Trends and Issues in Educational Media and Technology
In K-12 Public Schools in the United States

Melanie Misanchuk, J. Garvey Pyke, Hakan Tuzun
Doctoral students, Indiana University
May 11, 1999

Though the popular media report an explosion of hard and soft technology for K-12 schools in the United States, there is a lack of up-to-date data illustrating usage and access to these media. By investigating what is currently prevalent in educational technology in the K-12 system, we hope to establish a benchmark to help determine not just the current status but project future trends. To accomplish this, we sent e-mail questionnaires to 100 technology coordinators in K-12 schools and received responses from 31 of them, representing urban, suburban and rural schools from all across the country. We followed up with several telephone interviews in which we asked more detailed and open-ended questions.

Findings

Issue: Access to electronic media (including WWW, e-mail, etc.) by teachers and students in K-12 schools.

Trend: Teachers have increasing access to computers, the WWW, and e-mail.

Our e-mail survey found that 88% of teachers have computers in their classrooms and over 84% of classrooms have Internet access; most schools had the goal of being completely wired by the year 2000, and many thought they would have Internet connections by the end of this school year. We also learned that most teachers had e-mail access.

Trend: Students have increasing access to computers, the WWW, e-mail.

Our survey showed that 97.7% of students had some sort of access to computers at school. Seventy-six percent of students used computers daily, although the schools reporting the lowest use said that only 15% of their students used computers daily. As far as the Internet is concerned, 48% of K-12 students have daily WWW access at school. Though some schools reported that all of their students had Internet access, others said that none of them did. In our telephone surveys, we learned that students in some high schools have e-mail access at school, but our results are inconclusive to show a generalizable trend.

Issue: Usage of computer media in K-12 schools.

Trend: Teachers use computers primarily for management tasks.

Through our telephone interviews, we learned that teachers were using computers mainly for housekeeping tasks such as attendance, record-keeping, lesson-planning, word processing, e-mail, etc. However, they now consider the computer indispensable for these tasks.

Trend: Teachers are increasing their usage of computers for instructional integration.

The increase in use of computers for instructional purposes is not commensurate with the increase in computer use in general. Many more teachers are using computers on a daily basis for management purposes, but there is not a marked growth in computer use for instructional ends. One telephone respondent shared with us her department's new mission to encourage teachers to integrate computers into their curriculum in a more proactive way. She noted that this top-down initiative was planned because teachers would not do this on their own; indeed, they had very little idea how to use computers in a more instructional way, and that was the most important trend in educational technology for her department.

One e-mail survey noted that "the Internet has been a catalyst for integration of technology into the classroom," and other reports indicate that teachers are becoming more interested in collaborative projects using computers. Although a few early adopters have embraced presentation and multimedia software, many technology coordinators that we interviewed expressed a desire for greater usage of these programs in the classroom.

Trend: Students are using "office" applications most of all, but there has been an increase in WWW usage.

We found that most of student computer use centers around word processing, with few forays into other types of software. Often used programs of this type include Microsoft Office (chiefly Word) and ClarisWorks, etc. Some students are using HyperStudio, PowerPoint and other multimedia and presentation software. In addition, several interviewees reported that students are also using subject-specific software, such as MathBlaster, KidWorks, Accelerated Reader, Accelerated Math, and Print Shop. Netscape Navigator was often cited as a program used daily at both the elementary and high school levels. At all grade levels, students use the Internet to do research for reports.

Another finding from our research revealed the two-way interaction between teachers and students in learning new computer applications. We had reports both of students embracing programs only when their teachers were enthusiastic about the new software, and of students showing the teachers how to use the new technology or software. We found evidence of teachers' fears about their students knowing more than they do about computers and the Web in general and of certain programs in particular.

Issue: Usage of telecommunications equipment, such as TV/VCR, satellite/cable TV, and telephones, in K-12 schools

Trend: There is increased access to and usage of telephones in the classroom.

We found that 65% of classrooms had telephones. Anecdotally, this shows a steady increase over the last decade; ten years ago, almost no classrooms had telephones. Some states have passed legislation requiring all new school buildings to have telephones in every classroom, and there has been a push to equip older buildings with telephones. Although telephones do not necessarily play a clear pedagogical role in the classroom, their usage is akin to the record-keeping role of the computer: they increase teacher efficiency in a number of ways, including parent-teacher contact, teacher-teacher contact, etc.

Trend: The usage of TV/VCR and satellite/cable TV.

Over 77% of classrooms have TVs and VCRs: almost 62% of teachers are using them daily. The most interesting change in this trend is the movement toward having students active behind the video camera, rather than sitting in front of the television. We found reports of schools moving toward student video production and editing. We found that 68% of classrooms have cable or satellite TV, and 35% of teachers use TV daily.

Issue: Utilization of display media -- whiteboards, chalkboards, and overhead projectors.

Trend: More teachers are using whiteboards in the classroom than chalkboards, and many teachers still use overhead projectors.

Almost 50% of all classrooms now have whiteboards, which are now the standard for new educational facilities. White boards are replacing chalkboards in many older classrooms, too, for a variety of reasons, including chalk allergies and the damage that chalk dust does to electronic equipment. As more classrooms have computers, the more necessary it becomes to remove the chalkboards.

More than 82% of teachers have overhead projectors in the classroom. Of these, 35.6% use them daily. This suggests a consistent use of an "old" technology. Perhaps when RGB projectors and document cameras become more affordable for public schools, use of overhead projectors may decline.

Conclusion

All in all, our study was designed to measure the use of various technologies in K-12 schools at the present time. However, results from our e-mail surveys and telephone interviews showed that people wanted to talk most about computers, especially Internet uses. In open-ended questions, people were anxious to tell us about how much their schools were "wired," and many felt that the Internet was revolutionizing technology use in schools, notably in students' research projects. People are starting to get the sense that the Internet is a minimum tool that all schools must have, like textbooks. Many people felt that the Internet is a sort of "gateway technology," that once teachers start using the Internet, they are more comfortable and open to other technologies. The Internet has shown teachers and students a whole new world of computing, encouraging them to move beyond "office" applications.

Our surveys indicated that traditional telecommunications media (TVs, VCRs, satellite/cable TV, telephones) are still being heavily used in the classrooms, most of them on a daily basis. Our sample size is too small to extrapolate a generalizable trend of increased or decreased usage in this area. Similarly, other "low-tech" media such as overhead projectors, whiteboards, and chalkboards are still in consistent and constant use.

Although we recognize that the size of our sample restricts the quantitative validity of our results, we feel that our study provides a realistic snapshot of the current state of technologies in K-12 public schools. The proliferation of new educational media and technology assures that schools will continue to feel the impact of these same trends and issues for years to come.

This paper was originally published as: Misanchuk, M., Pyke, J.G., & Tuzun, H. (1999). Trends and issues in educational media and technology in K-12 public schools in the United States. Instructional Media and the New Technologies of Instruction, 24, 2-5.

To cite this web page: Misanchuk, M., Pyke, J.G., & Tuzun, H. (1999). Trends and issues in educational media and technology in K-12 public schools in the United States [Online]. Available: http://php.indiana.edu/~htuzun/html/academic/trends_and_issues99.html [Access date].

Copyright 1999, Melanie Misanchuk, J. Garvey Pyke, and Hakan Tuzun. All rights reserved.

Questions or comments: mmisanch@indiana.edu, jgpyke@indiana.edu, htuzun@indiana.edu