I recently met a computer lab person whose responsibility, according to the district, is to teach the technology curriculum. The upper elementary students will take technology for ten weeks. This person will teach them how to keyboard and to word process.
In that same school, many students are behind in reading and math skills. I thought that the students could use the word processor to brainstorm ideas, outline their ideas, word process their writing, revise the writing, and print out a final copy. I was informed that the students have to focus on learning the technology of word processing.
Are the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) for students integrated into your school’s academic curriculum so that when your students do a specific academic task they utilize (and learn) a specific technology skill? For example, students record the daily growth of a plant in science class by taking digital pictures and by putting information in a spreadsheet. As they analyze plants in science class, they learn to use a digital camera by taking, manipulating and labeling images They learn to produce a graph to see overall growth patterns in the plants. Educators know that when something is learned in a meaningful context then it is learned better and longer.
Or are the NETS a stand-alone curriculum in your school that only serves technology?
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Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle 
