Thursday, January 28, 2010

Technology, Standards and High Jump



Last week's look at 21st century skills leads perfectly into this weeks exploration of the standards we set to help students and staff achieve/acquire these skills.

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL)has laid out an amazing document called Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. This document is based on the beliefs:
1) Reading is foundational.
2) Inquiry is vital.
3) Behaviour should be ethical.
4) Technological skills are crucial.
5) Access should be equitable.
6) Information literacy is complex.
7) Individuals need to learn unique thinking skills.
8) Learning is social.
9) School libraries are essential.

These beliefs provide the framework for an extensive set of standards in four key areas:

1) Inquiry/critical thinking
2) Decision making/creativity
3) Ethical/productive knowledge sharing/citizenship
4) Personal/aesthetic growth

The International Society for Technology in Education developed their own standards called National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) Summarizing their beliefs/standards would take more room than I have here but the following statement should give you a taste:
The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE®) is the premier membership association for educators and education leaders engaged in improving teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in PK-12 and teacher education.


NETS has standards for students, teachers, administrators and technology leaders. Student skills are ultimately the focus in the areas of creativity, collaboration, information fluency, higher order thinking skills, citizenship, and technology. (Click here for a more detailed look)

Marjorie Pappas (2008) has an excellent summary of both standards systems including contrast and comparison charts. She also bottom lines the purpose for these documents:
Technology initiates change at an exponential rate, and information technologies are at the heart of the information literacy standards. No Child Left Behind and a growing body of research about both teaching and learning have changed education over the past ten years (p. 22)


That final quote hit me more than the standards themselves. For some reason a switch flipped and I realized that I personally and professionally haven't acknowledged a technologically induced societal/educational change. I still have some sort of mental barrier that views technology as cool but not as fundamentally crucial to the success of my students. How can this be? I am the tech guy for my school? I love sci fi and I teach mulimedia rich courses.

Shortly after I read Marjorie Pappas I paused to look at what I was doing. I had two monitors running with 13 tabs open plus Tweetdeck (five columns worth) and iTunes downloading podcasts. 5 days out of my week are like this almost 6-8 hrs per day.

HOW COULD I HAVE MISSED THE POINT THAT JOYCE VALENZA, WESLEY FRYER, WILL RICHARDSON, AND OTHERS HAVE BEEN MAKING? The world has changed. The rules of the game have changed (see Jackie's Thoughts on Web 2.0). As a learner and as a professional, I am exhibiting the skills that my students need. I am 35 but I can honestly say that I don't know how I could do what I do without my technology, collaborative, creative, and problem solving skills. These are the very things the creators of AASL's and ISTE's standards are focusing on.

One major implication to stress here...how powerful can technology standards be if the people tasked to implement them don't fundamentally acknowledge their necessity? This goes even further...how can information specialists like librarians establish their place in education if other educational leaders don't understand/acknowledge the technological shift in the world? Zmuda and Harada (2008)touch on this link between acknowledgment of need, standards development, and standards implementation but they use the term mission:
Such clarification of what the learners must do to achieve mission goals defines for all staff what good business looks like in the library media center. Good business is work (instructional activities and assessments) that develops student learning around the goals that are most important (again as defined by the mission). (p.43) This article is a must read so please see the reference section at the end of this posting.


Successful students/staff need to work in an environment where the heart (mission) drives the mind (standards) and the limbs (people) of an organization. This is a cyclical relationship as the people of an organization are the heart of the organization.

In my opinion, many schools in the North aren't ready to implement NETS or the Standards for the 21st Century Learner. As leaders we are just beginning to recognize the need for the skills outlined in these documents. Once we corporately acknowledge this need, then these standards will be essential to focus our efforts and alter our practice. At present I am using these documents as conversation starters within our technology planning group. A place to start anyway.

My classmates have expressed a different scenario. They have the heart and the passion but within their Canadian context they lack clear/concise/practical standards or direction to define their roles.

One final scenario included schools with 21st century missions and some standards in place but had problems finding new teachers with the skills to pull it all together. This scenario hit home that the issue of new standards and skills impacts learners of all ages...including post secondary learners (Marcoux, 2008).

What does all this have to do with high jumping?



In order to complete my degree I had to take an athletics course. Part of this course consisted of a high jumping competition. In essence my world had changed and I needed to acquire a new set of skills. High jumping was no longer something I watched on TV. It became an essential skill to my success as a learner/professional. Sure, I could jump. Sure I could have found anyone on the street to teach me how to jump but for me to succeed I needed to know how to do it right. Thank heavens for my coach who had a heart for the sport, competed in the sport imself, stayed on top of the latest training techniques, and was an expert at helping others to meet the required standards. This complete formula is what we need to support our learners today.

I will close with a question and a quote.

This following quote is directed at librarians but it applies to all other educational leaders as well:

Learning standards are as important as librarians consider them to be. We have to be sure that as a profession we both master and model the skills that students are expected to demonstrate. (Dickinson, 2008)


Question: Who should serve as the high performance educational/technological coaches in our schools to help staff and students meet these standards?

For those of you interested in more of the specifics of AASL's and ISTE's standards, visit Ruth Elliot's blog.

Non-hyperlinked resources:

Dickinson, G. (2008). A place to stand. Library Media Connection, 26(6), 10-12.

Marcoux, B. (2008) New standards-refreshing our work, again! School Library Media Activities Monthly, 24(7), 18-20.

Pappas, M. (2008). Standards for the 21st-century learner: Comparisions with NETS and state standards. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 24(10), 19-26. Fantastic comparison/contrast/summary.

Zmuda, A. & Harada, V. (2008) Reframing the library media specialist as a learning specialist. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 24(8), 42-46.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks, Mark. I think you have highlighted some really important ideas here...standards (and having a goal to work towards) only will really be effective if teachers/teacher-librarians/administrators all believe in them and understand why they are necessary. Without the kind of buy in you are talking about it, nothing will change, even if we have the best standards in the world to guide our work. Your final question is a good one too--who should be responsible for implementing these standards? I would argue that TLs are in the best position to do so, but since so few schools in Canada have TLs, that isn't probably realistic. So, then is it the tech person or the administrator or ??

    Lots to consider!
    Joanne

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  2. I honestly think it is going to take shifting education from content based to skils based approaches. This will require everyone to be involved from parents all the way up to ministers. One weak or tangential link in the educational chain can cripple the best efforts. Maybe it will take a societal issue like obesity. Once people couldn't hide from the very visible issues kids faced, policies, practices, and hiring changed in many schools. Maybe once people see the skill starvation in our students, other required shifts will happen.

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