What do you need to know?

How can teachers and schools ensure that their students are learning what they need when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy?

There are probably as many different ways of accomplishing this as there are ensuring learning (without technology) is taking place. Since technology is constantly changing and the level of implementation varies around the world this is difficult to answer. However, to have success in this area students need to be given opportunities. A 1 to 1 laptop school will have more opportunities than a school with 1 computer lab, however, even this doesn't guarantee anything if the students are not using it appropriately.

If a school is serious about this, they need to implement an atmosphere encouraging use of technology and it might be necessary to have benchmarks at certain levels. For example, in Elementary students will learn how to type, write, internet search, podcasts, etc. In Middle school students will learn how to blog, voice threads, and do collaborative work with other schools in the world using things like wiki's or Google docs. Perhaps there could be electives such as moving making, etc.

Of course teachers should have the freedom and creativity to implement and use their own set of tools, but a few bench marks along the way can help everyone. For example, right now my environmental class, which happens to be made up of a lot of 6th graders at the moment, are doing blogs. It was great knowing that all MS students actually have their own blog already so it was easy for me to implement this in my class. However, the problem I found was the students knew the tools, but didn't know how to write a good post. It either lacked content, links, pictures, and/or a pleasant appearance. This is our first year implementing all of this so it is evolving, but it would be great to know that all MS students will have the skills to use the tools and have already learned what is required to make a good post. If you know what skills students are coming to you with you know where you can start and can go further.

At ISB we have a set of evolving tech standards. However, I am unaware of how well this is known or implemented.