Problem Statement:

The state of Texas provides a per-student monetary allotment for each public school.  These funds, commonly referred to as T-funds, serve as the basis for yearly technology expenditures for hardware, software, and professional development.  In addition to T-funds, the school district makes basic hardware purchases for schools providing teacher PCs, carts of laptop computers, display devices, maintenance, and infrastructure from school bonds approved periodically by the community.  For this reason, there is a solid base of current technological hardware and software available for use as a tool by both teachers and students in the learning process in my elementary schools.  My own informal survey by observations has indicated over the past 3 years, however, that the available technologies have not been utilized to capacity in ways which will benefit students and teachers most.  Two Mimio digital white board presentation devices, for example, remain boxed in a closet in the downstairs computer lab.  Another is set up and ready for use with a cart in the upstairs computer lab, but instead of taking advantage of the technology, the cart is used for stacking student papers and the dry erase markers have been removed from their Mimio casings to be used simply on the white board.  I have observed pockets of daily and innovative use of other technologies within most grade levels K-5, but to this point many of the varied hardware and software options have not been embraced more than verbally by the larger faculty.  Various reasons were offered by faculty members when asked for the slow uptake including a too tightly-compacted curriculum, an extremely high focus on mandated state testing, a lack of hands-on professional development in the use of specific technologies, a lack of personal comfort with technology in general, and a lack of time to plan and integrate new formats into the curriculum.

What do you want to change and why?

Having viewed this under use of technology resources has led me to focus on one elementary school which I serve. This school is otherwise considered by the district and state to have recognized academic performance indicators, so my work on the campus should not be perceived as interference with struggling test scores as would be possible in my other lower performing elementary school.  Any improvement here, in fact, may offer a push toward an even higher chance of success in being rated as exemplary while teachers discover new ways to increase student engagement, new resources for content delivery, more efficient ways to communicate within the learning community, and more effective management practices utilizing technology tools which are currently available to them.  The purpose of my action research project is to increase the use of available technologies for instructional purposes in elementary classrooms. 

Cycle 1 Analysis and Discussion

Will identifying staff needs for technology training provide a viable baseline for promoting an increase in the use of technologies already present on campus?

Actions Taken:

In order to identify the staff needs, I decided to use an online survey of classroom teachers in my focus school.  Several different online survey services are currently available, but because of the advantages which ProfilerPro offered including a bank of prepared technology surveys, and their collection and data graphing, I decided to create my survey there.  Many resources for sample questions are available with a search online, so I began with those and with the bank in ProfilerPro, pulling questions from other surveys which seemed most appropriate to my purpose.  The difficulty came in two areas.  First, I wanted to limit the number of questions to about twenty to reduce the stress on teachers filling it out, and to increase the likelihood that they would thoughtfully read and complete the survey. The second difficult part was in selecting questions that were focused on my action plan.  Which data will help me to move forward in making positive changes related to increasing the use of educational technologies already present on campus?  I made a list of twenty questions, posted them in BlackBoard receiving timely feedback from my learning circle.

Continuing to focus on completion of the online survey, I spoke with campus administrators about timing its presentation.  The administrators indicated their willingness to allow me to present my survey to the faculty prior to the introduction of another much longer survey which they were holding. Their survey would be required, of course, and while mine is important, it would not be a requirement.  For this reason I wanted to be sure that mine was easy to follow, short enough, and out ahead of the longer one to increase my chances for balanced input.  I continued to refine the survey, deleting questions not specifically related to my research, and combining those which asked for similar information.  Soon, I posted a revised Word document of the survey in BlackBoard which Dr. Riel helped to edit in Orlando.  During this editing time, I learned how to word questions and the answer choices in order that I might receive the most accurate feedback.  Because of the push from our administration, I went ahead with the survey without further revision.  An email went out before the survey invitation so that teachers would be aware that this was coming and that they would be rewarded for completing the instrument. One roadblock that I discovered was that my district’s email server filtered out the subsequent mass of emails sent from ProfilerPro to the teachers containing directions for logging on to the survey, meaning that I had to follow up with my own message to them copying the same information. The following week was selected as the original window for survey completion by the teachers. 

Logging into my ProfilerPro account periodically through the following week, I could see that I had a problem getting faculty members to log onto ProfilerPro to take my technology use survey.  As of Friday, the final day of the window for completion, only 3 had taken the survey.  At this point I considered several options including offering a hardcopy survey option, or re-introduction of the survey with a revised timeline.  My principal suggested that I try again with the online survey, and as suggested by my learning circle agreed to send an email in support of my efforts. Instead, however, the principals decided to use the beginning of a faculty meeting to underscore the importance of my survey.  In addition, I went online and sign up each of the teachers as a member so that they could skip one step of the process, giving them more time to reflect on the questions and offer appropriate responses to each.  Next, I sent a new email which went into more detail regarding the advantages that they would receive from filling out the survey.  I watched the results each day of the new week, and each day I sent a cheerful reminder email to those teachers who had not yet completed the survey, and on the next to last day, I went to the doors of those who had not completed the survey and taped a little reminder note to the door.  During this process I was very careful to ensure that my messages were positive rather than punitive in nature.  I think that the week finished with everyone except for two teachers and another two teachers on maternity leave entering data. 

From this point, I plan to make appointments with grade-level teacher groups to look at their survey results together so that we can use the input to plan appropriate professional development according to their specific needs.

With all of the survey results in, the time came to make use of this data.  I compiled all of the data into an Excel spreadsheet and posted it to BlackBoard.  The school data was sorted into separate tabs, breaking the results down into grade level and departmental data groups for closer viewing.  Groups were emailed to schedule a time to meet with me so that we could look at their own data together, determine what it said about their technology needs, and draft a design for their upcoming professional development.  My incentive to meet was a promise that I would bring snacks and make the meeting time short and productive. 

This was the first week to meet with teacher groups planning their half day of technology professional development.  These were morning groups, so I brought muffins and juice to help create a comfortable working environment.  As a team, we went through the survey results one question at a time, focusing specifically on the areas which indicated need.  One of the things we noticed as we went through was that the fact that a group overall did not use a specific hardware did not necessarily indicate a weakness.  Each group of teachers has its own specific tasks to accomplish, and not all technologies are necessary or even helpful in taking care of those tasks.  The specials team, for example, felt that it wasn't critical that they know how to use the data projector, and the only one who did use it in her class already knew how and agreed to be the team go-to person if another team member developed a need to use it.  Instead, they focused on the need to understand communications tools better such as the finer points of our Lotus Notes email system.  By using the data from the survey and personal meeting times, I feel that we are better able to plan a productive half day that teachers will find applicable to their needs at work and will, in turn, benefit the school's mission.

The reactions:

Those Taking the Survey:  Data gathered from my survey in ProfilerPro indicated thirty-six classroom teacher respondents.  School personnel who were not asked to take the survey included administrators, a librarian, non-classroom support teachers, paraprofessionals, office staff, substitutes, therapists and diagnosticians, custodians, and cafeteria workers.  Three classroom teachers did not respond to the survey, and two classroom teachers who were on maternity leave did not answer as well.

The Survey:  The survey itself could be broken down into six sections.  The first section related to technology hardware already present on the campus and teachers’ degree of use of the hardware with responses of use frequency ranging from Not At All, to Monthly, then Weekly, and finally Daily.  The second section of the survey had to do with competence in technology integration with answer choices indicating Not At All [confident], Minimally [confident], Confidently [integrated], and Able to Teach Others.  After that, teachers were able to select up to four obstacles which they face in educational technology integration.  The fourth section of the survey had teachers select the area of professional responsibility in which technology has had the greatest impact.  After this, teachers were asked to rank their responses to attitudinal statements regarding technology use and support on campus.  In the final section of the survey, respondents were asked to briefly describe their best use of technology integration.

 Survey Results: 

Taking each portion of the survey as a separate entity, the data may be viewed in a variety of ways.  The view taken for the purposes of this report is that which I believe will be most helpful in making positive changes in the use of technology for academic purposes on this campus.  My goal is to use the data to help customize professional development along with teacher input in order that teachers will have a greater buy-in to technology use.

The first ten questions (Illustration 1) asked teachers to select how often they used ten hardware-based technologies which are presently available for their use.  These hardware items included desktop computer software, laptop computers, data projector, CD burner, digital display devices, television to computer video streaming, audience input devices, digital camera, digital camcorder, and scanner.  Although the desktop computers and laptop computers may appear to be related for teachers, I wanted to make the distinction in the data because the use of the 4 sets of 16 wireless laptops is a discrete portion of the usable hardware on hand for teachers to use with their classes.  The mean of the scores from all teachers was taken to get an overall picture of the school use which is discussed here.  Individual team averages may be different and this has been considered in working with teams to plan their half days of professional development.

Illustration 1: Mean Scores for Frequency of Technology Use

Overall, data for the campus shows a high use of desktop computers with their related software, rating daily except for one teacher.  The next most highly used technology was among digital camera users, indicating that most teachers range between using them monthly (2) and weekly (3).  This use is evident in hallway displays of student work and checkout records from the library.  The next two most highly used hardwares were the sets of laptop computers, evidenced in the online checkout records of some teachers which, along with video streaming capabilities came to use monthly (2) and weekly (3).  In the weekly to monthly use range of hardware included first data projectors, CD burners, audience input devices, camcorders, and scanners.  The least used hardware item which is the interactive display devices, which according to my own observation receive no use at all.

In working with teaching teams, most teams had a particular interest in one or two individual technologies which they felt would be most beneficial to them either in use with student lessons or in their own professional productivity.  It was their feeling that with the other hardwares, there was at least one person in the group who would be able to assist if need arose.  They liked the idea of keeping a repository of how-to directions inside the technology folder on the shared drive for this type of reference as well.  Some lack of use was explained by teams in their surprise that all of these devices including the data projectors were available for more than office and library use, indicating that the survey and follow-up in itself may increase awareness and therefore use of some devices.

Questions eleven through fifteen (Illustration 2) in the survey related to teacher competencies in file management, lesson planning, classroom management with technology, employing student expertise, and technology integration into the curriculum.  As a confidence measure ranging from not at all confident to able to teach others, the average response of the campus to all five questions translates to a feeling of confidence.

 Illustration 2: Mean Scores of Teachers on Technology Competencies 

Question sixteen (Illustration 3) offered ten possible obstacles which get in the way of using technology.  Survey takers were allowed to select up to four obstacle indicators including the following:

• Computers are not in a convenient location
• Limited resources
• Difficulty troubleshooting when problems arise
• Limited knowledge of how to use the technology
• Outdated software
• Limited understanding of how to integrate technology
• Lack of software or websites that support stat/district standards
• Lack of time in school day
• Insufficient planning time
• No obstacles

Illustration 3:  Obstacles to Technology Use

Results from the survey clearly show that time is one of the major factors getting in the way of technology use on this campus with lack of time in the school day to use the hardware and software with students (23%) and insufficient planning time for integration (15%) both ranking high.  The second-highest rated obstacle was personal difficulty troubleshooting technology (19%).  While the professional development planned with teaching groups can offer more planning time with teachers, it cannot offer them more time in the school day to use technology.  Group discussion did offer the point, however, that increased emphasis on tech integration during planning may help to alleviate this problem.  No groups wanted to use their professional development time to learn troubleshooting techniques, but opted to find those in their groups who could provide assistance when required.

The greatest impact of technology on professional responsibilities (Illustration 4) was a short section of the survey allowing teachers to respond with the one area in which they felt technology provided the greatest influence.  While this question did not provide a great deal of information for the implementation of half-day professional development for teachers, it provides the opportunity to check the accuracy of previous responses to the survey.  Respondents selected from among the following choices:

• Teaching and instructional support
• Student assessment
• Classroom management activities
• Communications
• I do not use technology for any of these tasks

Fifty percent of the teachers taking the survey indicated that teaching and instructional support provided the single greatest impact on their professional activities.  Another fourteen percent indicated classroom management activities as having a large influence on their activities as well.  As closely related as these two categories are, if collapsed, they would show that teaching and instructional support including classroom management is viewed at sixty-four percent as having by far the greatest bearing on their work as teachers.  The second single highest rated impact was communications (23%) underscored by the specials teachers’ desire to focus their professional development activities on communication tools.

Illustration 4:  Greatest Impact of Technology on Professional Responsibilities

Section 5 (Illustration 5) of the school technology online survey was primarily focused on teacher attitudes within the school.  Survey-takers ranked their responses to attitudinal statement ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree in a one-four ranking of the following statements:

• I have access to an adequate amount of reliable technology.
• Technology helps me to organize my work.
• I find the use of technology to be motivating for students.
• I feel comfortable learning about and using technology.
• I would like to integrate more technology into my own work.
• I would like to integrate more technology into my work with students.
• The building administration encourages the use of technology.
• The district administration encourages the use of technology.
• I feel comfortable helping others in the school with technology.
• I take personal time to learn and practice technology skills.
• The teachers in this school are willing to help with technology.
• I feel comfortable asking others in the school for help with technology.

Averaging responses again, all of the statements indicate agreement (3).  The lowest areas of agreement were in feeling comfort in helping others which closely coordinates with the question among the obstacles regarding troubleshooting, and in taking personal time to learn and practice technology which also underscores the obstacle question regarding time to plan and implement technology.  Most of those teachers who responded with disagreement with statement were beginning teachers who spoke out in small team meetings about feeling uncertain in various areas mainly because of their own lack of self-confidence in many areas of teaching.

Illustration 5:  Mean Scores of Teachers on Attitudes Toward Technology

The last section of the survey (Illustration 6) which asked teachers to give a brief example of their own best practices in using technology could, upon examination, be broken down in to six areas including the following:

• Internet research/information
• Presentations
• Streaming videos
• Response tools
• Classroom management
• Differentiation for students with special needs

By far, the highest response from teachers indicated use of the Internet for either professional or student research as their own best practice in the use of technology, numbering sixteen responses.  Following Internet use, teachers felt that they demonstrate technology integration in their professional and student use of technology to create and present content (9), and infusion of streaming videos into content presentation (7).  The other categories had one and two responses each as indicated in the graph below.

Illustration 6: Personal Examples of Technology Integration

From these examples of technology integration, information can be drawn regarding areas of comfort among the faculty and perhaps experts who can be utilized for demonstration and assistance with technologies already present on the campus.

Cycle 1 Question Answer:

Will identifying staff needs for technology training provide a viable baseline for promoting anincrease in the use of technologies already present on campus?  The Technology Usage Survey created and implemented online through ProfilerPro for my target campus has provided ample baseline information for creating technology professional development sessions taking place in Cycle 2 of my action research.  The core of the data gathered from the survey and subsequent meetings with teaching teams indicates areas of need in hardware learning, technology integration into the curriculum, obstacles and attitudes to overcome, and in locating areas of comfort and expertise among members of the learning community.  Each group has the opportunity to review the survey data, discuss their interpretations and responses relating to their needs and wishes for time provided by the school district and take part in outlining the content of their own professional development. This information proves valuable in creating and implementing half-day team technology learning sessions which are customized to the needs of each group. 

Reflection:

Creating, presenting, and giving meaning to a survey was much more difficult than I had previously thought.  First among the difficulties was crafting a set of questions which were appropriate to my purposes.  Even after working through the entire survey process, I see questions which might have been worded better in order that I might receive more accurate responses.  The question about laptop computers, for example, was clear to me and to most of the respondents relating to wireless laptops on mobile carts.  It was not clear, however, to a small number of teachers taking the survey and to others reading it who were not familiar with my campus.  Had I known about pilot testing, I might have tried that before implementing the survey with the full faculty, and some of these issues might have been resolved. 

Second among difficulties was getting teachers to actually respond online.  Being a person who tends to do as asked in all facets of my job, it did not occur to me that other professional educators would not take the time to respond without being prodded.  Several teachers later told me that they passed over my email because it appeared to include a very involved process, so they tabled it for later and just forgot to fill it out within the press of other daily activities. I felt that teachers probably did not see a gain for themselves in completing the survey, and that by providing a reason to participate which involved personal/professional advantage; teachers would be more likely to take part.  It was the statement in my follow-up email stating that they would receive a half-day of professional development with paid substitutes which made the difference in their sense of urgency.
 
Once survey information was complete, I felt the same way I felt as a child when faced with cleaning my room—How do I start dealing with all of these details to create something which has organization and meaning in the end?  Being fairly adept in using Excel, I discovered that the further down I broke the data into chunks, working only with the smaller portions, the easier it was to create meaning.  Creating graphs for each section of the survey data assisted me as well with a visual which showed the critical information in a different manner.  Seeing an overall picture in the charts first made the data details more meaningful and easier to interpret.  After making sense of the parts, looking at the larger data from the entire school was easier and more significant.

Meeting with teaching teams was an unexpected pleasure.  I found the teams to be interested in improving their personal practices regarding technology use and integration into the curriculum.  Prior to the meetings, I had expected them to feel that this would be a bother or interference during a time when they are so focused on improving campus test scores in reading, writing, math, and science.  They were, instead, refreshingly open to looking at the data and seemed to view the time offered as an opportunity rather than a bother.  I believe that the main reason for their openness is that the data is their own personal data rather than statistical analyses of information coming from outside sources, so often the case in creation of teacher professional development,  and that they could use it to help craft learning opportunities intended to meet their own needs, and it was presented in a friendly and informal session scheduled to their convenience. The results from their planning sessions and professional development days will be detailed in Cycle 2.

Meetings with teachers also helped to give me insight also into how campus technology expenditures should be directed because some hardware and software has been purchased previously which teachers find difficult or unimportant to integrate into their professional activities and student lessons. Teachers are generally uninformed as well about the budget process, and in the past technologies have been purchased in a top-down fashion (little or no teacher input) with district personnel, campus administrators, librarians, and technology specialists making decisions about what hardware and software would be purchased.  The teachers lack investment in the process, therefore, and do not feel committed to using the resources.  From these meetings, I learned also that some of the teachers do not know how to use particular technologies or do not integrate them into their lessons plans due to unavailability. Some of this is due to the expense of a technology meaning that it has to be shared by many classes or because it is used more by pockets of educators who seem to horde hardwares, making them unavailable to others as they need.

Reference:

Technology Use Survey Data (Excel Workbook)