NETs and the "Good Educator"

I believe that as effective educators, parents, and citizens, "...(we have the responsibility and right) to ensure our students are educated in 21st century classrooms by teachers who have the skill and training to teach well in them” (quote from The International Society for Technology in Education website). This week's essential question, "What obligation is there for teachers and administrators to meet these (ISTE NETs) standards?" and related blogging question, "How relevant are the NETs for Teachers and Administrators to being a "Good Educator" today?" can both be answered by the above quote from the ITSE.

In today's world, technology has become ubiquitous and essential to our day to day life in developed and increasingly so in developing countries. It has become integral in ways both tangible and intangible in most aspects of our day-to-day life. As educators we are responsible for providing students with the skills, understandings and attitudes they need to live successfully in society, so how could we not accept or believe relevant the need to learn and teach the effective use of technology in our schools and classrooms. I believe it is the professional duty of teachers to develop, demonstrate, and teach the skills, understandings and attitudes of 21st century digital citizens.

Schools already have set standards for professional practice for their teachers and administrators. Some of these standards already recognize the relevance and importance of technology and information literacy to a teacher's or administrator's professional practice. Looking at ISB's teaching standards and comparing them to the NETs-T standards, there is a clear overlap. Where the overlap is less clear, with minimal additions but simply explicit reference to technological tools, media and environment, current teaching standards could easily incorporate the ISTE NET standards for teachers. See this linked document for a comparative alignment of the ISTE NETs-T and ISB's Teaching Standards.

Although some teachers may resist such integration or addition of new technology and information literacy standards into an already long list of professional standards for teachers, while other teachers fear the inclusion of such standards due to the dynamic and exponential growth of information and technology in today's world, teachers cannot just bury their heads in the sand and ignore the changing digital landscape of the world around them. Good teachers and good teaching have always been very much about remaining current and connected to the world around us (with our pedagogical practices and curricular content), being adaptive and responsive to the changing needs of our students and society, and integrating the new and the old and synthesizing the two in our schools and classrooms.

For schools and teachers, the questions become not "What obligation is there for teachers and administrators to meet these (ISTE NETs) standards?" and "How relevant are the NETs for Teachers and Administrators to being a "Good Educator" today?" but "How can teachers and administrators meet this obligation—the obligation to model, facilitate and inspire life long learning and creativity for students as they take on the role of responsible leaders and 21st Century digital citizens?"