Technology is very important in today's society ranging from in home use, as well as, inside the classroom. Being that technology continues to expand it brings new opportunities for both the student and the teacher. Technology allows students to be more engaged in the learning and keep the students interest level at high. For instance, some school allows students to use a tablet inside the classroom. Allowing them to use the tablet will encourage them to complete learning activities. It can also assist them with spelling, and researching information for the younger children.
The ISTE standards for a teacher are very understanding and describes what we have teachers for. One of the teacher standards that stand out to me is to facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity. Having previous child care/teaching experience, I know that I have the skills to inspire younger children with my creativity. Being creative keeps the children having fun and keeps you without an headache. I actually don't believe that any of the standards listed are outside of my skill set. Working with children is a job and a learning experience itself. Therefore the longer you work with them the more you're actually implicating the standard that you may not even know about. Overall, it's just natural since I've worked with them for over four years.
I completely agree with the label "digital native" for today's youth. To be digital native means to grow up or be raised in the era when technology really advanced. During this era children, at the time myself, where learning how to use computers and cell phones. Now a days, children aren't even outside riding a bike anymore or playing any outside yard games. They're in the house on a tablet, laptop or maybe even playing the PlayStation. Teachers would be considered digital immigrates because they had to adjust to the advancement. In this day, digital immigrants like our grand parents text either slowly or not at all. They had to learn how to text, where as texting comes as a second language to us. With that being said there will be a lot of differences between myself and my students. This is because technology is still advancing, and there are going to be a lot of things that they're going to know that I'm not and I'll be learning from them.
Facilitating and inspiring creativity in my opinion is the best ISTE standard too. It is a skill that will not only be used in a student's hobbies, and artistic endeavors, but in their future careers as well. As I got older, I got more and more strict guidelines and rubrics when completing assignments, even art related ones. I think that though there should be some guidelines in place, students deserve a little wiggle room to be creative. What they come up with may even surprise us!
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