Social networking keeps expanding in popularity, especially among students, but very little is known about how educators are using social networks and whether or not they see a value in this technology for education.
A new survey of K-12 educators has been conducted to begin benchmarking educators' use and attitudes about Web 2.0 collaborative technologies like social networking, blogging, wikis, video-sharing, and more. The survey was developed through a collaboration of three national education organizations--edWeb.net, MCH and MMS Education--and was sent at the end of August to more than 70,000 K-12 principals, teachers, and librarians.
Early results show that 62% of educators who responded have joined one or more social networking websites, and their participation on these sites has had a positive impact on their attitudes about using this technology for personal and professional purposes, and in the classroom.
The survey also shows that some school districts are placing significant barriers to the adoption of this technology in schools by barring access to many of the social networking and collaboration websites that students use regularly outside of school.
The survey probes how educators view social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Ning, and LinkedIn as well as professional education networks, including Classroom 2.0, edWeb.net, and We Are Teachers, among others. It also explores educators' use of popular content-sharing tools like blogs, wikis, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Google Docs, and more.
Understanding how educators use and value these tools can have an impact on policy decisions and spur professional development programs to close the gap between students' and educators' use of technology.
The Survey of K-12 Educators on Social Networking and Content-Sharing Tools is co-sponsored by edWeb.net, MCH, Inc. and MMS Education. Preliminary results will be released at the EdNET Conference, an education industry summit being held in Chicago September 13th-15th. The final report will be issued in October.
For further information or to request a copy of the final report, call 800-575-6015, ext. 100.
edWeb.net is a professional social network for the education community that faciliates collaboration with colleagues. The edWeb is a user-friendly Web 2.0 platform that introduces educators to technology that students use every day, mostly outside of school. For more information, visit www.edweb.net.
MCH, Inc. is a source of compiled data on education, health, and government institutions in the United States. For more information, contact John Hood, president, at 800-776-6373.
MMS Education is a national market research, consulting and marketing company specializing exclusively in the education market. For more information, see www.mmseducation.com.
