Teaching NETS and AASL Standards - Whose Job Is It?

At first glance, a question about where standards are taught has an easy answer - in the course where they belong. Take science standards, for example, about scientific inquiry or physical science concepts like Forces and Motion. Nobody would even ask where those standards should be taught. The answer is obviously science class.

But technology standards are not as clear cut as other content standards such as science. Traditionally, one thinks of tech standards as skill specific knowledge. Use Excel. Make a PowerPoint presentation. Etc. But the most recent body of technology standards doesn't sound like that at all.



Take the National Educational Technology Standards whose logo is pictured and hyperlinked below.



The standards from this document read like a general skill set that could be found in any content area.

A look at the Standards for the 21st Century Learner linked through the picture below show the same general skill set.

As a matter of fact, my first reaction was "What do these have to do with tech?"

What becomes clear as you read these standards is that they don't intend to describe technology as a content area, but perhaps more as a method or tool that applies to all content areas through a set of general skills.

As an ESL teacher, I realized this was no different than a holistic view of ESL as being the use of language across the content areas. Language is a method or tool to apply to any content area. It is used in every content area, and often specifically taught specifically as it applies to certain content areas, for example, science and the genre of lab/research reports. Few people would fail to see the applicability of language to a content area. The dream of ESL teachers is that content area teachers teach and use the language of their discipline to all their students. It is in fact the ideal context for the development of language. Pulling students out of their classes to teach them language is the same thing as removing language from its context.

I'd have to guess that it would be the dream of tech coordinators for content teachers to use and teach technology in the content areas. By analogy with ESL, I would agree that embedding technology into the content areas and teaching and using it in that context is the way to go. In other words, it's not just the job of tech teachers to teach teach, it's content teachers' job too.