Joyce Valenza’s Neverending Search

Today’s issue of eSchool News announced ISTE’s release of a draft of the new NETS for students. It seems like only yesterday, but the original version of these heavily adopted standards about what students should know and be able to do with technology, have now been around for nine years.

Yippee! It really is time for change and these new standards focus less on the technology itself and more on how learners/citizens might thoughtfully employ it.

The standards are organized around six new categories:

• creativity and innovation;
• communication and collaboration;
• research and information retrieval;
• critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making;
• digital citizenship;
• technology operations and concepts

The article quotes ISTE CEO (and friend) Don Knezek,

“these new student standards focus on skills and knowledge that students need to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital society … Cognitive and learning skills, as well as creativity and innovation, are the focus now–and information and media literacy are also elevated [in importance].”

Knezek described the changes as a shift away from a focus on “competency with [technology] tools” and toward a focus on the “skills required in a digital world to produce and innovate” using technology.

ISTE welcomes our input and feedback on this critical document.
I look forward to thinking about these standards. And I look forward to updates of NETS for teachers and administrators.

Note: I may be a bit quieter over the next three weeks as I work to push this dissertation out of my laptop. (The babies were easier.)