Today is the last day of Chart Week here at Dangerously Irrelevant. Today’s post addresses teacher professional development regarding classroom Internet usage. All data are from the recently-released NCES report, Internet Access in U.S. Public Schools and Classrooms: 1994-2005.
Professional development for use of the Internet in public school classrooms
The chart below shows that 83% of public schools said that they or the district offered professional development to teachers on classroom Internet use in 2005.
Of course, just because professional development is offered doesn’t mean that teachers participate. The data below show that in 2005 only about a third of districts said that they were able to get more than 75% of their teachers to participate. Another third or do said that less than one-fourth of their teachers participated in such training. These numbers were slightly better than in 2002.
There are a variety of reasons why teachers might not participate in professional development related to classroom use of the Internet. The training offered might not be worthwhile or at convenient times, teachers might feel they have more pressing professional development needs, etc. However, in an era when information / media / Internet literacy have become vitally important, these numbers are at least somewhat concerning.
So what did we learn?
Here are the rest of the posts from Chart Week:
- Monday - Internet access in public schools
- Tuesday - Student laptops and wireless classrooms
- Wednesday - Length of student laptop loans
- Thursday - Internet safety
What did we learn this week? We learned that most schools and classrooms have wired connections to the Internet but that classroom wireless penetration is stagnant. We learned that student laptop usage is minimal, both overall and even in schools where students get to use them. We learned that significant percentages of schools fail to have students or parents affirmatively sign that they have read and understand acceptable use policies. And today we learned that teacher professional development may not be furthering our goals related to information and media literacy.
As in other areas, these data show that we have work to do.
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