School Standards: AASL vs. ISTE (Blog Post 1)

One particularly interesting concept to me, upon reading “Implementing the National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries in Rural Virginia” was the idea that media specialists may not even have access to these standards, particularly in rural or poor communities where the schools (and likely the librarians) can’t afford to purchase the standards and provide little professional development.  This is also an important point given the ISTE standards and the AASL standards.     

The ISTE standards were fascinating to me because they focus on the idea of rethinking education in innovative ways that incorporate technology.  Virtually all of the standards include some level of digital integration, and there is a good deal of focus on collaboration and using digital tools to collaborate globally.  Additionally, there was a heavy focus on students as leaders and innovators and students being engaged with their learning in a much more creative and collaborative environment than perhaps what we typically expect in a classroom.  This mirrors discussions we had in one of my education courses about how being forced to ‘teach to the test’ or students working to ‘get the grade’ rather than actually learning leads to students that are not able to succeed in careers, particularly as careers require more innovation and digital collaboration in the 21^st century.  For instance, I have a good friend who works at Google – the type of education described in the ISTE standards would be ideal for a creative student who wants to succeed in a company like Google.  The current educational set-up is intended to create students that can earn good grades, succeed in college, and then enter the workforce in a traditional job.  The general idea is that students are led to a career in which someone tells them what to do and they generate what was requested.  However, if you think about the standards in light of rural Virginia – are the ISTE standards realistic?  Do the schools even have the resources to provide students with the ability to engage with those standards?  Is the idea that entering a career where ‘being told what to do and doing it’ isn’t ‘good enough’ offensive to a student raised in poverty?  It is a lot easier to talk about in the abstract than it is when given a concrete example.  

I think the AASL standards are helpful in this regard as well – there is a focus on the need for technological tools and student life preparation.  However, I think the AASL standards are more closely aligned with the current educational framework rather than a complete overhaul of the system.  In all likelihood, the AASL standards are more realistic in terms of what can actually be accomplished, but perhaps the ISTE standards could be the ‘end goal’ as the AASL standards gradually evolve over time.  I would imagine that the AASL standards could be implemented immediately, with educators, administrators and media specialists working together to implement those standards – with the idea that the end result would be students that can function in the educational system in the same fashion that my friend functions in her capacity as team lead at Google.  The media specialist is in a unique position in that she can use the AASL standards as a framework for behavior within the library and can be more radical in changes that she makes to student tools and learning.  Perhaps even within these poor or rural communities, teachers can be focusing on helping the students be able to function in a career while the media specialist can use what resources are available to her to show students digital tools and other options for research, etc.

References

Church, A., Collins, K., Harvey, C., Spisak, Jr. (2013). Implementing the national school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries in rural Virginia.  Knowledge Quest, 42(2), E1-E7.