NETS... Effective?

When we look at the NETs for teachers and administrators and their overall effectiveness we have to ask ourselves, how relevant are these set's of standards for Teachers and Administrators to being a "Good Educator" in today's world? After all, if they are not relevant then the chance of them being achieved is minimal and their effectiveness is questionable.

There is little doubt that the NETs are full of great ideas and principles which enhance learning, however, I have to agree with Gabi (from our COETAIL course) that the NETs are not strictly technology related concepts and skills. Often the adoption of such broad technology standards are a way to justify or add 'weight' to our subject area. Dana, also from our COETAIL course suggests similar views that we are committing jargon overload by introducing yet another set of standards. So how effective are they going to be if people are already teaching the standards in other curriculum areas?

My question is, do tools really need standards? I think most would agree that technology is a tool, it is a means to an end, not an end to a means.

The moment an educator is using technology 'just to teach the skills' or just to make it more 'teched out' is a concern. As I have said in earlier posts, technology is there to save our time, not to consume our time (check out this blog post from kmc21...), or for a nice video from TeachersTV on how to use IT to save time... (sorry they won't let you embed this in a blog... rather ironic as that would save time for the viewer!). Tools enhance learning, so therefore any effective curriculum for technology needs to focus on how technology ENHANCES LEARNING... not just how to attach it to learning already occurring.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51783679@N00/2333409688

We must make certain that we keep an eye on using technology as a learning enhancement tool, a tool that saves our time, freeing us up improve our teaching to therefore improve our learning.