KN
OW
T
HE
IS
TES
TAN
DA
RD
S
Each Know the ISTE
Standards installment
describes a lesson from
a classroom observa-
tion and evaluates its
alignment with the ISTE
Standards ( iste.org/
standards).
By Helen Crompton
ISTE Standards for Teachers 1: Facilitate and Inspire
ACTIVITY 1: No evidence of the standard
The teacher gives students a set of numbers that represent the
favorite colors of students in one grade level at an imaginary
school. The teacher tells students to work individually to draw a bar
chart on paper. The teacher then gives them another similar data
set and asks them to compare the two sets of data.
I
N
D
I
C
AT
O
R
S
Creativity appears in many forms, from creating physical models to creating questions. It is the teacher’s role to make
students aware that there are multiple ways
to get to understanding and that they need to
investigate and ask questions. To encourage
creativity, teachers should design lessons with
a variety of options for assignments and tasks.
This student-led choice will encourage them to
tap their own initiative, knowledge, and interests
to complete the task.
The three class activities described in the
table below are designed to teach fourth graders about mathematics and data. Creativity is
not a skill that’s often connected with math. Yet,
as with all subjects, exercising creativity is one
of the best ways to gain a deep understanding
of concepts.
According to ISTE Standard for Teachers 1,
educators should give students opportunities
to be creative and reflective within a real-world
context and to use digital tools and resources in
both face-to-face and virtual environments. Al-
though Activity 1 probably looks familiar—you
likely have experienced a math class like this in
your own past—it does not provide such op-
portunities. The lesson is teacher directed and
offers no choice or possibility for the students
to be creative. The teacher provides data that
was already collected, probably from a text-
book, leaving the students few opportunities to
make any connection to the reasons that data is
important. Neither the teacher nor the students
use any digital tools in this activity.
In Activity 2, the students work in teams and
choose how they want to represent the information. But they also receive previously collected data, again robbing them of the chance
to make connections to why that information
was gathered and its purpose. As the students
