For this post, I am looking at an article in Knowledge Quest by Mary Lou Caron O’Connor titled Now Serving: An appealing menu of digital literacy tools & resources. O’Connor does a wonderful job of incorporating the AASL and ISTE standards into lessons and student enrichment. She uses a menu approach allowing students to choose the resources needed to achieve or complete an assignment. Students are given options in each category of think/inquire, create/engage, and grow/share/engage. The menus are varied for grade levels and assignments. This menu approach is an amazingly effortless way to implement AASL standards and can be expanded in a variety of ways. O’Connor has developed an especially useful tool for her classroom that is very versatile.
Diving into the standards, many aspects of the standards such as collaboration, digital citizenship, exploring recent technologies, and learner driven environments are a few of the similarities that I found while comparing the standards. The standards also do not lay out a curriculum to teach. The standards offer best practices for encouraging all leaners to develop lifelong skills that can be utilized by students entering the workforce or college.
Minor differences in the standards are in who the standards apply to. The AASL standards are focused on learners and the skills needed to develop minds that can inquire, include, collaborate, curate, explore and engage. The ISTE standards are for learners but there are also additional standards for educators, educational leaders, and coaches. The addition of these standards encourages educators to not only focus on students but also themselves and how they can interact with the community and become voices outside of education. These standards are well developed and offer a framework for librarians and technology educators that can guide educators and learners in an ever-changing digital age.
References
O’Connor, M. (2019, May/June). Now serving: An appealing menu of digital literacy tools & resources. Knowledge Quest 47(5).
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Christine,
ReplyDeleteThese standards were new to me and I thought they really exemplified how learning needs to happen in schools. I agree with how you say that the standards "do not lay out a curriculum to teach," but instead "offer best practices for encouraging all learners to develop lifelong skills." Since I work in a high school, I see students on a daily basis that really need more real world skills instilled into their day over some teaching of matters that may not be as helpful to them in the future. Hopefully libraries in schools can become more vital in all student's daily activities to give that extra push in having them understand more of the world around them. Great post!
Caroline Hoppe
Hi Christine! When a set of standards promotes itself as a way to help students learn how to think, not what to think, that shows an incredible amount of credibility and relevance to me. Isn't that what we are suppose to due as librarians? Foster the love of learning and how to be reflective learners! I'm looking forward to working more with the AASL and ISTE standards in my library work, as well as the Future Ready crosswalk. If you are a Facebook user, you should join the Future Ready Librarians Facebook group. Lots of good information and support there!
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