Key points:
The nation’s largest professional edtech organization kicked off its annual conference on June 29 by announcing major initiatives to train 200,000 teachers in using AI within the next two years, support instructional leaders more effectively, help schools manage their students’ social media use, and save educators time in evaluating new edtech tools.
At the International Society for Technology in Education’s ISTELive 25 conference in San Antonio, held in conjunction with the ASCD Annual Conference 25 after ISTE and ASCD merged in 2022, ISTE+ASCD Chief Executive Officer Richard Culatta said his goal was for every attendee to leave the event with at least one new skill, new question, and new friend. He also revealed four key pledges the organization is making to improve the educational experience for everyone.
“Our mission is to ensure that all students have transformational learning experiences that spark their imagination and prepare them to thrive in life,” said Culatta, a former director of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology. “To put it more bluntly, we believe life is too short for sucky learning.”
To achieve this mission, ISTE+ASCD is making the following new commitments moving forward:
Help all teachers become AI ready.
AI will revolutionize not just teaching and learning, but also the future of work. To help students thrive in this future environment, teachers must model the effective use of AI for their students, Culatta said.
He compared human and artificial intelligence to the difference between a dump truck and a sports car. Each has its own specific use cases where it makes more sense to use one over the other: You wouldn’t use a sports car to haul rocks, and you wouldn’t use a dump truck for a cross-country trip. Similarly, human and artificial intelligence have their own unique strengths and shortcomings–and students must learn when it makes more sense to use one or the other to complete a task.
As Culatta put it: “Students need to know when it would be irresponsible to hand off a task to AI–and when it would be irresponsible NOT to.”
The only way students can learn these skills in the classroom is if teachers are AI literate themselves. “We want to prepare 200,000 teachers in two years to model AI life skills for their students,” Culatta said. Toward that end, the organization has made available a number of professional learning resources to help teachers become AI ready.
Support instructional leaders more effectively.
“We aren’t doing enough to support our instructional leaders,” Culatta said. “We need to do better.” He pointed to other professions that offer licensing, communities of practice, recognition of excellence, and professional learning, noting that instructional leaders need these opportunities as well.
ISTE+ASCD’s answer is a new Instructional Leadership Initiative. The effort includes a Transformational Learning Leader Award to recognize outstanding instructional leaders; a certification program for instructional leaders; a Chief Instructional Leaders Council; and an Instructional Leaders’ Summit, to be held Jan. 16-19, 2026, in San Diego.
Give schools more control over their digital culture.
“Having an effective digital culture is a prerequisite for having a healthy school culture,” Culatta asserted. Creating a healthy digital culture, in which students use technology safely, responsibly, and respectfully, is a “team sport,” he added—meaning it requires all stakeholders to be involved.
In surveys, K-12 leaders say Instagram misuse is their biggest pain point. “We need to be able to remove posts and accounts that are causing a disruption in schools,” Culatta said. To make this process easier for K-12 leaders, Culatta approached Meta’s Antigone Davis, global head of safety for the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.
Working in conjunction with ISTE+ASCD, Meta created a special “school” mode for Instagram that includes an expedited review process for reporting misuse by students. The company has piloted the technology in 60 school systems, with the goal of reviewing and taking down disruptive posts within 48 hours. “What we’ve seen is, it’s working,” Davis said. Because of the program’s success, Meta plans to make it available to all middle and high schools nationwide.
Make it easier to evaluate new edtech tools.
“I’m worried that schools are spending too much time reviewing new digital tools and apps,” Culatta said.
Last year, ISTE+ASCD brought a group of organizations together to agree on five key indicators of quality. The result was the EdTech Index, which helps educators evaluate the quality of edtech products.
At ISTELive 25, Culatta said the organization is relaunching this tool to include third-party validations of quality. “I believe we can save a huge amount of time and speed up the time it takes for school leaders to review new tools and apps,” he said. “We believe by doing this, we’re saving a thousand hours per district, per year.”
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