For any questions, contact the ISTE Seal Team at seal@iste.org

The ISTE Seal is the indicator for education-ready quality and usability. It verifies that solutions are evidence-based and research-backed. By earning an ISTE Seal, products will be recognized for their alignment to best practices in:

• Digital pedagogy and the ISTE Standards
• How students learn and the learning sciences
• Key elements of classroom usability

Product reviewers are third-party education and technology experts who evaluate or “score” edtech products against indicators. Reviewers will determine if the product samples you provide meet the expectations of the indicators

• Digital Curriculum Products- Digital curriculum products include content and other functionality.
• Assessment Products- Assessment products help teachers create, distribute, and review interactive experiences to understand what learners know and don’t yet know.
• Learning Platform Products- Platforms include edtech products that may not include content out of the box. Platforms have functionality and related features.
• Professional Development Products- These products include adult-facing professional development geared toward educators or educational coaches.

1. Assemble your team. Decide who will complete each part of your application.
2. Use your ULTID to complete the first page of your application.
3. Add a link to your slide deck which should include evidence to all required indicators and the optional indicators you choose.
4. Review your whole application before submitting.
5. Submit your application on the platform.

At this point, your application will be assigned to reviewers. The ISTE Seal team will be in contact with you if they have any questions. Reviews typically take 4-6 weeks.

Think of dimensions as a way to organize each group of indicators into similar categories. Each indicator relates to one of the five dimensions. The “look fors” help you know what kind of evidence to submit for each indicator and what the reviewers will be looking for as they evaluate your application.

When multiple reviewers set out to score a product, they must ensure that they observe the same sample of that product so that all reviewers are looking at the same pages, content, and features. By providing specific evidence, you allow the reviewers to reliably score your product against each indicator.

The Teacher Ready framework is the result of research backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This product usability certification framework contains five Dimensions, or areas that the product is assessed against. Each area includes indicators that specify aspects of the dimension, and each indicator includes “Look Fors.” If a product meets requirements specified by the Look Fors, it receives a positive score for that indicator. Products must receive enough positive scores to earn a seal.

Each Dimension includes:

• Definition= An explanation of what the Dimension is
• Student theme= How a student might ask or talk about about it
• Teacher theme= How a teacher or edtech decision maker might ask about it
• Provider theme= How a product developer (company) might ask about it
• Indicators= Features of the product related to the Dimension that can be rated by teachers, other district stakeholders, and product evaluators
  • Indicator label= The title of the indicator
  • Indicator definition= The definition of the indicator
  • Look Fors= Observable examples of indicators, to be evaluated by product reviewers

The framework’s five Dimensions cover five areas related to technical usability, pedagogical usability, and digital pedagogy.

1. User Interface and Agency
2. Learning Design
3. Digital Pedagogy/ Andragogy
4. Inclusivity
5. Assessment and Data

The indicators include many edtech specific words. Here are some of the words that may require clarification as you are completing your application.

• Accessibility= Accessibility is the degree to which a product supports and accommodates diverse learner needs and preferences in multiple learning environments. Although accessibility considerations are grounded in consideration of accommodating learners with disabilities, such features (e.g. high contrast text) generally benefit all users and are generally covered under “Universal Design for Learning” (or UDL) guidelines (although the two are not synonymous).
• Activities= The assessments and/or interactive elements requiring student response and interaction. Distinguished from “content” here, although edtech curriculum products often quickly switch between or intertwine content and activities.
• Andragogystrong>em> = The method and practice of teaching adult learners; adult education.
• Andragogical usabilitystrong>em>= A specific kind of usability focused on how well the product facilitates the adult learning process, including meeting desired learning professional goals.
• Authentic learning= Experiential learning based on students’ real-world experiences and interests, current issues, and/or real data.
• Breadcrumb trail= A navigation tool that allows a user to see where the current page is in relation to the website's hierarchy.
• Content= The information the product provides. Content can be any format or media type such as text, images, audio, simulation, or video.
• Design thinking= A specific methodology for problem-solving, including a prescribed series of steps for designing a solution.
• Digital identity= How an individual is represented online in the public domain, based on activities, connections or tagging. Examples include social media posts, photos, public online comments/reviews, awareness and monitoring of how others are depicting you online.
• Digital andragogy= The product is designed to support the enhancement of adult learners relying on prior experience, skills, and knowledge.
• Digital pedagogy= The use of digital tools in ways aligned to best-practices in pedagogy to support student mastery of content knowledge, problem solving, critical thinking, effective communication, collaboration, and self-direction.
• Formative assessment product= A formative assessment product is an edtech product that helps teachers create, distribute, and review interactive experiences to understand what learners know and don’t yet know; often, this is a “quiz.”
• Growth Objectives= A professional growth objective for educators is a statement that outlines the specific area of improvement that an educator aims to achieve in their professional development. It is a goal or target that an educator sets for themselves to improve their knowledge, skills, and abilities in a particular area. Professional growth objectives should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). They should be based on the teacher's current performance level and should align with the school's goals and priorities.
• Learning episode= A time-based experience where teachers and students work together on the same learning objective. A “lesson” is a common example
• Learning sciences= The learning sciences make up an interdisciplinary field of research with the common goal of studying and understanding how people learn, and how to apply this understanding to the design and evaluation of learning experiences. Key fields include cognitive psychology, educational psychology, human development, linguistics and social psychology.
• Online safety and etiquette= Positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online or when using networked devices.
• Pedagogical usability= A specific kind of usability focused on how well the product facilitates the learning process, including meeting desired learning objectives.
• Product= An educational technology (edtech) application that can be purchased by an educational organization or individual. Digital curriculum products provide content as well as other functionality (such as interactive activities), while platform products solely provide functionality with no or very limited content.
• Technical usability= The traditional type of usability focused on ease of interaction with the product. Also the degree to which a tool helps the user meet a need or accomplish a task, including achieving a learning objective.
• Usability= Synonymous with “ease of use”, this refers to the degree to which a product helps the user meet a need or accomplish a task, such as a teacher using an edtech product to meet learning objectives with students. Edtech usability includes both pedagogical usability (how well a product facilitates the learning process, including instructional design) as well as technical usability (the ease of use and interaction with a product, including user interface design).
• User agency= The ability of a product user to easily navigate and use a product in ways that meet their goals. In other words, the product abilities and features a user has at their disposal.
• User interface= The means by which a person and technology system interact. This can include screens, a mouse, a keyboard, as well as interaction with software applications.
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)= The commonly accepted accessibility standard for web content today. The guidelines emphasize four content principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust.

Products that meet all required indicators plus the required number of their selected additional indicators and ISTE standards will be awarded a Seal.

We ask that you submit a link to a slide deck that includes, images and or videos that reviewers can easily access. Be sure to check your permission settings. You will not be able to upload any files directly.

We recommend quality over quantity when submitting product samples. Keep evidence focused on the “Look Fors” and ISTE Standards. The more specific and focused your product samples are, the easier it will be for the reviewers to locate it in your product and verify it. Slide decks with embedded/hyperlinked multimedia content typically work best. We recommend one or more slides for each indicator including a screenshot or embedded video with clear comments on the slide or in the presenter notes section to explain the context for what you are showing.

This application has sections that may be best completed by different roles within your organization. For example, you may have a member of your curriculum team complete the sections about learning design, assessment, and digital pedagogy and someone from your tech team complete the user interface and agency and inclusivity sections. This application is designed to be collaborative. More than one member of your team can work on this application. The person who begins the application is designated as the primary collaborator. This person is the only one who can submit the completed application.

The primary collaborator can add additional collaborators. To do this, click on “manage collaborators” and “add collaborator.” Your team member will receive an email to login. Then they can access and contribute to the application. The primary collaborator can also remove access and change the primary collaborator if needed. Only one person can be logged into your application and make changes at one time.

Refer to your ISTE Seal Application Guide for specific information about required indicators.