UNESCO (the United National Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) has published guidelines for teachers's use of information communication technology (ICT) to improve education. The organization led the development of the standards in cooperation with ISTE, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), and corporate partners Cisco, Intel, and Microsoft. Three booklets are available:

• Policy Framework explains the rationale, structure and approach of the CST project;
• Competency Standards Modules crosses the components of educational reform with various policy approaches;
• Implementation Guidelines provide a detailed syllabus of the specific skills to be acquired by teachers within each skill set/module.

"These standards consist of modules that will help trainers prioritize their needs and design training curricula adapted to specific requirements and resources, reflecting UNESCO's conviction that countries must occupy the driver's seat of educational planning," said UNESCO's Director-General, Koïchiro Matsuura.

A future phase of the project will establish a UNESCO mechanism of quality assurance and compliance of training programs with the standards. UNESCO also plans to map existing teacher-training standards and program to their matrix of skills sets in an attempt to streamline global efforts.

Source: UNESCO, ICT Competency Standards for Teachers