What?s Holding You Back?

By Ria Mastromatteo, Educational Technology Consultant ()

What keeps you from using technology in your classroom? An online survey was done on ?Speak Up for Teachers Day? polling 11,132 teachers representing 885 schools across all 50 states. All grades and disciplines were covered. Ninety-eight percent of the survey participants said that they had at least one computer with Internet access in their classroom.

Some other interesting results from the survey include the following:

Only 3 percent of teachers said they ?never? use the Internet when devising lessons
78 percent of respondents said technology is essential to achieving state and federal goals
Younger and older teachers seem to use technology equally. Older teachers are just as enthusiastic about the use of technology as the young

The number-one obstacle to integrating technology was lack of time! Another obstacle was the use of filters, firewalls and security measures that block places where kids should go and often frustrated teachers as well as the students.

More information on the survey can be found at www.netday.org. When reading the results, remember that this is an online survey so teachers who rarely, if ever, use the computer probably are not part of those surveyed.

Want to know what the students think? A comparable site where students gave their opinions can be found at www.netday.org/downloads/VOICES%20AND%20VIEWS%20final.pdf.