EDIM 502 Week 5_Students Meeting the NETS-S

The era of strictly pencil and paper classrooms has changed. The Internet, handheld devices, and free educational applications have changed the way of teaching. Although 21st Century Learning has been and continues to be a major struggle for many teachers, it has become extremely efficient and beneficial towards not only gaining the interest of students, but also furthering the student's understanding. Helping with this transition, the International Society for Technology in Education created standards for teachers and students to follow call the National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S). These standards consist of the following 6 categories:

1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Collaboration
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations and Concepts

These standards can easily be met through a mixture of 21st century learning and inquiry based learning. For instance, students may be probed with solving a task or presenting a product of his or her work. Through the Internet and Web 2.0 applications, soon to be 3.0, students can learn technology operations and concepts to more efficiently research solutions or information needed. The students can also collaborate with others via Web 2.0 tools, such as through Google Docs or a Linoit board. From a teacher's standpoint, this may seem frightening that students can easily share work. The reassuring aspect of Google and many other Web 2.0 collaborative applications, are their revision history. Making the students aware of this tool within the application, creates a sense of accountability and digital citizenship. 

Students can also become more critical thinkers and problem solvers through these Web 2.0 applications. For example, a student may be asked to solve a task such as designing a wall speaker mount that allows the speaker to rotate or re-position itself in three different ways. Through online research consisting of videos, animations, online discussion board, etc., the students can formulate an idea of how he or she would solve the problem. The student could then take that idea a step further and use a Web 2.0 application like Google Sketchup to digitally design the product. The student's entire process of researching, designing, and then displaying his or her product via a Web 2.0 application like Prezi, Voice Thread, Podcast, etc., would bring the student's creativity and innovation full circle.

References:

National Educational Technology Standards for Students. (n.d.). NETS For Students 2007. Retrieved November 19, 2012, from www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007