Teacher Education Network Newsletter

ISTE Teacher Education Network (TEN) publishes a monthly newsletter. I have been impressed by the scope of these newsletters for a couple of years now.

This month's newsletter covers the new alphabet of technology in teaching: AI, VR, AR, for example. If you don't know about those acronyms or are not sure, check out their January 2019 newsletter.

Image source: public domain and modifiable

The ISTE Certified Educator

This month, I received my ISTE Certified Educator badge. The process involved a two-day seminar, face-to-face, in Arlington, VA, back in August. This was followed by a month-long online program.

The tasks were not too daunting. The hard part was the portfolio requirement which asked participants to generate artifacts covering 24 of the ISTE for Educators standards elements.

I missed one or two and the points were fair(ish). For the standard covering Digital Citizenship, for example, I shared work my students did such as the development of TED-Ed Lessons. I was critiqued for embracing the "old, fear-based" approach to Digital Citizenship. Well, good call, I guess. Teacher Candidates need to start somewhere and need to have an idea of what to do when a student comes to them in crisis. But ISTE has a point that good Digital Citizenship should be more than a list of DON'Ts.

The certificate is good for two years.

ISTE Certification

ISTE is promoting its new certification for Educators using their Educator Standards. Last week, Dr. McVey attended the mandatory two-day training session to become part of the first class of ISTE Certified Educators. This first step will be followed by 4 weeks of online training then he will have to put together a portfolio.

He is looking forward to sharing details of the process and perhaps even making EMU a Certified Authorizer Program. This article provides even more information about how ISTE is focusing on teachers and collaboration, rather than devices or software.

ISTE in Chicago

For those of you who will be in Chicago for all or part of the annual ISTE Conference, please look for me and say hello. No word on the Keynoters yet, but we will share as soon as we know.

As a board member, Dr. McVey has been working with a team to develop a Higher Education reception at the conference on Monday. Many Higher Education folks have felt increasingly isolated from ISTE over the years but with two Teacher Ed professors on the board, we are hoping to change that.