Teaching with Technology

Teaching with Technology:

The Promise and Reality of the U.S. Digital Classroom

A graphite White Paper from Common Sense Media

FALL 2 013

Teaching with Technology:

The Promise and Reality of the U.S. Digital Classroom

A graphite White Paper from Common Sense Media

Table of Contents

Executive Summary....................................................................................3

Introduction................................................................................................. 5

Methodology............................................................................................... 6

Key Findings...............................................................................................7

1. Edtech isn't optional; it's essential.............................................................................................. 7 2. 1:1 student access to devices is just getting started,

but the penetration of laptop and mobile devices is remarkable............................................... 8 3. Few teachers report using edtech tools frequently,

but demand for edtech use is strong.......................................................................................... 9 4. Money, access, time, and training are the biggest

challenges to edtech implementation....................................................................................... 10 5. It's tough to find the good stuff.................................................................................................. 11

Conclusion................................................................................................ 13

Survey Toplines......................................................................................... 14

2 TE ACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY: A GR APHITE WHITE PAPER

?2013 COMMON SENSE MEDIA

Executive Summary

Overview

Teaching with Technology: The Promise and Reality of the U.S. Digital Classroom is a national online survey of teachers and administrators conducted in May 2013 to identify current practices, attitudes, and challenges related to the selection and use of educational technologies in preK-12 public school classrooms in the United States. This Graphite White Paper from Common Sense Media is a report on the findings from this survey, which will be fielded annually.

Methodology

The survey was conducted online in the U.S. by Harris Interactive in May 2013, among 764 public school preK-12 teachers and 205 public school administrators. The data were weighted to key demographic variables to align with the national population of the respective groups. No estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. Wherever significant differences are reported, they are reported at the significance level (alpha) of 0.05. (For more details on the survey and the methodology of the study, please see the full report.)

Throughout this paper, "educational technologies" or "edtech" will refer to digitally delivered products designed to help students or teachers, such as mobile applications (apps), websites, computer/console games, digital planning tools, or digitally delivered curricula.

Main Findings

1. Edtech isn't optional; it's essential.

Most teachers (86%) and administrators (93%) consider it important or absolutely essential to use educational technologies1 in the classroom. Overwhelming proportions of teachers agree that using edtech in the classroom confers benefits like student engagement, personalized learning, and collaboration. Elementary school teachers (57%) are significantly more likely than middle (42%) or high school teachers (36%) to agree that edtech is absolutely essential.

2. 1:1 student access to devices is just getting started, but the penetration of laptop and mobile devices is remarkable.

The majority of teachers (73%) report using more traditional provisioning or ways for students to access technology, such as in-class sharing (37%) or using the computer lab (36%). Only one in nine teachers (11%) are implementing 1:1 or Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs (where each student has access to their own device). Half of all teachers (49%) report having used tablets in their classroom for learning or instruction during the school year (either teachers only, students only, or by both), 40% report smartphone use, and 69% laptop use. High school teachers, and to a lesser extent, middle school teachers, report significantly higher prevalence of 1:1/BYOD provisioning.

3. Few teachers report using edtech tools frequently, but demand for edtech use is strong.

Despite their enthusiasm for edtech and its benefits, weekly less than one fifth (19%) of teachers use content-specific tools (like Mathboard), 31% report using information/reference tools (like Desmos Graphing Calculator or ), 24% use teacher tools (like ClassDojo or Lesson Planet), and only 14% report using digital curricula (like Dreambox Learning or Lexia Learning). Even in 1:1/BYOD classrooms, teachers report relatively low usage. For example, 15% of teachers in 1:1/ BYOD classrooms report using subject-specific content tools weekly and 18% use teacher tools weekly. Weekly use of information/reference tools in these classrooms is higher, at 37%. Math teachers are not significantly more likely to use edtech than teachers of other subjects.

However, while teachers vary in their current use of edtech, nine in ten (92%) agree they would like to use technology in the classroom more than they do now.

1 In the Harris survey, Teachers and Administrators were initially shown the following definition of "educational technologies": "Educational technologies are digitallydelivered products designed to help students or teachers, such as apps, computer games, websites, digital planning tools or digitally delivered curricula."

?2013 COMMON SENSE MEDIA

3 TE ACHING WITH TECHNOLOGY: A GR APHITE WHITE PAPER

4. Money, access, time, and training are the biggest challenges to edtech implementation.

As seen above, the use of edtech sometimes lags behind its promise. What's standing in the way? Teachers and administrators identify funding, infrastructure, and time as the biggest challenges to implementation. Educators also rank lack of training high on the list of challenges.

5. It's tough to find the good stuff.

In addition to the typical challenges of funding and infrastructure, this survey also asked teachers about discovery and decisionmaking around edtech. Three quarters (76%) of teachers agree it's at least somewhat difficult to find high quality edtech products, and roughly one in three spends an hour or more each week looking for edtech products to use in the classroom.

Further analysis reveals that teacher attitudes toward the potential of edtech are related to perceived difficulty of finding good edtech products. Compared to those who agreed it was not difficult, teachers who agreed that it was difficult to find good edtech tools were more likely to agree that lack of training, demands on teacher time, and difficulty of determining quality are obstacles to edtech implementation. They were also less likely to be high edtech users and to agree that edtech is absolutely essential, improves outcomes, helps students collaborate, or that funding is a challenge. However, there were no significant differences between the two groups (difficult vs. not difficult to find good edtech) in terms of relevant demographic factors such as school level or subjects taught, mean years of experience, urbanicity of the respondent's location, and proportion of minority or free/reduced lunch students.

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