Survey: Ed-tech use falls short of desired goals


Despite the tough economy, schools still have been able to maintain ed-tech integration plans—though they’d like to do more.

Despite budget constraints brought on by a lagging economy, K-12 schools and colleges are holding steady when it comes to ed-tech use. But they’d like to be doing even better.

That’s the key takeaway, anyway, from a self-assessment of educational technology use conducted by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

The organization’s “2012 SIIA Vision K-20 Survey,” the fourth in an annual series of benchmarking studies, surveyed nearly 1,700 officials representing all levels of K-20 education. The self-assessment asks school and campus leaders to rate their progress toward SIIA’s vision for ed-tech use, represented in two ways:

(1) Seven educational goals, which describe the key instructional and institutional outcomes enabled through technology…

• Meet the individual needs of all students;

• Support accountability and use data to inform instruction;

• Deepen learning and motivate students;

• Facilitate communication, connectivity, and collaboration;

• Manage the education enterprise effectively and economically;

• Enable students to learn from any place, at any time;

• Nurture creativity and self-expression; and

(2) Five technology measures that indicate progress in implementing technology to meet these goals…

• Widely use 21st century tools for teaching and learning;

• Provide anytime/anywhere educational access;

• Offer differentiated learning options and resources;

• Employ technology-based assessment tools;

• Use technology to redesign and enable enterprise support.

This year, SIIA added three new questions at the beginning of the survey to get a deeper understanding of participants’ mindset:

  1. How well is technology currently integrated in your educational institution?
  2. What do you feel is the ideal level of integration for technology in your educational institution?
  3. How important is integrating technology into your educational institution?

Although about three-fourths of both K-12 and postsecondary participants rated the importance of technology integration high, only about one-fouth said they currently have a “high” level of integration, suggesting that ed-tech use lags behind ideal usage for both K-12 schools and colleges.

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Meris Stansbury

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