District Administration - June 2007 - (Page 35)

that education stakeholders can eﬀectively advocate at the state level, and provision of support resources for educators, students and parents to use in advocacy at the local level. [See www.edtechactionetwork.org and ISTE’s Ed Tech Advocacy Toolkit under “Advocacy” at www.iste.org.] DA: How important are the various scenarios presented in the NETS Refresh documentation? KNEZEK: The scenarios are extremely important, as they help educators and other stakeholders picture how the NETS might be achieved through a variety of approaches with the same activities teachers use to address core content standards. DA: PowerPoint is spotlighted in onethird of the scenarios presented in the NETS Refresh materials you provided. Does PowerPoint represent the state of the art or even something every child should be expected to learn and use? KNEZEK: There are extremely creative ways of using the features of presentation software to meet a number of the indicators in the refreshed NETS and to link to and disseminate products that demonstrate mastery of indicators in the NETS. If you are asking if we are promoting it as a “killer app,” absolutely not. Should students learn to use presentation software eﬀectively in their learning and productivity? Absolutely. I’m not familiar with all the scenarios in the document we shared with DA. If we are using the example of a call using VoIP as a demonstration of mastering one of referring all questions to the technology,” Papert has claimed. It focuses on whether “this use or that use of the computer is the right one.” Verbal inﬂation, which is related to technocentrism, is the common practice of inﬂating the signiﬁcance of an educational practice simply because it uses technology. Despite its lofty rhetoric about the global economy and the need for new educational experiences, the NETS Refresh assumes that schools will remain relatively unchanged and includes few novel examples of technology use. Standards documents by their very nature are aspirational. Do classroom PowerPoint presentations, often requiring little actual knowledge construction, represent the cutting edge of 21st-century learning schools should achieve? One-third of the scenarios in the NETS Refresh draft involve PowerPoint presentations. Is PowerPoint use critical in preparing students to be lifelong learners and contributing digital citizens in a global society? What if my school uses Keynote instead? Regardless of the presentation software employed, the educational value of making presentations continues to remain an open question. Another scenario presented in the draft involves young children reading a story about birds and then conducting a “mini-research project.” Is this research “mini” because young children are involved? Does the research process change substantially based on the age of www.DistrictAdministration.com students? The students then call an expert about this type of bird to ask questions. So far, so good. This sounds like a terriﬁc early childhood activity you might ﬁnd in classrooms over the past century. The critical variable that warrants the scenario’s inclusion in the NETS Refresh document is that the children used Skype to place the call. Skype is then explained as Voice Over Internet Protocol. Kids made a phone call! Does it matter how the call was placed? I hope not. This is an example of verbal inﬂation. Other examples include descriptions of students creating mind-maps (visual diagrams of the brainstorming process), looking up facts, making posters and even without a fundamental knowledge of the technology so central to their lives? What is one to conclude about the state of educational technology if agency over the computer was not a priority for any of the stakeholders (technology coordinators, corporate veteran and academics) involved in the creation of NETS Refresh? Is this an oversight or an anti-intellectual reaction to learning the science of complexity? While it is all well and good to promote “digital citizenship” as a standard, that goal is elusive if school network policies severely restrict access to the tools of modern democracy including Web chats, social networking sites, streaming video, blogs and wikis. “How are students to make productive contributions in a global society without a fundamental knowledge of the technology so central to their lives?” creating ﬁlms. Sure the computer may enhance these activities, but they were all possible without computers, the Internet or even technology standards. What is new? How does the use of technology advance education? Despite the emphasis on creativity, innovation and invention, the NETS Refresh documents fail to include a single mention of programming or computer science. How are students to make productive contributions in a global society Observation Is Not Insight The NETS Refresh draft also suﬀers from an exaggeration of the youth culture phenomenon. A great number of educational technology pundits and school reform gurus like to recite statistics such as the number of children who own cell phones or the hours of television they watch. That demographic trivia is then presented as wisdom even though it lacks any insight or recommended action. The NETS June 2007 35 http://www.edtechactionnetwork.org http://www.iste.org http://www.DistrictAdministration.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - June 2007

Contents
Editor's Letter
Letters
News Update
Security Update
Technology Update
Curriculum Update
Inside the Law
Admistrator Profile
District Profile
Refreshing the ISTE Technology Standards
Action Teams
RE-Construction
Professional Development for the New Century
Multimedia LIT
New Products
Leadership Books
Problem/Solution
Online Edge
Speaking Out
Supervisor's Opinion
Professional Opinion
Research Corner
Calendar of Events
Understanding the Times

District Administration - June 2007