2016 ISTE Standards for Students aim to put students in the driver's seat

Do today’s students need to be empowered learners, knowledge constructors, innovative designers? Should they be computational thinkers and global collaborators?

Many of you believe they should.  

Today, ISTE is releasing the first draft of the new ISTE Standards for Students. Since we launched the standards refresh at ISTE 2015 in June, educators have shared feedback during face-to-face forums, in virtual meetings and via online surveys. The draft document represents the ideas, thoughts and opinions of hundreds of educators from nearly all 50 U.S. states and multiple countries.

We rely on wisdom from the field to update the standards and are grateful to the individuals who have participated so far.

But we’re not finished yet.

Student voice and choice has emerged in the refresh process as a key need. In that spirit, we want to hear from students, and we’re hoping you can help us do that by leading a refresh session for students. If you’re interested, contact Sarah Stoeckl, ISTE’s senior project manager for the Standards Department. She can also help you set up a session for educators if you’d like to help with that.

No time to hold a session? Below are several other ways you can help out.

• Read the draft of the student standards and fill out this survey to give us your feedback and share the link far and wide.
• Let us know what resources you’ll need to understand and implement the standards by filling out this survey.
• Tell us how you, your school or your district are using the standards. Tell us your story and it might be published!

Carolyn Sykora is ISTE's senior director of the Standards Department.