points about how we approach technology integration.  The article offers a historical perspective on the controversy of new technologies as they threaten the status quo in schools.  For example, the introduction of the student slates in classrooms in the 1840s was hugely controversial.  Imagine that!

Socol goes on to explain that education’s aversion to new technology has always been around.  Today many educators are asking whether or not we should use the latest digital communication technologies in the classroom.  Socol says this is the wrong question.  Instead, we should ask how we should use these communication technologies in schools.  These technologies are the means in which we communicate in our modern world and a necessary tool for business.

Says Socol: “Yes, we still have stone carvers. Yes, we still have calligraphers. But we no longer teach students to chase the duck, pluck the feather, and cut the quill.  We no longer teach Morse code … Now we must give up teaching that ink-on-paper is the primary information source. It is not. We must give up insisting that students learn ‘cursive’ writing. Instead, they must learn to text on a Blackberry and dictate intelligibly to their computer.”

The article ends with a bang.  Follow its link in this posting to read the entire article.

In the essay “At School, Technology Starts to Turn a Corner” (New York Times, Aug. 16, 2008), author Steve Lohr describes a contemporary model for 21st century education that embeds technology into project-based learning.  The “New Technology” teaching method is gaining momentum and is currently deployed in nine U.S. states.

The New Technology method transforms classrooms from lecture-and-textbook models into active, inquiry-based learning centers.  Students conduct research to tackle real issues and answer complicated questions.  They meet state standards and benchmarks by getting out of their seats and completing practical tasks.  According to the article, students in active, project-based classrooms perform better in class and on standardized tests.  They own the information because they had to discover it themselves through guided activities.

An excellent video from the New Technology Foundation website documents a math teacher at New Technology High School in Napa, California who starts her teaching units by looking at the state standards and then brainstorming how she can create real-world, hands-on applications for her students.  It would be a seriously fun math class where students get out of their seats, conduct experiements and work collaboratively.  Quite different from the textbook-and-lecture math classes I received in high school, from which most of the information sits in a dusty region of my brain known as the medulla iforgotta.

This week the International Society for Technology in Education released a promising update to its National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) framework.  The new standards reflect a new way of thinking about technology’s role in 21st century education.

The previous NETS-T standards maintained a focus on teacher-driven textual knowledge.  I am delighted to see that the updated NETS-T standards reflect a strong emphasis on the teacher as a co-learner and a knowledge facilitator.  Rather than merely delivering content knowledge to students, teachers are now expected to guide their students through a creative learning process that involves collaboration, innovation, problem solving and authentic learning experiences.  This is a significant step forward in re-defining the role of the teacher in 21st century society.  NETS-T 2008 is now on the right track.

NETS-T 2008 consists of five major performance indicators:

• Learning and creativity
• Assessment
• Digital Age skills
• Digital citizenship
• Professional development

For more information on NETS-T 2008, I invite you to read Dave Nagel’s article The Future of Instruction: Teacher as ‘Co-Learner’ in The Journal.