ISTE

ISTE is a vibrant professional community of educators who have been supporting the teaching of computer science for nearly 40 decades. ISTE hosts the nation’s largest edtech conference, authored the ISTE Standards, which have guided the use of technology for learning since 1998 and engage a strong membership base in year-round professional learning. ISTE has: ● An active online CS professional learning community. ISTE’s membership community of about 17,000 early-adopter educators eagerly participate in CS activities. ● A CS Track at ISTE Conference. The ISTE Conference & Expo is the largest ed tech event in the country with an extensive CS strand of activities including workshops, showcases and hands-on playgrounds. ● Developed Computational Thinking definition and resources. In collaboration with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), ISTE developed an operational definition of computational thinking for K-12 in 2010. This effort, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), was the product of more than 700 CS thought leaders and educational practitioners who crafted and agreed upon a framework to serve K-12 education. Targeting K-12 non-computing educators and leaders, ISTE and CSTA also developed resources to make the case for computational thinking (CT) and to help educators understand and explore how CT could be used across the curriculum and at all grade levels. With Georgia State University, ISTE has expanded this work to the classroom, deploying a small scale professional learning project in an elementary school. This project is designed to help teachers who are new to CT to implement it in interdisciplinary projects, as part of another NSF grant (2014-17). In addition, just this year, ISTE published the book No Fear Coding by Heidi Williams that provides practical examples of how to build CT skills in students from K-5. ● Created CS Standards for Educators. While nearly all of the current energy is focused on CS professional development (in-service training of existing teachers), ISTE has started the long-term work of having schools of education offer CS pathways. ISTE unveiled standards for computer science educators in 2003, which were updated in 2011. These standards have been primarily used to nationally recognize preservice and advanced programs via the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). ● Been a worldwide advocate for CS. ISTE has also leveraged its capabilities as an international organization and network. For example, ISTE designed and deployed a CT leadership professional development with 90 Ministry of Education trainers of principals in Malaysia (2016).