Texas has released a draft version of the upcoming science standard, known in Texas as the TEKS, or Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.

Science and technology are like bread and butter, Fred and Ethel, peanut butter and chocolate. They go together well. It is just understood that science in the real world is intimately tied to technology.

So how well do the new draft TEKS incorporate technology?

After looking at the TEKS draft, it appears that technology is given the same ambiguous short shrift that it was given in the previous incarnation.

For instance, looking at the new TEKS, it is apparent that the chance for students to incorporate technology into their lives is still, at best a choice to be made a the district or classroom level, and not something mandated by the state, which is the only real way  something is ever done in the state.

Look at this proposed TEK objective for students:

Under Section 2, Scientific Investigation and Reasoning is this objective for students:

(E) communicate with others observations about simple descriptive investigations.

Would this be so much better of the TEKS looked like this:

5. (E)communicate with others using technology tools such as email, web sites, or presentation software about simple descriptive investigations?
   

I don’t understand why the core curriculum standards don’t automatically say EXACTLY what they want done with technology, and not leave it up to interpretation.