Page 8 - THE Journal, May/June 2018

FEATURE | SURVEY
In our third-annual ed tech survey, teachers reveal an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward tech in the classroom and its impact on teaching, learning and professional development.
TEACHING with TECHNOLOGY
BY DAVID NAGEL
TEACHERS ARE GROWING FONDER of technology every year. Even the dreaded mobile phone is gaining acceptance as a classroom tool, at least among those who participated in THE Journal’s third-annual Teaching with Technology Survey.
Teacher Attitudes Toward Tech
While teachers in each of the preceding surveys were, for the most part, pumped up about tech for learning, this year’s results reveal an evolving positivism not just about tech, but about the direction tech is heading.
Exactly three-quarters of teachers in the survey indicated tech has had an extremely positive (38.37 percent) or mostly positive (36.63 percent) impact on education. The remaining 25 percent said tech has had both positive and negative effects on education. Zero respondents said tech had a negative or extremely negative impact.
25%
36.63%
38.37%
What is your view of the value of digital technologies in education in general?
Technology has had an extremely positive impact on education. Technology has mostly had a positive impact on education.
Technology has had both positive and negative effects on education in roughly equal measure.
Roughly the same number were positive about tech’s impact on the difficulty of teaching. About 77 percent said tech has made their jobs easier (44.48 percent) or much easier (32.27 percent). About 15 percent said it’s made their job harder, and 2 percent said it’s made their job much harder. The rest were neutral.
1.74%
14.83% 6.69%
What is your view of the value of digital technologies in education in general?
It’s made my job much easier.
It’s made my job easier.
It hasn’t had much of an impact either way.
32.27%
44.48% It’s made my job harder.
It’s made my job much harder.
There was overwhelming agreement, as well, that tech has had a positive impact on the effectiveness of teaching. Eighty-seven percent of respondents said tech has positively impacted their ability to teach. Ten percent said it’s had no effect. Three percent said it’s had a negative effect.
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| MAY/JUNE 2018