Just because teachers have classroom technology access doesn’t mean they are satisfied with their level of access, according to survey results released Monday at the Florida Education Technology Conference in Orlando.
The endeavor from PBS LearningMedia, a digital division of the Public Broadcasting System, found that while more than 9 in 10 teachers who responded to a national survey said they have access to computers in classrooms, more than 4 in 5 said that technology access falls short of their needs.
Further, 93 percent of respondents expressed the belief that interactive whiteboards could enrich classroom education, and 81 percent indicated they felt the same way about tablet computers such as the iPad. The openness to both technologies was consistent to respondents across grade levels and school demographics, and is perhaps surprising considering the thought among some analysts that tablets were replacing whiteboards as the trendy tool in education. (Read more in our upcoming winter issue of Digital Directions.)
The survey was comprised of responses from 500 teachers across the country last December, randomly selected from panel that’s makeup was to be indicative of the characteristics of educators across the U.S.
PBS LearningMedia was launched last May, beginning with a reorganization of existing infrastructure from PBS’ digital library and local services from WGBH, WNET-New York, and Kentucky Educational Television, or KET.