NETS-T Refresh - NECC 2007 075933

This was an exciting event.  ISTE has provided leadership with the NETS for more than 8 years.  The NETS-Student was unveiled at the conference.  I fully support the resulting work of refreshing the NETS-S.  Being from Canada, we don't follow the NETS as requirement. Last July, I looked to many places for leadership on Information and Media Literacy.  NETS-S provided some insight but it was missing something.  As you have read earlier in my blog, we created our own IML Student Learning Capacities.  It was wonderful to see our IML very closely aligned with intent and even wording to the NETS-S.  After discussing the NETS-S at our table, the goal was to consider what NETS-T would look like.  Our table was so impressed that NETS-T should follow the same idea as NETS-S.  Teachers need to be information and media literate.  Much of the existing NETS-T included what I see as just good teaching - NETS-T 2,3,4,5. I would like to see that NETS-T take the 6 aspects of NETS-S and add a layer of the Art and Science of Teaching.  So much of what I believe so deeply is that we need to remove the concept of technology as something to learn.  Teachers teaching so students can learn will involve the use of technology but the focus should remain on learning.  Meeting the diverse needs of students can no longer be managed within the blinders of traditional literacy only.  A synopsis of another session by Will Richardson is appropriate here.  Students graduating today with skills taught traditionally will need to be re-taught when they are hired.  Intel has more than 26 000 internal bloggers and more than 20 islands in Second Life.  I don't know of a single Secondary English teacher preparing their students for this career opportunity.  (I realize this is a strong statement - If you know of any teachers that grow students literacy that prepare them for this environment, please contact me and I will immediately correct this blog.) More from EdTechConnection blog http://www.edtechconnection.net/blog/2007/6/24/necc-2007-nets-refresh.html