Today at the 21st Century Skills Master Teacher Academy we looked at a lot of information, but most notably would be the Educational Technology Standards (which are available on the South Dakota DOE Website).  

The lesson plans that each of the participants of the Academy are required to create and subsequently post online are required to include these Ed Tech Standards as well. From just visiting with my advisory group, I know that there are going to be some great lessons available (not to mention that I am really excited about a lesson plan I heard about across the room that another high school English teacher is planning on Beowulf). 

The whole idea of standards is to install some sort of consistency in our teaching throughout the state. And, as I posted before, there is now a 46- state push to create national standards in English, Math, and Science. We seem too often to be inundated with standards and as I am trained in both Social Studies and Language Arts, I have really critically looked at a great deal of the standards that have been created for secondary students. I think that these standards may not seem as difficult to approach. 

Do I agree with standards? Yes and no. Do I want the Secretary of the Department of Education to tell me exactly what to teach in my classroom? Absolutely not. Do I want all students entering my Senior British Literature class (from any school district) to be prepared to read at grade level and understand difficult text, not to mention be able to write effectively? Of course I do! 

Standards are overall a very practical way to lay out a curriculum, but like most educators I know, I don’t want to be told exactly how to teach in every lesson in my classroom. The educational technology standards for high school seem to be very broadly written. They also seem to allow a lot of liberty for teachers to approach these standards as they see to best fit into their classrooms. As I have not yet aligned these standards to my curriculum, I resist the tendency to say that they will be easily integrated. 

 Most of these standards seem easily attainable for my classroom and for my peers’ classrooms in my district. They all do a lot of really amazing things in their classrooms with technology. This is something that we can do because of the resources that are available. The 1:1 Laptops, Promethean Boards, wireless projectors, and soon iPod Touches have made technological literacy in our district more easily attainable. I actually think that most of these standards most of our high school teachers already assess regularly through regular classroom projects. 

I invite you to check it out for yourself and rate your own proficiency on these standards– how well would you do?