June 2008 — News
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The Future of Instruction: Teacher as 'Co-Learner'
NETS-T 2008 expresses these concepts through a new set of imperatives and standards for teachers, along with rubrics for these standards. It also sets "essential conditions" for effectively leveraging technology for education, such as a "shared vision" for ed tech among stakeholders, granting leaders the ability to effect change, systemic planning, and several others.
Among the changes in NETS-T 2008 are five major new performance indicators for teachers. (You can contrast these new indicators with the old ones by clicking here.) These include (as paraphrased from the latest NETS-T document):
- Learning and creativity: Teachers use subject matter expertise to facilitate and inspire creativity in students, including inventiveness, problem solving, and reflecting, through the use of digital tools, collaborative tools, and co-learning experiences (i.e., teachers learning along with their students);
- Assessment: Teachers couple "authentic learning experiences" with assessments for evaluations so that students set their own goals for learning, engage in personalized learning, and are evaluated based on "multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards";
- "Digital Age" skills: Teachers exhibit fluency in digital tools, engage regularly in technology-based collaboration and communication, and "use information resources to support research and learning";
- Digital citizenship: Teachers promote "safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology," promote etiquette, and work to foster a global perspective in students; and
- Professional development: Educators adopt a model of lifelong learning and exhibit professional leadership through participation in learning communities, evaluation of research into the latest digital tools for education, contributions to the "effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession," and demonstration of leadership in education technology.
All of these take into consideration that teachers are "modeling and applying" concepts from the most recent National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS-S 2007).
NETS-T 2008 also includes an expansive list of rubrics for these performance indicators and scenarios for the various indicators delineated by proficiency level: beginning, developing, proficient, and transformative.
