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Advancing Edtech Evaluation and Selection

Discover reliable tools for selecting edtech products.

Edtech Product Selection for Leaders

Education leaders have unprecedented access to edtech products, but there’s no clear way to determine a product’s quality or effectiveness for learning. How can decision-makers know if a product meets learning standards and drives student achievement without a shared definition for what makes a product usable, valuable and effective?

Launched in 2020, ISTE set out to tackle this tough problem from all angles with the Teacher Ready project. Supported by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Teacher Ready framework provides valid, reliable criteria for reviewing and evaluating edtech products – ensuring that edtech solution purchases are money well spent. The result of the work is a set of user-friendly resources designed to help teachers and education leaders select the best edtech on the market, including:

ISTE Teacher Ready Evaluation Tool
Teacher Ready Evaluation Tool

A free evaluation tool that helps educators determine the usability of edtech products for their contexts.

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ISTE Seal 2100 C
ISTE Seal

A product certification - the ISTE Seal - that signals edtech products that are exceptionally well-built.

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ISTE Edtech Index
EdTech Index

A one-stop shop - the EdTech Index - for information about edtech products, including certifications and other market validators of quality.

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Stretch AI

Teacher Ready Evaluation Tool

The Teacher Ready Evaluation Tool provides educators and edtech decision-makers a standardized way to evaluate an edtech product’s classroom usability. Grounded in research about the learning sciences and user experience design, the tool’s criteria will guide you in completing valid, reliable evaluations of edtech products that can help you determine which products are built best. Be sure to also download the Teacher Ready Edtech Product Evaluation Guide, which provides details and background that support the best use of the Teacher Ready Evaluation Tool. 

ISTE Seal

In a crowded K-12 education space, educators can look for the ISTE Seal, ISTE’s product validation for products that have been tested for quality and usability. Products that earn the ISTE Seal are aligned to the ISTE Standards, feature great user experience design and support teaching practices backed by research including the learning sciences.

Learn About the ISTE Seal

EdTech Index

Find. Compare. Decide. 

The EdTech Index is the first stop for educators and edtech buyers in searching for and evaluating edtech solutions. The Index has 1500+ of the most used edtech tools listed and pulls together important and market validators from trusted education and technology organizations all in one place. Now, educators are able to find the most complete, reliable and up-to-date information available on learning technology products.

Browse the Index

Learn More From These Books, Articles, Podcasts and Guides

Article: Empowering Educators and Enhancing Product Quality

Curious about Teacher Ready and the Seal? Learn about how Teacher Ready informed the redesign of the ISTE Seal, and what district leaders and edtech companies think about it!  Read the EdSurge article.

Article: Establishing a Research-Based Framework for Edtech Product Quality

How did Teacher Ready come to be? Hear from the ISTE team about the foundational research that went into the framework. Read the EdSurge article.

Podcast: Learning First: Reviewing Our Ed Tech Priorities As We Head Back to School

Listen in as Liz Kolb, clinical professor of education technologies discusses how edtech should be used to support students in learning, making sure that students and learning always come first in a technology-forward landscape. Listen to the Podcast.

Download: Better Edtech Buying Guide, Revised Edition

This guide will assist your edtech purchasing journey by helping you determine your district’s needs, prioritize value in products, and evaluate those solutions to help your district buy better edtech products. Download the Guide.

Book: Better Edtech Buying Guide for Educators

Get a hardcopy version of the original edition of the Better Edtech Buying Guide for your library. Purchase the Guide.

eBook: The Technology Coordinator's Handbook, Third Edition

The Technology Coordinator’s Handbook is a thorough and useful guide, designed for edtech decision makers to help them better assist teachers, students, and administrators with the use of edtech devices and resources in the classroom. Purchase the Book.