NETS Standards for Teachers and Students

According to the ISTE's NETS for Teachers there are five standards for teachers. Standard five is 'Teachers Must Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership.' This means that teachers should "continuously improve their professional practice, model lifelong learning, and exhibit leadership in their school and professional community by promoting and demonstrating the effective use of digital tools and resources."

Teachers constantly growing technologically in their professional practice is very important because the world is constantly growing technologically. There is always some kind of new tool or program coming out that can help further the education of student's and ease their learning. Also, the students in every teacher's class are always going to be using the newest technology. Using computers in class really entices student's and lets them have fun with educational sites.

There are workshops available to help teacher's learn how to use educational and technological programs that would be great to use in the classroom. One website that offers courses online for teachers is World Wide Learn (1999). This site offers online workshops intended to help teachers learn the newest technology to further their students education. Another way for teachers to learn the newest technology is in schools with regular programs. There is a school in New Orlean's called Martin Behrman Charter Academy and twice a month this school has a Technology Thursday. On Technology Thursday's the Assistant Principal "presents a three-hour training session that brings staff up to speed on technology for teaching, record keeping, research, and more (Banks, 2009)."

The ISTE's NETS for Students states that students should be able to use technology to "apply the basics in authentic, integrated ways to solve problems, complete projects, and creatively extend their abilities." This is to allow students to be on a path to lead a technologically advancing and contributing life. There are 6 standards in the NETS for Students. Standard 4 is Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making. This means that students should be able to "use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources."

It is very important for students to be able to solve problems and do research via the internet and technological programs. The internet is a fantastic resource and a great way to find out information. To do research used to take much longer because people had to find encyclopedias and look up all the information they needed in several books. Now when doing research all that is needed is a search engine. With a few key strokes and a click there are millions of pages of information instantly. Students need to learn how to use this information to learn effectively.

There are a few different things that teachers can do to teach their students how to properly use technology. One thing that teachers can do it teach their students to use search engines properly. There are many search engines on the internet such as Google (2009, Google), Yahoo (2009, Yahoo), and Ask.com (2009, Ask). To use these search engines just type in the query in the search bar and click search. Teachers can teach students what sites are more trustworthy than others as well as the difference between .com, .org, and .edu. Another thing teachers can teach their students is how to use computer-based encyclopedias such as the World Book Encyclopedia (2009, World Book). These are encyclopedias that are at many school libraries and contain only information that can be found in paper copies of encyclopedias. Students can be sure that this information can be trusted and do not have to distinguish whether or not it's true.

By: Alaina Latella