One of the things I love about professional associations like TCEA is that they allow individuals with similar interests and professional goals to network with each other. This is especially true in a field like educational technology. Things move so quickly in this area of education that if you aren’t well connected with others that have similar jobs as yours, you might make strategic decisions that involve large expenditures without having all the necessary information.
This is why TCEA launched the TCEA District Technology Survey. The data from this survey will illuminate the landscape of technology use in Texas districts. The survey questions have been developed to gather information on a range of topics: instructional technology products and practices, technical support products and practices, and leadership of technology departments and staffing configurations. In addition, for those that opt-in, the information will also serve as a way to match individuals who are using certain products or who are implementing specific instructional practices in order to gain insight and assistance when needed.
The survey will close on June 15, but let’s look at some of the data we’ve already collected. Hopefully more people will respond, which means the data is subject to change. But this will give you an idea as to what type of information you can glean from the results of the survey.
BYOD
As you can see in the charts below, a good number of districts are allowing some of their students to use their own digital device at school.
Device Checkout Program
Districts are also recognizing that some of their students may not have devices to bring to school. So they have devices that students can check out.
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Every Student Has a Device
Although we are a long way from districts giving every student a device, the practice is growing.
Open Education Resources
This chart indicates that 95% of Texas districts are at least interested in learning more about Open Education Resources and 40% are currently in the process of investigating what that would look like in their district.
Additional Types of Questions
In addition to these questions, the survey also explores a range of other topics:
- Types of applications used to manage technology
- Types of applications used instructionally
- Staffing patterns
- Data privacy and security practices
- Student use of email and social media
- Department organization
Contribute to Survey Data
If you are a technology director in a Texas school district or charter school and you haven’t taken the survey, please do so. We suggest that the survey be answered by the technology director and/or their leadership team. Please forward this information to whomever would best be able to complete the survey. It is estimated to take between 15-20 minutes to take. The survey will be open until June 15. The results of the survey will be made public at the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year.
If you like listening to audiobooks, you’ll enjoy using OverDrive. If your district doesn’t subscribe to it, check and see if your local public library does. If so, you can check out audiobooks from them, as well as through their network of other contributing libraries!
While grandparents love this app for making collages of their grandkids, students of all ages will find this app easy to use when they have an assignment where they can create collages, annotate over photos, etc.
Though many of us remember copying down notes in class to study for tests, current students seem to prefer to take photos of the board to capture their notes. This app is so handy for that. Point and aim it at the board, projector, paper, etc.. Once it detects the area, you just snap the photo; it will crop it so only the board is in the photo and deskew the image so it looks like you had prime seating in front of the board when you took the picture. Save as an image on your device or as a PDF or Office format if you have an Office 365 account.
Sometimes you want your students to record a video to capture their learning. But many devices have a default video recording app that is bare bones. You’ll find Adobe Express to be an easy go-to tool that will help students make great videos without getting bogged down in the technical aspects of videography. Though it is only for iOS currently, it is worth the wait for other operating systems.
Pushbullet is great if your students find that they need to “push” files or photos from their phone or tablet to their laptop/computer (and vice versa). Pushbullet makes it easy without having to move your file/photo to Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or DropBox first. And, since it is in the cloud, you can access your account from any device to retrieve previously pushed files. This is great if you have students taking photos or videos on their phones, but then need to add them to documents that they are editing on a computer.
If you want an easy app that allows all of your students to share, then this has to be the best app for that. It’s perfect for having students summarize their content or reflect on their learning. If they are using a phone or tablet, they’ll need to download the app; otherwise, they can use the webcam on their laptop to participate. Though I don’t recommend the paid version of many apps (I remember what it was like when my teacher budget was whatever I had in my pocket), this is definitely one app that is worth the price; consider getting others to join with you and you all can enjoy a discounted price. Even without the additional features in the paid version, this is a super app!
