While students are becoming “Free Agent Learners” who learn best collaboratively in an anytime-anywhere personalized environment utilizing the available digital resources, the thoughts go to the people whose job it is to educate all these free agents. How are the current teachers, the future teachers, and the current school administrators coping with all the changes occurring in the education world? Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up survey asks teachers and future teachers how they would use technology in the classroom in the report, Unleashing the Future: Educators “Speak Up” about the use of Emerging Technologies for Learning.

Speak Up is a national survey conducted by Project Tomorrow, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that today’s students are prepared to be tomorrow’s leaders and innovators. Project Tomorrow has been conducting this survey since 2003 and their 2009 survey represents the largest collection of stakeholder input on education, technology, 21^st century skills, schools of the future and science and math instruction. The stakeholders include K-12 students, parents, teachers, administrators and this time the Speak Up survey also surveyed 1,987 college students enrolled in teacher preparation programs.

In another report from the same survey, Creating Our Future: Students Speak Up about their Vision for 21^st Century Learning, the K-12 students’ vision for education could be summarized in these three essential elements:

As students continually redefine themselves as students and learners in a digital world, Project Tomorrow decided that they should extend their Speak Up 2009 survey to find out how educators are responding to students’ interests. How are they capable of using technology within the school environment to encourage and facilitate the digital learning environment? How do they encourage collaboration and communication in a world that insisted everybody work on their own and in silence, and in the classroom, not anytime-anywhere?

The Speak Up 2009 survey pointed out that integrating technology into the curriculum is important to district administrators and to principals. Teachers feel that through the use of technology, students are more motivated to learn (51 percent), apply their knowledge to real problems (30 percent), and take ownership of their learning (23 percent).

District administrators (90 percent) and principals (92 percent) report that the successful implementation of instructional technology is important/extremely important to the education mission. Also, district administrators (60 percent) are more likely than principals (55 percent), teachers (38 percent) or future teachers (38 percent) to believe the integration of instructional technology is extremely important to their district’s core mission.

Top Technology picks for the ultimate school

 

Key technology tools for facilitating 21^st century learning

 

Project Tomorrow ends their report with this question: “As we continue our local and national discussions about creating learning environments that will engage students and enhance student achievement, perhaps we should begin to ask: are our schools and districts ready to accommodate the desires that this next generation of teachers have for 21^st century, technology-enabled and empowered classrooms?”

 

Source: Unleashing the Future: Educators “Speak Up” about the use of Emerging Technologies for Learning  - Speak Up 2009 National Findings Teachers, Aspiring Teachers & Administrators – May 2010