Launching New Standards

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What is the size of a beach ball, makes a beeping sound, and in one day changed the course of American education for the next 50 years? If you said the launching of the sputnik, you are right! The ensuing panic and fervor launched a revolution in American schools as President Eisenhower saw that the U.S. was falling behind in missile technology and spurred America to make massive investments in science, education, infrastructure and networking — one eventual byproduct of which was the Internet.

Sound familiar? We are at another crossroads of similar urgency and reactive response. And not surprisingly, the same questions that no doubt guided Eisenhower and are challenging President Obama should also provoke us educators:

Which goals will guide us? How do we choose among competing interests of public education and the private sector? What pedagogy informs teaching practice? What current research is available to inform our policy? How will these new skills be assessed? Who is responsible for educating within an ideology of globalism? Who will pay for it?

As a response to the explosion of digital media, two bodies have responded with policies and standards that are shaping the outcomes and assessments of student media literacy in American schools. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)) has designed:

Similarly, the second body, the American Association of School Libraries, updated its standards, implementations and assessments:

While these two bodies have created overla

pping objectives within the standards, one of the key differences seems to be accessibility of support materials. The AASL has maintained a “resource for hire” approach whereas NETS allows free access to its materials.

Policy and profit have always been bedfellows and implementation “resources for hire” such as Big 6 have emerged. They compellingly promise students will “watch both their understanding and test scores sky-rocket!”

Say...is it just me or are they glomming on to my Sputnik metaphor?

Marjorie Pappas (2008) has an interesting discussion of the differences in the two standards. She notes:

… ISTE standards have always been focused on educational technology, while AASL has always been focused on information literacy that transcends all types of media and technology.

Janet Murray and Doug Johnson have also waded into the discussion on implementation of these standards. Janet has aligned the two sets of standards with teacher friendly basic activities. Doug cautions that schools and states will need to carefully pick and choose which skills will be included in their own IL/IT curriculum models and for embedding in the content area standards.

So there has been a lot of sputtering over these standards with many comparisons being made between existing national and state standards and these two pillars of standards. When you also consider the Partnership for 21st Century Skills ICT standards, you have to wonder how standard are these standards? How is it that the world can agree on ISO for cameras, or agree on standards for Olympic events, but not cannot standardize media literacy?

And to add even more contrails into the atmosphere, there are also standards developed in other countries that reveal a global common need to establish some type of congruency between standards and practice.

Australia

• A Library Advocate's Guide to Building Information Literate Communities

Canada

• School Library Information Portal

United Kingdom

• Information Literacy Place

Applications for Teaching and Learning

As teachers and teacher-librarians we need to wrestle with these standards for two reasons: First, we need to be able to embody them in our own practises in order to maintain our credibility as users and advocates of media literacy. Secondly we need to empower teachers by increasing their understanding that research-based information literacy standards are easily integrated into the curricula of subject areas.

In our class discussions my colleagues have expressed frustration with the demise of the teacher-librarian in schools today. This is exacerbated by the increasing limited opportunities for post-secondary training and declining funding in school jurisdictions for hiring teacher-librarians. The move in Alberta schools is to hire library technicians at one-half the cost of a classroom teacher. While at first glance this policy seems to move away from the call to standards, it may actually reflect a response to the new Alberta curricula in which ICT outcomes and standards are infused into the content of the subjects.

The ASLS and NETS standards can be teased out of the new Alberta curricula that address common concerns. If we are teaching to curricular standards, then we are already teaching and assessing according to ASLA and NETS standards. It is the teachers’ responsibility to ensure they are implementing curriculum standards.

Alberta Standards

Alberta Education early adopted an integrated, contextual approach to instruction and application of ICT skills and include:

· Mastering isolated ICT skills is insufficient as an end goal

· ICT skills can and should be embedded into content instruction and integrated appropriatel

into content-area outcomes across the curriculum/program.

· Assessment of learners’ progress in meeting ICT outcomes must be integrated into and

aligned with other assessment of student progress.

The Next Generation of Sputnik: SpaceShipTwo (SS2)

I interviewed a high school administrator about Alberta ICT standards and the teacher’s role. These were her thoughts:

There is perhaps an assumption that there is a fundamental tech illiertacy, of teachers in schools. We do have both old and new staff, with varying skills of tech literacy. While our hiring practice is to seek the next generation of young teachers who do indeed come with the tech skills, it is wrong to assume that teachers are unwilling or uninterested in learning and applying new tech standards.

In our school the older teachers are mentoring the younger teachers in areas like classroom management and curricular expertise, while the younger teachers are assisting the older staff with technology issues. This partnership is proving to be dynamic and effective. Teachers are also being supported through district AISI projects that provide tech training in their subject areas. Teacher tech competency is being developed at the school & jurisdictional level.

A New Orbit

September 2, 1958, Washington:

Eisenhower saw The National Defense Education Act (NDEA), signed into law providing funding from 183 million dollars in 1959 to 222 million in 1960 to United States education institutions at all levels.

The competition for sputnik’s technology pulled new technology standards for education into the stratosphere. Today it is the still the technology that is driving the new standards.

Ironically in that quest for hard science, a freedom of expression in the liberal arts education also emerged. Far from being the crisis which politicians had perceived it to be, educators welcomed it as an opportunity to be innovative in their praxis.

January 27, 2010, Washington:

There will be an increase of $1.35 billion for Obama's signature "Race to the Top" grant program, aimed at sparking innovation in schools across the country.

Today’s economic crisis our sputnik, and the resultant new standards, can also be a wonderful opportunity for all learners to be innovative in their practise.

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Satellite pic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQj_Bq1sIoc