School & District Management

Speak Up Devotes Separate Survey to Future Teachers

By Ian Quillen — March 12, 2012 1 min read
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The Speak Up survey project, an ongoing effort by the folks at Project Tomorrow, is today opening a survey devoted entirely to future teachers’ impressions about the use of technology in instruction, according to an informational flier.

The survey, which will be open until May 11, targets students in undergraduate and graduate teacher preparation programs, as well as career-changers in alternative certification programs. Colleges and universities that promote the survey—which is estimated to require about 20 minutes of respondents’ time—will receive a free online report that consists of both national and institution-specific data, the flier says.

One of the survey’s goals, Project Tomorrow Chief Executive Officer Julie Evans says in an email, is not only to discern whether students of education are receiving ed-tech related training, but to determine whether they see the value in such preparation, regardless of its availability. Evans also hopes to be able to use the data to link personal technology behaviors to students’ expectations for the classroom—i.e. to see if “the future teachers who are active social media users [are] more or less likely to value technology within instruction,” she said.

This is not the first time Speak Up has included future teachers as part of its research, but they haven’t been singled out for their own report before. But now may be as good a time as any, given a climate where some ed-tech leaders are charging that teachers’ colleges are lagging behind the digital evolution of classrooms when ti comes to preparing its graduates for their careers.

Data from the survey will be presented at a Congressional briefing this fall. That follows two Speak Up Capitol Hill presentations this spring, with an April event focusing student and parent data collected from its 2011 survey, followed by a May briefing on data collected from educators in 2011.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Digital Education blog.