Review on the 2009 Michigan Educational Technology Standards for Students

As I took a quiet evening scrolling through the 2009 Michigan Educational Technology Standards for Students I took a moment to let my mind wander to the many projects I have created for my students: There was the movie a third grade class created through a reader’s theatre of “The Three Bears Rap”, a newsletter for fourth graders on animals, numerous PowerPoint presentations for first graders that made creating books so easy, and a monthly video new magazine our fourth grade class writes, edits and presents eight times a year. One must think I spent endless hours aligning my curriculum to these standards because each project covered so many of them. I just got lucky.

But now I really do look at them. I have worked with the MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) for the past two years and have been working this year in the Project-Based Learning Program. I initially joined this program so I could go to the MACUL conference for free but it has become so much more. It has really focused my organization of these technology-enhanced projects. It really brings in all the standards from all the curricula as well as providing guidelines to provide the best outcome for students.

I, of course could not just create a simple project for this initial endeavor. No, no, a colleague and I have set out to use the second grade social studies GLECs for 4 quarterly projects. The first semester, students will be creating a video tour of their school. Each student has taken photos of different areas in the school and will be developing map skills through various activities. Second semester, students will be exploring the nature preserve adjacent to the school through geocaching. In the third semester, second graders will take a field trip around the “downtown” (what’s left of it) and explore the rich history of our community. During the final months of the year students will create a video exploring the hopes and dreams each has for our community.

I admit it sounds very ambitious and it is a great deal of prep work. But much of my prep work for these projects start in Kindergarten. I have students take digital pictures of each other so each has valuable experience with equipment and software like KidPix and Kidspiration. They can then use these skills in the upper grades to create rich and engaging projects that deepen their knowledge of their academic subjects. The Michigan Educational Technology Standards are excellent guidelines for all educators. We just need to look at them more often.

For further information:

MACUL: http://www.macul.org/

PBL (Project Based Learning) http://www.leadingpbl.org/