u05a1 - NETS 2.0

u05a1


Nets 2.0 


As education continues to change and evolve, so must the standards and practices of teaching.  For 21st century learners, the use and integration of technology is a must in order for our students to be ready for cutting edge careers.  The International Society for Technology in Education has created the National Educational Technology Standards for Students, or NETS-S, so that educators can aligned material with technology in order to integrate core standards.  Student use of communication, collaboration, and publishing Web 2.0 applications can help students to meet the NETS-S. 


Communication is one of the most essential and fundamental practices of being human.  Our ability to speak and write is what separate us from common animals.  It is an inherent need.  The world of communication has changed as technology has advanced, and so common practices of paper writing need an upgrade.  A simple upgrade, like the use of blogs, such as Google’s blogger.com can provide students with a new way to write and submit papers.  The use of this type of technology will also allow teachers to meet the NETS-S standards of Technology Operations and concepts and Creativity and Innovation.  A students prior knowledge of Microsoft Word applications can be embedded and transferred into a blog.  Blogs also provide a way for parents to view student published work, an added benefit.  Communication and Collabotation Standards can be met using digital tools such as Skype, Google Hangout, and Tangler.  For students with access to computers with webcams and microphones, Skype and Google Hangout allow for real time student collaboration outside of the classroom.  Tangler is a great site for use of live forums.  Students can ask questions and other students and even their teacher can answer them with little wait.  


New technology has extended collaboration beyond the walls of the classroom.  The NETS-S call for Communication and Collaboration as well as research and information fluency.  Both of these standards can be completed with the use of a variety of web tools.  Some of the most user friendly, especially for students, are Wikispaces and Edmodo.  Wikispaces is a collaborative web page tool that allows for students to upload, edit, and imbed documents and research.  Most students are familiar with famous wikis such as Wikileaks, and wikipedia.  For a teacher to meet both core stnadards and NET standards, students could do a researched based project, with the final out coming being a published wikispace.  Each student could have a specific role, as wiki allows for multiple users to create and edit information.  The students can also create works cited references to show where digital information has been gathered from. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decisions Making standards can also be incorporated with this digital projects if each student is given a part of the project, a specific problem to solve, and the use of technology to complete it.


Using new technologies to publish also has man benefits aside from the creative benefits.  One of my favorite aspects of publishing on the web is the ability for it to be easily seen and shared.  One of the biggest problems with teaching, especially in a middle school setting, seems to be communications with parents on the side of their own student.  I think almost all educators have experienced the frustration of tests, papers, and information never getting from the student to their parent.  When web aplications are used to published final products, it makes reviewing the material for teachers, students, and parents much easier.  My two favorite platforms are animoto and glogster.  Animoto is a fun way to create videos.  In my classroom we use this publishing feature for book reports, as the students create a “movie trailer” for the novel they had just read.  Glogster is a great tool to create online posters.  It saves paper, and also eliminates fears that many students have because they “lack artistic ability” when creating projects.  


With all of these Web 2.0 applications, teachers are able to monitor their students’ work and progress to make sure that becoming respectful digital citizens.  Using any Web 2.0 application will allow educators and their students to meet the NETS standard of Digital Citizenship.  Monitoring these online behaviors in a classroom setting will hopefully transfer to safe digital citizenship in their own lives.  Having students meet the NETS-S is an easy process with Web 2.0 technology, it just takes some creative planning on the part of the teacher to integrate already created lessons and activities to web based platforms. 


Animoto.com. (2012). http://animoto.com/intro/animoto/22?gclid=CPuniY-QwLECFYao4AodGx4AWA.
Blogger.com. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.blogger.com/home.
Glogster.com. (2012) Retrieved from http://edu.glogster.com/.  
Google Hangout. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts/.
International Society for Technology in Education. (2011). National Educational Technology Standards for Students. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx.
Skype. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home.
Tangler.com. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.tangler.com/.
Wikispaces.com. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.wikispaces.com/.