eSchoolNews has an article outlining proposed changes in NETS for Students (NETS Draft). This is a significant issue for us – we have a book out there with a 2007 copyright focused on the existing NETS. Assuming the draft is approved, this is a good example of why books, while important, must be backed by readily available web resources. Hate to have students out there learning dated material.
What follows is an initial reaction.
I have been attempting to cross reference the surface level of the existing and the draft standards. The terminology has changed, but in some cases the change in wording mostly reflects an effort to use phrases that are currently in vogue (e.g., Technology Research Tools -> Research and Information Retrieval, Technology communication tools -> Communication and Collaboration). Note the draft standards include numbers to help us see how the older standards have been incorporated or reworded.
Looks to me like the “tool” concept is out. This will take some time for me to digest. In the early days, Cindy and I were influenced in our writing by Jonassen’s “Mindtools” and the message we offered was an attempteto help educators see that technology (in various forms) offered various ways to help students explore content area topics and skills. This was not the modal model (Note – this is not an original phrase, but I have been waiting a long time to use it). Going back even further, it was the third option in the tutor, tutee, tool model. Perhaps the removal of the word tool and the focus on verbs (communication, collaboration, research, information retrieval) is an effort to help teachers consider what students should be doing or learning to do. Not sure I think this change will necessarily be meaningful to most or that it would necessarily differentiate the role of those offering “technology” standards in contrast to those offering standards for content area instruction. Technology does, in fact, offer all of us various “tools”. Those of us who encourage the use of technology are pretty much encouraging educators to assist students in using such tools to accomplish a wide variety of curriculum standards. The application of the tools to the goals of content area disciplines is what I would see differentiating Science, Language Arts, etc. standards from NETS. This is very different than encouraging students to learn about technology (which is really one of the six standards) or focusing technology on improving efficiency (e.g., assessment, record keeping) or on direct instruction (CAI).
Anyway, the “new standard” concerns Creativity and Innovation. Is this the Tough Choices or Tough Times, flat world, etc. standard? I don’t mean to be critical – I like the message.
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