Technology Integration in Communities of Practice

I send my survey out through the school email to all faculty and staff at my school on July 10th, 2013. By July 18th, I received 20 responses. This sample is a convenience sample, and not considered random. Math teachers are over-represented, and the method of surveying would bias the results towards the tech-savvy since it was conducted over email, and over the summer.

Form

Results
How comfortable do you feel with technology in your personal life?

Mean = 3.5

How comfortable do you feel teaching with technology in your classroom?

Mean = 3.3

Teachers report feeling comfortable with technology in their personal lives and in their classrooms. They are only slightly less comfortable in their classrooms. There were only 7 teachers that changed their response. Five rated their classroom use lower, and, surprisingly, 2 rated their classroom use higher.

How often do you use technology in your classroom?

Technology usage is very frequent at the school. Seventy percent of respondents report using technology everyday, and 85% use it at least once a week. Although for the English & PE teachers that only uses it "once or twice a year," I hope they didn't use half of their computer time responding to my survey.

How familiar are you with Khan Academy?

Mean = 2.25

How often have you used Khan Academy in your classroom?

I don't know why I asked about Khan Academy. If I want to know who is using it, I can just look at our computer lab calendar. We have a dedicated lab for in the math wing and it is booked most of the time, around 70%. It is interesting that most of heard about it, but never used it.
I seems as if the knowledge about Khan Academy is there, and many teacher might not think it is useful in their class. Since it is only one of the many online tools available, maybe we can find some others that are more appropriate for them.

How well do you think our school integrates technology into learning?

Mean = 2.45

How well do you think you integrate technology into learning?

Mean = 2.7

I asked these two questions just so I could geek out with stats for a little bit. Let's take a look at the individual data.

Personal [3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 3, 4, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 2, 3]
School   [2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3]

This is dependent data, so the corresponding elements in each list are from the same person. Let's see what the difference is between how they rate themselves and how they rate everyone else.

Diff     [1, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, -1, 0, 0, -1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, -1, 0]

Ten people rated themselves the same, three worse, and 7 better. We can ignore the people who rated themselves the same, but look at the better and worse. More than twice as many people rated themselves better! If you ask everyone what they think average is, and then use the data to find out what the average actually is, it should be the same. But it turns out that more people think they are better than average. This a fun statistical phenomenon that shows up a lot. Udacity has a fun lesson on it.

What is the best way for you to learn about new technologies?

I am surprised to see the most common response for technology training was the formal Professional Development. I have been to many of them, and taught a few and the turn-out for them is relatively low, and the enthusiasm not much better. I do think it would be great for teachers to be able to come into other classrooms and observe teachers that are using technology well. That will be something I will bring up at our school.

What subject do you primarily teach?