Tech Tsunami….

“The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.”

– Common Core Standard MISSION STATEMENT

To properly answer this week’s blog inquiry- whether Common Core would HELP or HARM the infusion of technology into 21st century classrooms– I decided to revisit the mission statement for Common Core standards (see above).   My focus was drawn to this portion of the statement; in particular, the emphasis on “[relevance] to the real world.”  In our current culture, it becomes increasingly difficult to employ relevance without the infusion of technology.  We are living in a time where it’s commonplace for a 9 year old to be the primary user of an I-Pad or smartphone; putting up-to-the-minute information at one’s finger tips.  As a teacher, I many times get tech lessons from my middle school learners- from the newest/coolest presentation platform to how they get around IT blocks to access certain sites at school (yikes!).   My current middle-schoolers never experienced a time when you could only make a call from home; or when you had to return a call (or page) at a payphone.  Because of this, it becomes increasing difficult to hold their attention without infusing technology as much as possible into daily instruction.

As I contemplated whether or not Common Core would get in the way of technology implementation, I couldn’t help thinking about TSUNAMIS.

 *Watch it 🙂

There’s little that can withstand the power of a tsunami.  In the same manner, I feel that technology is the only thing that will remain standing as standards continue to evolve.  For me, I was extremely happy to see that our new Common Core Standards attempts to embrace 21st century learning- part of that being embedding technology to help delivery content and showcase student learning (authentic assessments, projects, etc).  While the Common Core as we currently know it may look totally different 5 years from now, I am confident that its revised version OR replacement will have to keep up with technology and not the other way around….