Updated National Technology Standards For Teachers Released

A renovated set of standards for how teachers should improve learning through the use of technology was released last week in San Antonio, Texas at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Conference, the nation’s largest K-12 educational technology conference.

The standards try to shift the focus from technology tools to raising academic achievement and preparing students for highly skilled jobs of the future. These standards suggest the facilitation and inspiration of student learning and creativity. Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments.

Conference themes suggest the end of isolated individual learning and teaching. Instead they are seeing a shift to connected learning and teaching that transforms the classroom into a digital learning portal to the outside world, a world where students and teachers have almost the same access to information and where collaboration and sharing of knowledge are taking place across the globe to construct higher levels of knowledge.

A major theme of the National Educational Computing Conference this year was that the K-12 world is becoming flat—meaning that long-standing hierarchies of educational authority are giving way to more collaborative approaches to teaching and learning such as the use of wikis, blogs, and social networks.

To help educators face that challenge, ISTE unveiled a major revision of its educational technology standards for teachers. "The National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers" outline the skills and knowledge that teachers need to use technology more effectively in the classroom.

The first version of NETS-T, released in 2000, has been adopted by numerous states and teacher-preparation programs.

View an overview of the New Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (PDF download).

The new standards emphasize the need for teachers to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity, to design and develop digital-age learning experiences and assessments, to model digital-age work and learning, to promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility, and to engage in professional growth and leadership.