ISTE Standards Exposure

By ISTE - iste.org, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61799199

In my role as Technology Integrator it can be overwhelming to decide on the right direction when looking to advance staff in their teaching practice and students in their potential. It's easy to get lost in the bells and whistles of technology engagement instead of focusing on the purposeful use to deliver curriculum and achieve academic standards. Thankfully, one of the best ways I have found to keep things in perspective is using the ISTE standards (Student, Teacher, Coach, & Administrator) when trying to be thoughtful about how we are using technology to enhance our teaching. 

We have been making progress in meeting regularly with grade-level teams and departments K-12th. They were originally set up as 'tech check-ins' to give teachers a voice to address immediate and small concerns and then allow for planning conversations in upcoming lessons. My fellow integrator and I wanted to move the needle a bit faster and felt many teachers time and ability to process the ISTE standards when planning lessons was often limited. We decided to use some of the time already dedicated to our tech check-ins could be used to help teachers process the ISTE standards and jump start the conversation about effective technology use in their classrooms.

So the question was: "How do we quickly introduce portions of the ISTE standards to teachers during these check-ins and still have time to let teachers ask other questions or bring up concerns?" Our first decision was to start with the Student Standards in order to hold discussions that would engage teachers around student learning, we would circle back with the teacher standards in larger-scale PD.

It was then determined that we needed to develop protocols in which to frame these discussions. My fellow integrator, Anita Moose, has been well-versed in our District initiatives of Cognitive Coaching and Adaptive Schools so we decided to adapt several of their protocols in order to hold meaningful and productive discussions with our teachers that could be executed quickly. We broke the standards review into two pieces: 1. A general overview of all 7 of the student standards. (Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer, Computation Thinker, & Creative Communicator)  2. A deeper dive into the sub-standards.

This process has just begun and we plan on carrying over into next year, but the first few meetings we have had promoted some great discussion and got teachers thinking critically about the ISTE standards and how they apply to their own teaching and student learning. You can review and use the protocols we came up with below and feel free to make any suggestions for improvement in the comments. I'm sure I'll be writing an update post as we dive deeper with what's working and what needs improvement so stay tuned!

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ISTE-S  Standard  Protocols