Stretch Your EdTech Practice with ISTE!!

ISTE, or the International Society for Technology in Education, is a world-wide network of educators striving provide students with proper educational technology. Along with their AMAZING conference, which I hope to attend one day, they provide technology integration standards for a variety of school stakeholders. In this blog series, I will be focusing on the Educator and Student standards that have been recently revamped and rereleased. These standards provide a set of goals and guidelines for incorporating technology into the classroom. First, I will focus on this year’s brand new Educator Standards and the toolkit that was released with them. ISTE’s “Stretch Your Practice” campaign parallels the Educator standards with a yoga practice. They urge educators to reflect on their use of technology using the standards as a guideline and stretch the way we think about technology in order to grow our educational practice into something worth sharing!

The Educator Standards Toolkit includes all 7 educator standards, and the yoga poster and growth plan, as well as many other useful links and tools to help you grow your practice. This blog series will follow me through the process of growing my practice and analyzing the standards as I incorporate them into my classroom. Each standards will receive a post with a breakdown of the standard, my reflection about my practice, and some ideas about the incorporation of the standards in the classroom. After I have taken a look at all 7 educator standards, I will turn my focus to the 2016 Student Standards. Although these two sets of standards are very intertwined, for the purposes of this blog, I will look at them separately. I hope you will join me in looking at these guidelines and breathing life into our educational practice together.

The educator standards are a “road map to helping students become empowered learners.” This map includes seven standards for educators to follow in order to grow their educational practice and develop the students we see everyday into the adults we want to see running society in the future. It is impossible to extricate these seven standards from the matching seven Standards for Students. They are designed to help you better implement those student standards. The ISTE Standards for Educators strive to make you a better: Learner, Leader, Citizen, Collaborator, Designer, Facilitator, and Analyst. In order to create the best students we can and develop our students into empowered learners, digital citizens, knowledge constructors, innovative designers, computational thinkers, creative communicators, and global collaborators, we must look at these seven aspects of ourselves as educators.

Come learn and reflect with me as I delve into my educational practice and start to stretch the way I think about my students!

Part 1: Educator: Learner

Part 2: Educator: Leader

Part 3: Educator: Citizen

Part 4: Educator: Collaborator

Part 5: Educator: Designer

Part 6: Educator: Facilitator

Part 7: Educator: Analyst

Part 8: Student Standards