Teasing Apart the Teacher-Technology Puzzle

Technology can be a transformative learning tool in the classroom. According to The National Education Technology Plan (NETP), technology has the potential to “affirm and advance relationships between educators and students, reinvent our approaches to learning and collaboration, shrink long-standing equity and accessibility gaps, and adapt learning experiences to meet the needs of all learners.”

While these are lofty goals, to be truly effective, educators need to have the skills and support to take full advantage of technology-rich learning environments. However, teacher insights are often overlooked. Because educational technologies are often expensive to purchase and deploy, school administrators are under intense pressure to quickly choose what will bring the most value to the most students at the lowest cost.

From previous foundry10 technology and learning research, we know that teachers are not always invited to share their perspectives and experiences with a technology before school leadership makes the decision to adopt it school-wide. And once implemented, teachers may not have the time or tools to assess if the technology is genuinely enhancing student learning and reevaluate usage for the following school year.

Read the Report: Teacher Attitudes Toward Technology 

Teacher Attitudes Toward Technology in the Classroom

To bring teacher perspectives on classroom tech to the fore, foundry10 recently surveyed 200 K-12 teachers from 110 schools in Washington state about their attitudes toward adopting and implementing technology in their classrooms. Here are a few key findings with implications for school administrators, technology specialists, and fellow education researchers from our white paper Teacher Attitudes Toward Technology.

• Teachers agree that school is a good place to learn about technology. More than three-fourths of teachers in our sample (78%), including 100% of elementary school teachers, agreed with the statement that school is a good place for students to learn about technology.

• Early career teachers have more concerns about technology than mid-career teachers. Teachers with 1-5 years of teaching experience reported significantly higher levels of concern with technology having a harmful impact on students and society than teachers with more than 20 years of teaching experience.

• The more concern teachers have, the less comfortable they feel about using technology. Teachers’ level of concern was significantly related to teachers’ level of comfort with technology in our study.

How to Support Teachers Using Technology

When school administrators and district technology support professionals dedicate resources to building teacher confidence with using technology in their classrooms, the students benefit. Here are a few tips and resources to set teachers up for success and make the most of classroom technology.

• Offer Relevant Professional Development
  Tailored professional development can help boost teachers’ confidence with technology and develop skills that can be directly applied to their use of technology with students. Our research on STEM professional development indicates that teachers benefit most from training focused on topics that are directly applicable to the current learning environment.

• 50 Tips for VR in the Classroom
  Successful implementation of VR in classrooms can be held back by numerous hurdles, including barriers related to funding, space, equipment, teacher and student comfort with the technology, and more. foundry10’s EdTech team created this resource offering “50 Tips for VR in the Classroom”—based on our extensive real-world experience using and studying VR in education spaces—to help teachers more easily navigate these potential challenges.

• The VR Stress Test
  How do you know if a VR software or game is a beneficial addition to your classroom? What questions should you ask when considering one? The foundry10 VR Software Stress Test offers a method for answering those questions.

• The VR Hardware Comparison Table
  This at-a-glance VR Hardware Comparison Table is designed to help educators more easily identify virtual reality (VR) headsets that meet their needs and budgets.

• The VR Learning Map
  Take a field trip to a local educational virtual reality experience museum or traveling exhibition to test out the latest VR technology. If based in Seattle, check out this VR Learning Map.

• Gather Feedback on Classroom Tech
  Gathering student feedback is a simple but sometimes overlooked method of evaluating the efficacy of educational technologies. Student feedback can help teachers make more informed decisions about their technology practices in the classroom. foundry10’s Guide to Gathering Student Feedback on Classroom Technology can help educators gather and use student feedback to inform their use of technology moving forward.

Though progress has been made in recent years to bridge the technology gap and bring emerging technology to students, it is imperative that we continue to evaluate how technology is used in the classroom to ensure that teachers have the support they need to implement technology in a way that truly brings value to student learning.

 

About foundry10 

foundry10 is an education research organization with a philanthropic focus on expanding ideas about learning and creating direct value for youth. In collaboration with diverse partners, we surface, evaluate, and share opportunities to better support youth learning both inside and outside the classroom. We do this through applied and experimental research, as well as collaborative philanthropy and educational programming rooted in evidence-based best practices.