The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has released its standards for student achievement in educational technology. These standards are called Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs). Part of education improvement includes developing high standards for what students have to learn, followed by a rigorous curriculum and testing/assessment system that map to those standards. Having well trained teachers in specific subject areas then helps complete the system for learning.
OSPI has already developed standards or EALRs for reading, writing, communication, math, science, social studies, health and fitness and the arts. These are all based on 4 learning goals, which can be found at OSPI's website, along with the new ed tech EALRs: http://www.k12.wa.us/EdTech/pubdocs/K-12-EdTech-Standards-Dec2008.pdf
http://www.k12.wa.us/EdTech/techstandards.aspx
The Ed Tech standards have two EALRs; integration and digital citizenship. The links above will tell you all you need to know about this important education topic. These are very detailed and laid out by grade level expectation or GLE from kindergarten through grade 12.
The Ed Tech standards incorporate just about every technology topic you can imagine from basic operations of computers to doing serious research with the ability to cite sources and understand how to use copyrighted material properly.
Cyber safety also gets prominent mention, which is critically important for young people to understand. As a member of the Attorney General's Youth Internet Saefty Task Force, one of our goals was for students to get uniform, properly vetted internet safety information into the hands of students, teachers and parents. Adopting this EALR will go a long way to helping our kids stay safe on the internet as well as help them be productive and ethical digital citizens.
Hopefully, these EALRs will also spur teachers to become more technologically adept and be on par or above their students' level of technology proficiency.
Check out the links above and get more details about OSPI's Educational Technology Standards and the other policy areas OSPI handles.