ISTE Standards for Students

    Ok, ISTE means International Society for Technology in Education. At the introduction part, it talks about the necessity for students to be a digital skilled person in literacy

    Well, if you go to the http://www.iste.org/docs/pdfs/20-14_ISTE_Standards-S_PDF.pdf, the standard for students, you could see that it has 6 areas covered there. A first look would be ok, it's good and simple. But then i come to the question, to what age or grade level? It would be difficult for Kindergartners with a senior high student with the same one. Apparently, the standards just offers us a general guideline. i would say it better than none. Right! We could go on expand the standards anyway. I suppose it includes the area that i should think of. Besides of the age/grade level groups, i would argue it sets up different standards for different stages of development. Standards is what we used to measure. SO it need to be more exact.
   As i went through these 6 areas, i was thinking of Ashley's class with their theme poem and story jumper project. First of all, this technology integration is only part of their writing project. It is another way of writing. Not replacing the way of writing with a pen. However, it shows that students need to be taught of basic computer and online searching skills at a very young age by now. It is a new challenge to kids, as they now do not focus only on their writing, which is already a complicated a process, but they have to cope with the typing, basic computer skills, arts, and etc. I totally understand the way that you raised your hand, but it is just a click then the problem could be solved. But you could do nothing until somebody comes to help! Waste of time and you see that you are left behind!
    Collaboration can also be seen during their writing. Children are always talking to their shoulder friends even if they had trouble themselves. They were trying to help and it is nice of them to share with each other!
    Well, the last area is really difficult for young kids, i believe. Ashley told the kids that they could finish their picture book at home if they wanted to. The boy stood beside me told me that he could not because he did not have firefox on the computer at home. It shocked me first for him to know firefox, and then i told him it would be fine for him to use IE or chrome or safari too. Well, i don't know if he could understand with only a few sentences of my explanation. But how could we explain such a difficult thing to a 1st grader? Are they ready? Are we ready? I remembered that i met a similar problem two years ago when i applied to change my visa status online by USCIS. I had to call the custom service for a reason and then i was transferred to the technical department. YES, you had to go on their website then on a particular browser which i had to download at the time while holding on the phone. Thinking back, it was hard for me, because i had to understand him over the phone to explain in technical terms of what it looked at.
    Technology is changing our life, our way of living and thinking, to what extent we are not sure. I totally agree that there should be a standard but should be more detailed than this one. Looking the Core standards, i simply could not finish reading them in minutes. I need hours to understand what it is talking about!