Model digital age work and learning

The third of the ISTE standards for teaching is perhaps the most difficult and the most important. By modeling digital age behavior, we help students to learn not just the nuts & bolts of how things work, but the appropriate, ethical use of digital age tools as well.  

What makes this difficult is that this is a knowledge set most teachers need to learn. That adds additional pressure to know more and more; not just the content area, best instructional practices, and school expectations, but another realm as well. In reality, however, not staying current on these issues is detrimental both to the teacher's employability and to the students in their care.

For most teachers, administrators, and other school educators, modeling digital age work is difficult NOT to do at least from time to time. Meetings are flipped or enhanced with technology, administrative tasks are increasingly paperless, and online collaboration continues to thrive. The big change comes when teachers see that the grade portal or class site they use as a matter of fact is a big part of this aptitude, and simply building off of the communication skills used when cultivating that portal connection can be expanded to many other tasks without much additional work.

On the whole, the idea is to work smarter, not harder. Technology is meant to allow us to be more effective and more efficient. Deliberate integration and modeling of digital skills will pay efficiency benefits over time.