Educational Technology Standards

I gathered from reading the Oregon Educational Technology Standards (OETS) that the overall big picture is for students to be well rounded and competent with technology. The standards outline a breadth of criteria (creativity, innovation, collaboration, communication, research fluency, critical thinking, problem solving, etc.) that are applicable both within the classroom and outside of the classroom in a real world setting. What I found most interesting is that all of these standards could easily be applied to any other important skill set that is required as a classroom standard or a workplace standard; for example, all students and employees must be able to work well with others, think critically on their own and be a contributing citizen. Essentially these standards recognize and validate technology competence as a crucial skill set for success (and in order to earn a diploma).

Below are three standards that struck me and how I will implement them in the classroom:

• Creativity and innovation: Students can read a passage or poem and predict what will happen next/the direction that the material will take. Technology can be used by creating a google presentation of a breakdown of what they think will happen next. Artwork, drawings, words, etc. can all be used in the presentation to communicate their ideas.
• Communication and collaboration: Students can create a google doc for their group projects. This way students can communicate from home, instantly be on the same page as their group members and easily work in a group setting.
• Research and Information Fluency: Students can research the author, time period, other pieces of work, literary terms, etc. with the usage of the internet. Their ideas can then be taken one step further by using Screenr in order to visually communicate what they learned. Students can create a presentation that shows the web pages they found and verbally articulate at the same time what they learned from each web page or image.

I interpreted the ed tech for teachers standards as a guideline for how teachers should model for students in order for them to learn and be able to apply technology skills. When teachers utilize and teach with technology, the benefit is that students can see how technology becomes applicable, useful and relevant in their own lives. Meaning can easily be enhanced with the use of technology, and the standards for teachers demonstrates this. In addition to the aforementioned benefits of using technology, students also learn how to use technology when their teachers model it in the classroom. For example, when a teacher creates and uses an aspect of technology (whether this be a blog, website, visual presentation, etc.) students see how the tool is being used and perhaps explore the technology on their own as a result of curiosity.

One of the challenges we face as teachers is that there is so much to know and technology is always advancing; consequently, it can be difficult to keep up. For example, prior to taking this course I had no idea that there were alternatives to PowePoint (google presentations) or composing all of my documents onto Microsoft Word (google docs). In order to overcome this obstacle, I need to challenge myself to stay current with the technology. I can learn just as much from my students as they learn from me. Technology is a huge part of life for students. Asking them what they know about technology gives them a "teaching moment" in which they can reinforce what they already know and take pride in the fact that they are teaching their educator; in addition to the student's benefits of teaching me about technology, I learn and stay current too.