Any idea about how to implement national Technology Standards for teachers and students in the Elm/Midd school classroom?

The National Technology Standards for teachers and
students in general are more geared towards the integration of 21st century teaching
practices rather than in the knowledge of programs as it is. Why is this? Because,
according to the 21st century teaching paradigm, problem solving (across the
curriculum), socialization skills, and the ease to adapt to change are imperatives that
surpass the need to memorize the use of a program that is likely to be obsolete in less
than 2 years.

This being said, the best way to implement
the (ever changing) technology standards for teachers and students is to target
life/learning skills that are useful for many years to come. An example of these skills
include: Research skills, the maneuver of online dictionaries and thesauri,
investigative inquiry, inference skills, extended meaning skills, association skills,
and the building of schema.

Once these skills are mastered,
no matter what new program or software, or operating system comes to the market, the
students will be able to attempt them.

If, instead, we
insist on learning ONE current program and isolate its use from other skills we would
just be reducing ourselves to an utilitarian use of technology instead of a lifelong
experience with it.

Hence, keep on teaching the basic
skills of problem solving and integrate technology as a way to do so: Teach the kids how
to unfreeze computers, how to map printers, how to use other sources rather than the
usual Google/Yahoo/AOL to research, and you will see that their mentalities will expand
to bigger horizons than those provided by the technology marketing
industries.