Technology in the Classroom, ISTE Standards for Educators, and Digital Natives/Immigrants

Technology in the Classroom
Technology has a large place in the classroom in the current day and age. When broken down, there are two main influences that educators and students have to use technology in the classroom:

1. The first influence is that the students who are currently in the K-12 setting have all grown up surrounded by an immense amount of technology. For educators, the influence of technology on their current students is something that CAN'T be denied and CAN be used as a leg up for educators because their students are heavy technology consumers and subsequently, are drawn to it. This means that if educators can effectively build technology into their curriculum, then it will allow the educators to speak the language of their students and increase the chances of the curriculum being able to effectively engage many of their students. 
2. Technology was made to make life easier. Though I find that there is beauty in putting pen on paper, having the ability to check entire dissertations for grammar and spelling errors with a click of a button is even more beautiful. The simplification that technology brings to the classroom and an educator's day to day life is a huge influence as to why educators use technology in the classroom. 

ISTE Standards for Educators

ISTE is an acronym for the International Society for Technology in Education, and they set out five different sets of standards. The set of standards that we will be looking at is the standards for educators. If you would like to look at the ISTE standards for educators, here is the link to access them: https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators

To start, the standard that is most meaningful to me is the leader standard. Under the leader standard, the website reads, "Educators seek out opportunities for leadership to support student empowerment and success and to improve teaching and learning." This standard is most meaningful to me because I am a firm believer in students being the most powerful demographic in the world. Like I previously stated in the Technology in the Classroom section, today's students have spent their entire lives immersed in technology and if the educators of the world backed these students by doing these three sub-standards that were stated on the website under the leader standard:

1. Shape, advance and accelerate a shared vision for empowered learning with technology by engaging with education stakeholders.
2. Advocate for equitable access to educational technology, digital content and learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of all students.
3. Model for colleagues the identification, exploration, evaluation, curation and adoption of new digital resources and tools for learning.

then we as educators could begin to give the students the opportunity of technology and they would go and do world-changing things.

On the other side of things, the designer standard is one that currently seems way outside of my skill set. The website states that this standard is where "educators design authentic, learner-driven activities and environments that recognize and accommodate learner variability." I think that this is a great standard and is super important, but I am also lacking in skill when it comes to technology and to be able to do all of those things stated by the website with the use of technology currently seems like a daunting task. 

Digital Natives/Immigrants

According to Mark Prensky, a leader in education and the future of education, digital natives are known as the "native speakers of the internet and related technologies." Which would make digital immigrants the opposite and someone who does not speak the language of the internet and technology. Though I agree with the idea of digital natives and digital immigrants, I believe that it deals more with what era of technology you were born into and how you came into technology, and not how well you speak the language of technology. In my personal life, I would be considered a digital native because I was born in 1998, which is in the era of technology and my parents would be considered digital immigrants because they were born in the 1960s, where technology was nowhere near where it was in 1998. However, my parents are both far more advanced in their knowledge of technology than myself and have made it their career. 

My home life and my school life are two different stories with technology though. Some educators knew how to use the classroom technology with some proficiency, but I had many educators that were light-years behind even my small knowledge of technology. When they had to do anything with technology, it was a guaranteed 15-minute break because it would take them forever to even figure out how to turn on the projector. This led to a lot of wasted time and even more pen ink and paper being used. I don't think that this will be the case between educators my age and their new students. Many people my age are extremely proficient in the use of technology because they are digital natives who knew how to speak the language of technology. This means that all of my 15-minute technical difficulty breaks will not be the case for the future generation of learners. Their 15 minutes will be used to learn even more with far greater tools than pen and paper, and for that, I'm jealous!

Comments
I was able to comment on Hayley Singer's most recent blog post. I talked about how I liked a point that she made about utilizing technology to engage students. I was also able to comment on Malyce Collins' most recent blog post as well. With her, I talked about a point she made on her and her teacher's technology knowledge and how there wasn't a large disconnect between the two of them. However, I think that the background of Malyce's blog is white and the comment font color is white so you can't see any of the comments.