2008 Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School Wireless Learning Initiative Year 2 Results: Student and Teacher Survey Results Report
Date: 2008
Author: Damian Bebell and Rachel Kay
Affiliation: Lynch School of Education
Keywords: One-to-one, classroom, teachers, students, survey
Summary:
The Wireless Learning Initiative is a nearly two-year old 1:1 student and teacher laptop program at the Lilla G. Fredrick Pilot Middle School (LGFPMS) in Boston, Massachusetts. The current report summarizes the results from teacher and student surveys that have been collected during the first two years of the project implementation including measures of technology use and teaching practices both before and after the introduction of student laptops across all grade levels (six through eighth) and the four school Academies. Although the student deployment was relatively short (less than one full school year for most grades), the results contained several notable findings.
Key Findings:
* After the first year of the school wide student deployment of computers, students and teachers both reported robust student use of technology across a wide spectrum of educational uses in and out of the classroom.
* After the first full year of the student laptop deployment, teachers continue to devlop an incredibly diverse catalogue of educational technology applications across all aspect of the curriculum and their professional responsibilities.
* Major increases in teachers' use of technology were observed for "delivering instruction/presenting information to the class", "helping students understand concepts", and "creating/maintaining web sites", and "creating multimedia" during the 2007/2008 school year.
* Students regularly reported using their home computer for educational purposes such as "write papers for school" (approximately 30 minutes per day on average) and "search the Internet for school" (approximately 15 to 30 minutes per day on average).
* Survey results going back to November 2006 show that teachers have largely increased not only many of their uses of technology, but their confidence and perceived ability to meaningfully use technology for a wide variety of educational goals.
* The data also suggests that the Frederick school's emphasis and importance on the integration of educational technology into the curriculum is both practiced and believed by the majority of teachers.
* Frederick teachers overwhelmingly reported that the majority of their students were engaged and on task during their classes.
* Across all categories, Frederick students reported confidence in their technology skills with most surveyed applications and scenarios, requiring only occasional assistance, if any, for the majority of students.
* Echoing prior results, eighth grade students generally reported greater skills and abilities across most of the measured technology applications than the sixth grade students suggesting that confidence may increase with age and experience.
Thus, the success of the initial launch and deployment of student computing has been nearly universally successful indicating that school level factors (administration, support, professional development, etc.) have served all grade levels, subject areas, and Academies consistently well.
Source Article: http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/PDF/FWLI_Year2_Report.pdf
