Tag:

survey

Help Bridge the Digital Divide in Texas by Taking This Public Survey

by Matt Russell July 26, 2023

written by Matt Russell

In the pursuit of digital equity, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, under the umbrella of the federal $42.5 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), has earmarked a new historic allocation of $3.3 billion for broadband expansion in Texas. This allocation represents a pivotal investment aimed at enhancing access to reliable, high-speed internet and closing the digital divide across the state.

Image of the BEAD Program home page. — **Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program**

While we acknowledge this unprecedented funding, it is important to recognize that Texas, despite having the highest federal funding allocation, also has one of the largest number of unserved addresses in the nation, highlighting the scale of the task at hand.

How You Can Help

Public feedback is a pivotal component of this planning process. As leading professionals in the field of education and technology, your insights and perspectives are invaluable to this process. By contributing to the discourse, you can help to shape a robust and effective strategy that optimizes the allocated funding and addresses the broadband needs of the state – specifically for our schools and their students.

You can contribute to an improved understanding of the challenges Texas households are facing in accessing affordable and reliable internet service by participating in the Texas Digital Opportunity Public Survey. This information will directly inform the Texas Digital Opportunity Plan.

Image of the Texas Digital Opportunity Public Survey home page — **Texas Digital Opportunity Public Survey**

Take 10-15 Minutes to Complete an Anonymous Survey

The deadline for the survey is August 31 and TCEA encourages each one of you to take the 10-15 minutes to complete the survey and to share it with your networks. The survey, which is anonymous and available in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Vietnamese, is designed to identify barriers to internet access, affordability, and adoption.

Why Does It Matter?

As a member of TCEA, your participation is vital to ensuring a comprehensive and representative digital strategy for Texas education. With your assistance, we can help to bridge the digital divide and ensure that the forthcoming expansion of broadband services benefits all Texas educators and students.

TCEA thanks you for your participation and contributions to this crucial endeavor.

Take the Survey Now

July 26, 2023 0 comments

Listening to the Voice of Texas Teachers

by Dr. Julie A. Evans May 5, 2021

written by Dr. Julie A. Evans

For almost two decades Project Tomorrow/Speak Up has annually surveyed K-12 students, parents, teachers, and administrators across the country. These online surveys have played a crucial role in capturing the authentic voice of education stakeholders and providing schools and districts with essential information about the needs and aspirations of their key stakeholders. Our yearly Speak Up reports, based on the survey data, regularly inform policies, programs and funding at the district, state, and national level.

We are grateful for the partnership we have this year with TCEA and for their past support. TCEA has made it possible for Project Tomorrow to reach out to all the dedicated and committed teachers, students, parents, and administrators in Texas and ensure that their voices are heard loud and clear.

This past year has been a challenging one for everyone. Closed schools led to remote and hybrid learning and then to reopening. Students, parents, and administrators all struggled to manage in this changed environment. And for our classroom teachers this has been a year like no other testing their skills and endurance. Thank you to all the Texas teachers who demonstrated their spirit and endurance, working tirelessly to meet the needs of their students.

Listening to the real-life experiences of our classroom teachers is more important than ever. Our teachers were eyewitnesses to the unprecedented events unfolding in their schools and classrooms. Gathering their feedback and insights is critical now and can pave the way for improving the educational experiences of all students.

During Teacher Appreciation Week we are expanding our efforts to reach teachers – and TCEA is playing an important part in this effort. We urge TCEA members to join us in this call to action for teachers to “Speak Up”.

Texas Teachers, You Matter

During Teacher Appreciation Week, teachers can directly share their views through a special Speak Up survey for teachers. Here are ways that Texas teachers can be part of Speak Up’s efforts during Teacher Appreciation Week.

SHARE: Share the email and link below with teachers in your district, state, and TCEA membership. Click here to view Sample Email.
PROMOTE: All teachers who complete the survey will be eligible to receive prizes and awards for their classrooms. Learn more now!
EARN: You can earn recognition through our District Recognition Badge Program.
BENEFIT: You will receive your survey information, essential information in making key decisions, particularly as it relates to the new stimulus funding.

The Project Tomorrow has additional information. The good news for all teachers taking the survey – you will be eligible to win prizes and classroom grants.

Listening to Texas Teachers Matters

Teachers are still taking the survey, but we could not resist peaking at some of the preliminary data. The early findings are proof of why every K-12 district administrator should be seeking input from their teachers right now.

To use technology more effectively Texas teachers told us they needed:

Classroom set of digital learning devices for every student (64%)
Planning time with colleagues (60%)
Professional learning about effective use of digital tools (56%)
Reliable, high-bandwidth Internet in the classroom (49%)
Confidence that students have out-of-school Internet access (54%)

These preliminary findings – and much more – are part of the recently released infographic. View all of our new infographics released during Teacher Appreciation Week here.

Every school district in Texas needs authentic data like this right now to make the best decisions for their community and for spending new federal dollars that are being disbursed.

Texas Data Matters

Over the years, state education leaders and district administrators have used Speak Up data to validate new initiatives and support new investments. On a national level, Speak Up data highlights digital learning trends in K-12 education and promotes new discussions about ways to support innovation in schools. More important than ever, this year’s national Speak Up report provides a glimpse into how the sudden shift to digital learning may lead to sustained educational transformation. Read more about what the Speak Up data is telling us here.

Call Out

Together we can listen – and act upon teacher voice – and make a difference in the learning experiences of all Texas students. The Speak Up survey is open until August 15 – urge all Texas teachers to take part in this important effort. Help us get the word out and make sure that the voices of all teachers in Texas are heard! Participate now!

Make Your Voice Known

You have a voice so use it. Take the survey now!

May 5, 2021 0 comments

CTO/CIO Educational Trends

Insights Learned From Your Speak Up Data

by Jennifer Bergland October 23, 2019

written by Jennifer Bergland

I am going to be very up front with my intention in writing this blog. My goal is to persuade school district technology directors or other administrators to seriously consider having their school or district participate in the annual Speak Up Survey.

Speak Up is a research tool districts use to learn what students, educators, parents, and the community have to say about educational issues. Yes, there are quite a few questions on the survey that deal with technology, but there are many other types of questions that will provide you with some much-needed insight into the attitudes of your stakeholders.

For example, in last year’s survey, they asked several questions about social and emotional learning. They also asked students how they prefer to learn subjects like math or science. Oh, and did I tell you that the survey is completely free and that they make it really easy for your district to participate?

A Texas-Sized School District

In order to help you see how a school district administrator could use this data, I’m going to take the state of Texas’ data and pretend I am the technology director of the “Texas School District,” covering the entire state. Let’s see what the data tells me about my district or what questions come to mind when I review the data.

Community

First, I’m very interested in the use of technology in my community. 78% of the members of my community use the internet to conduct research and 76% use mobile apps. 75% of my community use technology to watch an online video to learn how to do something. This tells me that a large portion of my community has internet access and is using it for research and to learn new things. However, it appears there is still some type of digital divide in my community. Is it an access or a skill problem, or both? I’m also surprised that only 26% of my community say they use Twitter. Since I spend a large amount of time on Twitter, I had assumed others did, too. This lets me know that I need to use a wider variety of social media to communicate with the members of my community.

Students

There are a series of questions in the survey that are posed to middle and high school students to see how often they seek ways to learn something because of their interests. This helps me see how students are using technology when they are looking for specific information or want to learn a skill. Only 9% of both middle and high school students post a question on a discussion board or a forum. Do we need to be more intentional in using this type of application? Do they just not know how, or have they found better ways to seek answers to their questions?

There are a greater number of students who are researching the internet for information: 32% of middle schoolers and 42% of high school students. Students are also using YouTube and other video services to learn how to do something. 42% of my middle school students and 57% of my high school students often use videos to teach them a skill. I need to talk to the instructional staff to see if we are taking advantage of this type of technology. Should we be posting short videos that teach one of the standards our students are struggling with? If so, what skills do my teachers need to know in order to do this and what technology do they need?

Teachers

Speaking of teachers, I really want to know what they are doing with technology. The data tells me that 45% of them are customizing digital content they find online to meet their students’ needs. This sounds an awful like Open Educational Resources (OER). Hmm, maybe we need to have more conversations about OER.

SpeakUp I also discovered that 43% of my teachers are facilitating student collaboration projects using online tools. This is such a great skill. How can I leverage these teachers to help other teachers do this as well? Also, I’m pleasantly surprised that 44% of my teachers are using an online curriculum. However, I want to know more. What is the frequency? Are they occasionally doing this or is this something they use every day? I also want to know what they are using. Are they using the district’s Learning Management System, or is it an online textbook?

I am a little disappointed that only 9% of my teachers are creating their own online professional learning networks. I had pretty high hopes that platforms like Twitter could help connect educators, especially those who may be the only one that teach their subject at their school. Maybe I need to do my own survey to see if, in fact, that is the case. Maybe the 9% are the teachers who do not have a colleague at their school that teaches their subject. Sounds like I need to do some more digging.

Finally, there is one question I am very interested in. It asks the teachers what they need to more efficiently and effectively speakup integrate digital content, tools, and resources into their daily instruction. 51% said they wished they had a classroom set of digital devices. 49% said they needed to know that their students had adequate broadband access outside of school and 46% indicated they were concerned that they didn’t have consistent, reliable internet access within school. Maybe I need to have my staff do some focus groups related to internet access and speed. Looking at my network resources, they should have adequate bandwidth, but maybe something is happening on campus that I am not aware of. While my team is on campus, I probably should also have them ask teachers about the availability of technical support since 47% of the teachers indicated it was lacking. And lastly, my teachers still need time to plan with their colleagues (60%) and additional professional development (50%). I need more staff to be able to meet this need!

Whew, I learned this much in less than an hour by looking at this data. This will come in handy when I go to the superintendent and tell her I need more funding to do the things she wants me to do. It will also help me know where I need to place my time and energy.

Your Turn

Seriously, I gained this information in less than an hour. Just think what you and your team could glean from your district’s data.

If nothing else, I hope you will sign up to watch one of their webinars so that you can learn more about the survey and how it can assist you in your work. On October 23, you can watch the livestream of Julie Evans, the CEO of Project Tomorrow, provide a congressional briefing on the latest data. Julie does an excellent job of weaving a story with the data. She is always extremely interesting. In addition, check out this site for other webinars the Speak Up team is hosting.

Register Now

The Speak Up survey is open until June 30, 2020. What are you waiting for? Register today!

Photos of student and teachers by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Photo of hands and laptop by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

October 23, 2019 0 comments

CTO/CIO Leadership

SpeakUp Survey Is Open!

by Jennifer Bergland October 25, 2018

written by Jennifer Bergland

It’s time for students, parents, teachers, principals, librarians, technology leaders, superintendents, and more to Speak Up via the annual Project Tomorrow’s digital learning survey. Share your thoughts and experiences on education issues such as:

Learning and teaching with mobile devices, digital content, gaming, videos, and virtual and augmented reality
Internet access at home and in school
Importance of math and best ways to learn math
Digital citizenship
And much more!

The free surveys take less than 20 minutes to complete and are completely anonymous. Join more than 500,000 people from more than 10,000 schools to be sure your voice is heard this year! Your school or district’s data will be made available to each entity. This data can help guide your efforts to expand digital learning opportunities for your students.

2017 SpeakUp Data

Below is some the Texas data from the 2017 SpeakUp Survey:

speakup

34% of Texas 3rd-5th grade teachers indicated there were not enough computers for students to use at school.
48% of Texas 6-8th graders and 39% of students in grades 9-12 said they were not allowed to use their personal mobile devices at schools.
31% of school administrators and teachers said the availability of technology for student use at school was a challenge for technology integration.
44% of school administrators and 43% of teachers listed digital equity issues such as student access to technology and internet at home as major challenges.
46% of school administrators and 69% of teachers said that motivating teachers to change their teaching practice to use technology in their classrooms is something they still struggle with.
59% of librarians said helping teachers move from sporadic to sustained usage was one of their top challenges while 47% listed students not having enough access to computers or the Internet outside of school as one of their challenges.
48% of librarians indicated the integration of digital content components into a teacher-friendly system was a major challenge.
The number one issue (57%) for technology leaders when it comes to cloud computing is ensuring that the data is secure.
47% of the technology leaders consider the homework gap (students lack of access to the Internet at home) and teachers lack of understanding cloud applications are the next two biggest challenges in implementing cloud technology.
The next challenge facing technology leaders in this area is having multiple sign-ons with different products (41%).

Specifics

As you can see, we can learn a great deal about the technology implementation across the state from the SpeakUp Survey. Every school and district will be given access to their own data. If you have never participated in the SpeakUp survey, I HIGHLY encourage you to consider doing so this year. You can start small and only do a few campuses or a few grade levels. This is completely free and your data is never shared with others except in an aggregated form (i.e. Texas or national). It is a wonderful tool to use in your planning.

speakup

Surveys are open through January 30, 2019. They make it easy to promote your survey with their promotional materials. This flyer is an excellent promotional resource. Also, they are super helpful, so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask them.

Credits:

Photo of data chart was created by rawpixel on Unsplash

Photo of students using laptops was created by NESA by Makers on Unsplash

October 25, 2018 0 comments

Announcements/Important Dates CTO/CIO Educational Trends

TCEA Launches Tech Use Survey

by Jennifer Bergland June 6, 2018

written by Jennifer Bergland

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.

survey

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.

. survey

Every Student Has a Device

Although we are a long way from districts giving every student a device, the practice is growing.

Survey

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.

survey

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.

June 6, 2018 0 comments

CTO/CIO Leadership

Ways to Promote the Speak Up Survey

by Jennifer Bergland November 21, 2017

written by Jennifer Bergland

Klein Independent School District led the country on the number of Speak Up surveys for years. What value do they see in participating in Project Tomorrow’s survey? In a Speak Up publication, Dr. Bret Champion, superintendent of Klein ISD, answered that question by saying, “The data we gather from Speak Up informs next steps for digital learning in Klein ISD, as we work with all stakeholders to re-imagine learning and make our shared Promise2Purpose vision a reality for EVERY student.”

Last month, I wrote a post giving a broad overview of Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up Survey. As a refresher, the Speak Up survey is a national research project that is a free service to schools and districts to assist their efforts in technology and district planning. The survey will help districts gather the thoughts of students, parents, teachers, principals, librarians, technology leaders, district administrators, and community members on a range of issues such as:

Learning and teaching with mobile devices, digital content, gaming, videos, and virtual and augmented reality
Internet access at home and in school
Importance of math and the best ways to learn math
Digital citizenship
And much more!

As a former technology director, I totally agree with Dr. Champion’s assessment of the Speak Up survey which is why I’m hoping more districts will join Klein. That’s why I reached out to some districts who have been utilizing the data from the Speak Up survey for several years to find out their tips and tricks for the deployment of the survey. Below is what I learned.

How to Increase Staff Participation in the Survey

Provide tweets and other social media messages/images that campuses can use to promote the survey.
Hang posters announcing the survey at the entrance of each school.
Send survey instructions to each teacher to share with students through Google Classroom or other Learning Management Systems.
Provide an award for the campus with the most responses.
Provide presentations for each campus regarding survey results for use with their technology planning meetings.

Increasing Speak Up Participation by Parents/Community

Tweet out messages about Speak Up.
Send emails through the district’s message system at the district and campus level.
Post information about the survey on the district Facebook page.
Provide information with the Speak Up logo on all campus and district websites.
Put promotional messages on each school marquee.

Why Participate?

The data from the Speak Up survey is extremely useful for technology planning both at the district and campus levels.
Questions have been vetted for quality and relevance.
It is free and enables us to collect information through one survey instead of having to create our own.
All the promotional materials are provided.

TCEA is so convinced this survey will assist districts in their technology planning that we are giving away two free TCEA Convention registrations to Texas school districts who submit their surveys during Speak Up America week (December 4-8), or Speak Up Appreciation Week (January 8-12).

Hopefully, some of the ideas offered by school districts can assist your school and/or district in promoting the survey, and a chance to win a free TCEA convention registration will provide an added incentive to participate. If you have any additional tips and tricks to share, please include them in the comment section below.

Credits: Microphone photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash, Teen with laptop: Photo by Mikayla Mallek on Unsplash. Also a big shout out to Dianne Tidwell, the Director of Instructional Technology at Tomball ISD, for providing me with some great tips on how Tomball gets such amazing participation in the survey.

November 21, 2017 0 comments

CTO/CIO Leadership

SpeakUp Survey Opens October 16

by Jennifer Bergland October 9, 2017

written by Jennifer Bergland

If you knew that 55 percent of your district’s parents thought their children would thrive in a blended learning classroom, would it impact your strategic planning for your school or district? Would it help your planning if you knew the five essential elements your teachers felt they needed to effectively and efficiently integrate digital content, tools, and resources into their daily instruction? Would it surprise you if you found that 53 percent of your middle and high school students felt they needed the Internet at home to do their homework, but only 13 percent of your teachers were assigning homework that needed the Internet? All of this information and so much more can easily be obtained by your district’s participation in the SpeakUp Survey. And by the way, these statistics are from the surveys completed by Texans in 2016.

Project Tomorrow is a national education nonprofit group whose mission is to “ensure that today’s students are well prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders, and engaged citizens of the world.” The SpeakUp Research Project for Digital Learning is a national research project and a free service to schools and districts to gather survey data from students, teachers, librarians, campus and district administrators, parents, and community members. It is designed to help education leaders as they create and implement their vision of the next generation learning model. And it is completely free to school districts.

You are probably thinking this sounds like way too much work, that you simply don’t have time to distribute all of these surveys and make sure they are completed. The good news is that they have made this process super easy. They have everything you need.

SpeakUP Support Materials

Some of the items you can find on their website to help you organize and promote the survey are listed below.

Welcome Packet – gives you enough information to get started
Flyers – to help promote the survey
Information Material – to help answer all your questions (timeline, testimonials, introduction letters to give to principals, etc.)
Social Media – suggested messages for the different social media outlets
Sample Emails – help you get the word out
Instructions – for each group you are targeting
Lesson Plans – in case you want your teachers to build this activity into a learning experience
Press Release – to communicate to your community that you want their input

You have complete flexibility with the implementation of the survey. If this is your first time, you could start small by targeting one school or one grade level. You could decide to only survey students and staff this year and add parents and community members the following year. Just remember, the more data collected, the more information you will have for your strategic planning. This brings us to the best part. After the data is collected, Project Tomorrow analyzes it and provides you with your own data in an extremely easy format to read and manipulate. They even have a PowerPoint template that you can use to easily import your district’s data.

Important Details

Register your district so all further communications from Project Tomorrow will get to the right person.
Promote the survey using all of their free materials.
Determine the time frame to conduct the survey. Project Tomorrow opens the survey on October 16 and closes it on January 19.

Information is power. Knowing what key stakeholders value and their opinions on certain issues can assist school district administrators when implementing new programs and adjusting current ones. This is especially important when the district is transitioning from a print-based instructional model to one that relies on the use of digital materials and technologies. The SpeakUp Survey provides your district an excellent opportunity to help gather the data you need to monitor and adjust during this transition. Gaining this information has never been so easy! What are you waiting for? Register now!

October 9, 2017 0 comments

CTO/CIO Educational Trends Leadership

Digital Learning Trends

by Lori Gracey May 22, 2017

written by Lori Gracey

The Speak Up 2016 survey results are starting to come in, and they’re showing some interesting trends in digital learning. Below are the seven concepts that are bubbling up to the top right now.

Trend #1

No surprise here. Superintendents are reporting that funding, bridging the achievement gap, and staff morale are their top concerns. These are the same concerns that have topped their list for the past six years. However, the level of concern on these topics has increased this year.

With the attacks from the media recently on the teaching profession, it’s certainly understandable why staff morale is low. And with reduced funding at both the state and national levels, there is even more reason for teachers to be unhappy right now. The achievement gap, despite the best efforts of our educators, seems to be growing as the digital divide across our country grows.

Trend #2

There is some good news, however. Campus leaders are reporting that data-informed instruction, social media communications, and online assessments are making a difference with today’s students. Other technology enhancements that seem to have a positive ROI include videos, simulations and animations within instruction; cloud-based applications and tools; student access to mobile devices in school; and online professional development for teachers. These might be good trends to investigate for your district this next school year. (If you need help planning for and implementing any of these, TCEA can help. Just email Dr. Bruce Ellis to get started.)

Trend #3

Online videos and online games top the list of digital content being used in the classroom now, with online curriculum and online textbooks following closely behind. The key takeaway from this result is that school districts (and their technology staff) must be planning for and providing greater bandwidth and more WiFi access as the need for online learning continues to grow. This is a trend that will only continue to grow over time.

Trend #4

Student use of devices shows some interesting changes. 58 percent of high school students and 25 percent of middle school students are now bringing their own devices to school for classwork. But how they choose to use those devices on their own is different from how their teachers are directing them to use them. When teachers direct, students use them to:

Do Internet research (81%)
Play educational games (60%)
Take online tests (50%)
Read online articles (37%)
Use online textbooks (32%)
Watch teacher-created videos (29%)

But when self-directed, those same devices are used by the students to:

Check grades (74%)
Look up class information (54%)
Email teachers (41%)
Receive reminders (39%)
Take notes (39%)
Take photos of assignments (29%)

This seems to indicate that the learners are using the technology for more productivity uses on their own, which may mean that they have internalized and adopted them more completely than their teachers. This would be a good discussion topic for future educator inservices.

Trend #5

This is a continuation of the previous trend, which shows that the four main groups surveyed (teachers, administrators, parents, and students) all remain on different pages when technology use for learning is discussed. According to the report, “Few teachers say they regularly assign Internet-dependent homework, more principals think Internet-dependent homework is being assigned, but students say they regularly use the Internet to help with homework.”

Trend #6

The report shows that social media is playing a larger role in learning for all surveyed.

In 2011, 50 percent of students in grades 6-12 said they could not access social media tools at school. In 2016, only 38 percent of students had the same complaint.
Nearly half (45 percent) of teachers said that they pinned a lesson on Pinterest in the past year and 19 percent use Twitter to follow education experts or fellow educators.
Eight of ten school principals say they are using social media to communicate with parents and students – 61 percent said it has a positive impact.

There continues to be a divide between social media used by students (Instagram and Snapchat) and that used by adults (Facebook). But 44 percent of students do say that social media is a must-have for their learning.

Trend #7

Parents more than ever prefer receiving a personal email from their child’s school. Face-to-face meetings and text messages were a distant second, as you can see from the chart below.

From a report by Project Tomorrow

The results of this extensive survey with its longitudinal data should be shared and discussed at district leadership meetings and professional development sessions in every district. What are your students telling you?

May 22, 2017 0 comments

Educational Trends Leadership

You Need to Speak Up!

by Jennifer Bergland November 14, 2016

written by Jennifer Bergland

How many students in your school or district have access to fast broadband at their homes? How many students have access to a personal digital device they are allowed to bring to school? What are your community’s expectations about the use of technology in your classrooms? If you do have answers to all of these questions, are they based on real data or hunches? If they aren’t based on real data, they can be. Project Tomorrow provides the SpeakUp survey so that educational leaders and policy makers can know what their key stakeholders think about the use of technology in the educational process.

The Basics

The survey is for grades K-12.
There are surveys for students, teachers, parents, administrators, and community members.
For grades K-5, a teacher can decide to do a group survey or individual surveys.
Each survey takes less than twenty minutes to complete.
Survey will be open until January 13, 2017.
All of the data will be made available to the district contact in February to be used as the district wants.
The questions are grouped by theme:
- Learning and teaching with technology
- College and career readiness skills
- Student’s interests in STEM
- Professional development
- Internet safety/privacy issues/homework gap
- Administrator’s challenges
- Emerging technologies

speakup graphic

Use of the SpeakUp Data

Districts can use the free data about their own stakeholders in any way they wish, including to:

Use in technology planning (budgeting, equipment, infrastructure, professional development).
Define your district’s strengths and weaknesses of technology use.
Engage your parents and community in the process.
Provide a greater voice in policy and legislative initiatives.
Provide reliable data to report to your community.

Although there are surveys for different stakeholders, each district or school can decide which surveys the district will promote. If this is your first year to participate, you might want to only have your administrators and/or teachers complete the survey. You can also decide how big you want to go. To get started, all you need to do is go to their website and register a contact for a school or the district. This contact will get weekly summaries that can be shared with the teachers or principals. The final data gathered from your school or district will be sent to the contact in February.

Project Tomorrow has some excellent promotional materials that will make it easy to get the word out. Included in these materials are flyers, banners, instructions, sample tcea-speakup emails, lesson plans, a list of the survey questions, and press releases. They have made it super simple to get started. As an incentive, if your district participates in the SpeakUp Survey, it will be eligible to win one free TCEA 2017 convention registration!

Promote the Survey

Send emails to all stakeholders and include a link to the survey.
Provide a link to the survey within your district’s LMS for easy student access.
Use district or campus social media.
Set goals for each type of survey (100% administrators, 80% teachers, etc.).
Involve district leadership in promotion at various administrative meetings.
Use the promotional materials provided by Project Tomorrow.
Use school marquees to inform the community about the survey.
Use weekly summaries to spur competition between schools.
Set up a period of time that is designated as your SpeakUp push (i.e. two weeks before Christmas break).

speakup banner

I have been involved with Project Tomorrow since its inception. The surveys are excellent and provide incredibly valuable information. The data can be used to help your district determine your future goals and aspirations based on real data, not assumptions or anecdotes. The data will allow you to reflect on where you’ve been and where you want to go. Knowing your community and parent expectations on technology use can be very useful when you submit your technology plan and budget requests. If you have any questions, you can contact Jenny Hostert at jhoster@tomorrow.org.

November 14, 2016 0 comments

Leadership Online Tools and Apps

Brainstorming and Voting: Getting Staff Input Easily

by Lori Gracey June 16, 2016

written by Lori Gracey

A campus or district administrator has a lot on his plate these days, including getting faculty opinions and buy-in on both small and large initiatives. What he doesn’t have is time to solicit that buy-in.

Now there’s a free tool that can help. Tricider offers fast and easy brainstorming and voting so that people can collaboratively make decisions. Unlike common survey tools which require set responses, it allows participants to add their own ideas, arguments, and discussion to a Tricider question. When the deadline for discussion and brainstorming is up, participants are asked to vote on the ideas presented. With its simple ask a question, brainstorm and discuss, and then vote process, this is one tool you’ll use over and over again.

The author of the question can invite participants via a shared link, email, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. And there are lots of ways to customize the discussion, from having new or better ideas emerge to the top to including pictures and links. No registration or log in is required, which makes Tricider very easy for everyone to use. But if you do register, then you are given a plethora of additional features, all included free.

To see how it works, I’ve posted a sample question below. Just click on the Add New Idea button and put in your answer. You can then add an argument, if you wish, or vote for one of the other choices. Please try it out.

I can see Tricider being used with students, particularly for small group work. You could even use it for entire classes or grade levels to discuss and vote on favorite books, prom king and queen, cafeteria rules, etc. And if your family is trying to decide on a vacation location or a gift to give Grandma from all of you, it will do the trick. You can set the poll to be private or share it with the whole world, which opens even more opportunities for collaboration. It’s just such a great, quick tool and I hope you’ll give it a try!

June 16, 2016 0 comments

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