U05a1- Students Meeting the NETS-S

I teach for a county Head Start where we use objectives instead of standards like most school districts.  I was unfamiliar with the NETs for students.  I have heard of them but that is about it. We only have one very vague objective: Tools and Technology. This objective is where we rate the children on everything they do technology wise in my classroom.  When reading through the NETS for students, I think they are very clear and I could see how they could be integrated with older students.   I wish we had a more specific objectives to cover some of the same things the standards cover.  I would like to see a creativity and innovation objective to use with my students.  I have some students that can do so much on the HATCH pads and computer but there is no real way to show that they are creative.  I would also like to have an objective about technology operations and concepts, that way we could see the student’s improvements as the year progresses. 

After looking at the student profiles I have a greater understanding of how these standards can be included for young learners.  I mostly focused on grades Pre-2 in the age range of 4-8 years old since this is the age group of my students.  The NETS can be met by students in any age range through communication, collaboration, and publishing web 2.0 tools.

Some ways that communication covers these standards is if you use a web site like Skype and have the students work together with others. This covers standard one.  Anytime that students are on the computer, they how have to demonstrate safe use for technology which is standard 5.  If the students used a site and recorded an electronic book and shared it with their friends, they would cover standards: 10 demonstrate and navigate electronic books, 9 communicate about technology with correct terms, 8 independently apply digital tools, 4 digital presentation, and 3 engage learners from multi-cultural. There are many other ways to cover the standards with young children.  There are learning websites that would cover most of the standards just by having the kids log on.  In all the examples that I mention above the students would need to use collaboration.  They would need to collaborate with other students in their class, teachers, and others that they connect with during their projects.  Any project they complete the students will be publishing it in some way.  It might just be for their teacher and the other students in their classroom, but it might also be for others on the internet.  Publishing was a hard concept for me since we are not allowed to publish any of our students work on the internet outside of our Teaching Strategies GOLD website.  It is a safe site and unless you are the teacher or parent, you are unable to view the students work. This rule is in place because we have lots of single parents, parents who are incarcerated, and foster parents. Not being allowed to publish their work is for the safety of the children.  I remember once during my undergrad when working with standards and having a hard time finding what standard fit my project, a professor telling me that you can make almost any standard fit a project and I feel it is the same with NETS standards with communication, collaboration, and publishing projects and using web 2.0 sites.   

References:
http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007

http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-students/nets-for-students-2007-profiles