ISTE Standards for Students 1.6 – Creative Communicator

This standard emphasizes how students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to their goals. Therefore, students:

1.6.a. choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation or communication.

1.6.b. create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.

1.6.c. communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively by creating or using a variety of digital objects such as visualizations, models, or simulations.

1.6.d. publish or present content that customizes the message and medium for their intended audiences.

In higher education, this standard also promotes one of the 6C’s of education (critical thinking, collaboration, communication, creativity, citizenship/culture, and character education/connectivity), as seen in my post, Promoting the 6C’s of Education through Digital Technologies in Higher Education – Ignasia Yuyun, particularly communication skill. The same voice as ISTE Standards for Students 1.4 (Innovative Designer) and 1.5 (Computational Thinker), this standard emphasizes how students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively using the platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to their goals. By leveraging digital technologies, students have a choice to select appropriate platforms, tools, styles, and formats to express their ideas and thoughts with their teachers and peers.     

To address Standard 1.6.a, pointing out that students choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation or communication, I provide some platforms for communication purposes, such as LMS forum discussion, WhatsApp Group, Email, Google Drive, and Video Conference (Zoom, Google Meet). These communication tools help students share their ideas, opinions, thoughts, artifacts, problems, challenges, and reminders while working on project-based activities (QUEST Project, Genius Hour, Playlist, and Fishbowl). To illustrate, these project-based activities require peer review assessments; thus, students use some tools, such as Google Docs, for sharing documents or video conferencing to provide feedback or exchange ideas.

Through various project-based activities (QUEST Project, Genius Hour, Playlist, and Fishbowl), students also have a choice and voice to create their original works, responsibly repurpose, or remix digital resources into new creations (Standard 1.6.b.). For example, students create multimodal artifacts in the QUEST project, develop an E-Module for teaching English in the Curriculum and Technology Design class (Genius Hour Project), and create various digital content in the Content Writing Genius Hour Project. These final artifacts also reveal how students communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively through various digital objects (Standard 1.6.c.), such as infographics, posters, podcasts, e-modules, videos, and blogs. Finally, students publish or present content by customizing the message and medium for their intended audiences (Standard 1.6.d.) by sharing their final artifacts through the LMS forum discussion, social media (Instagram), and web blog.

All things considered, digital technologies inevitably allow students to communicate clearly and express themselves creatively using platforms, tools, styles, formats, and digital media appropriate to their learning goals. This way, teachers or educators are expected to facilitate various technologies and provide support during the learning process.