ISTE Standards for Students
The ISTE Standards for Students describe what K-12 students should know and do with technology. ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education) publishes them. The current student standards came out in 2016 and lay out seven roles a digital learner should grow into. ISTE is voluntary, not a federal mandate or a content standard. Districts and states use it to guide technology integration alongside their regular academic standards.
- K-12 digital learning
- Published 2016
- Seven roles
- ISTE
Students set their own learning goals and use technology to make progress.
Students act safely and ethically in online spaces.
Students curate information from digital sources and build their own understanding.
Students use a deliberate design process to solve problems with new solutions.
Students decompose problems and use computational methods to model and solve them.
Students choose the right digital medium for their message and produce work for a real audience.
Students work with peers across cultures to expand what they can do together.
The ISTE Standards for Students describe seven roles a digital learner should grow into. Each role has four sub-indicators that spell out what the role looks like in practice.
The seven roles are intentionally not grade-banded. ISTE expects each role to develop across all grades, with the depth growing as students mature.
- Student roles (7)
-
- Empowered Learner
- Digital Citizen
- Knowledge Constructor
- Innovative Designer
- Computational Thinker
- Creative Communicator
- Global Collaborator
- Companion sets
-
- Educators (2017)
- Education Leaders (2018)
- Coaches (2019)
- Computational Thinking Competencies (2018)
1.5.b │ │ │ │ │ └── sub-indicator (a, b, c, or d) │ └──── role number (5 = Computational Thinker) └────── standards set (1 = Students)
Indicator 1.5.b is the second sub-indicator under the Computational Thinker role: students collect or identify data sets, use digital tools to analyze them, and represent data in various ways. The leading 1 distinguishes the Student set from the Educator (2), Education Leader (3), and Coach (4) sets.
ISTE tells me which apps and devices to use.
No. ISTE is platform-neutral on purpose. The indicators describe what students should be able to do with technology, not which technology they should use.
ISTE replaces content standards.
ISTE is a layer on top of content standards. A grade 6 Knowledge Constructor still needs to know grade 6 history or grade 6 science. ISTE describes how that student gathers, evaluates, and builds knowledge in a digital environment.
ISTE is just for the computer teacher.
The student standards are written for every teacher. Most districts that use ISTE expect every content teacher to plan with at least one or two of the seven roles in mind.
If a school uses ISTE, that means students get more screen time.
The standards say nothing about screen time. Several of the roles (Innovative Designer, Global Collaborator) can be met with low-tech or no-tech components inside a larger project.
- Role
- One of the seven student standards (Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, and so on).
- Indicator
- A specific sub-statement under a role. Each role has four indicators, labeled a through d.
- Standards set
- One of four ISTE collections: Students (1), Educators (2), Education Leaders (3), Coaches (4).
- Computational Thinking Competencies
- A separate ISTE framework (2018) that expands the Computational Thinker role into a full progression.
- ISTE Certified Educator
- A professional credential for educators who complete ISTE's standards-based course of study.
How are the 2016 student standards different from the older NETS-S?
The 1998 and 2007 versions focused on tool fluency: students could use a word processor, a spreadsheet, a search engine. The 2016 standards shifted to the deeper roles (Knowledge Constructor, Computational Thinker, Global Collaborator) and treat the tools themselves as interchangeable.
Are computer science standards the same as ISTE?
No. Computer science standards (the CSTA K-12 CS Standards, the K-12 CS Framework) cover programming, data, networks, and impacts of computing as a content area. ISTE covers how students use technology across every subject. The two are complementary.
Does ISTE require coding instruction?
The Computational Thinker role expects students to learn how problems can be decomposed and modeled algorithmically. Some districts meet that with coding instruction. Others meet it with unplugged computational thinking activities and data work. Both are within the standard.
Where do the educator and leader standards fit in?
The ISTE Standards for Educators (2017) describe what teachers should be able to do to support the student roles. The Education Leaders set is for district and school administrators. The Coaches set is for instructional technology coaches. The four sets are designed to reinforce one another.
- 1
1998: NETS for Students
ISTE publishes the first National Educational Technology Standards for Students, framed around six categories of tool fluency.
- 2
2007: Second edition
NETS-S is rewritten around six broader concepts (creativity and innovation, communication and collaboration, research and information fluency, and others), beginning the shift away from tool-specific language.
- 3
2016: Third edition, renamed
ISTE rebrands the standards as the ISTE Standards for Students and rewrites them around seven roles. The new version is fully tool-neutral and emphasizes student agency in a digital environment.
- 4
2017-2019: Companion sets
ISTE publishes parallel standards sets for Educators, Education Leaders, and Coaches, and releases the Computational Thinking Competencies as a separate document.
- 5
Today
ISTE is the most widely referenced technology framework in U.S. K-12 schools. Many state education agencies cite ISTE in their technology guidance. ISTE itself runs a teacher certification program tied to the standards.
ISTE began as a small classroom-technology association in 1979 and published its first student standards in 1998. The early versions were tool-focused, which made them date quickly. The 2016 rewrite was a deliberate move to standards that describe what students do, not which products they use. A Knowledge Constructor in 2016 was already free to use a search engine, a primary source archive, or a generative AI tool. The role does not change as the tool changes.
Adoption of ISTE looks different from adoption of Common Core or NGSS. There is no state board vote and no aligned test. A district picks ISTE because it wants a vocabulary for technology integration. Many state education agencies cite ISTE in technology plans without formally adopting it. The result is that ISTE has wide influence and modest legal weight.
- Publisher
- International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).
- First released
- 1998 (as the National Educational Technology Standards for Students, "NETS-S").
- Current version
- 2016 ISTE Standards for Students (the third major revision).
- Subjects covered
- Digital learning competencies. Not subject-bound. Designed to sit alongside academic content standards.
- Grade range
- K-12.
- Adoption
- Used by school districts and many state education agencies as the reference for technology integration. Adoption is voluntary and not tracked by a central authority.
- Legal status
- Voluntary. ISTE is a membership association, not a state or federal authority.
- Companion frameworks
- ISTE Standards for Educators (2017), Education Leaders (2018), Coaches (2019), and the Computational Thinking Competencies (2018).
- License
- ISTE owns the standards. Free to reference. Reproduction requires permission.