Survey reveals tech disconnect between students and teachers

It's no secret that even the most pint-sized kids are increasingly tech-savvy these days, but can the school system keep up? An educational nonprofit known as Project Tomorrow surveyed nearly 300,000 students, 35,000 teachers, and 43,000 parents to see just how these tensions might play out in the classroom.

The statistics portray a body of students and parents ready to embrace new technology, with wary educators not always quite as willing (or financially able) to plug students into emerging tech  — a far cry from one Tennessee school that requires each student to own or borrow an iPad.

According to the study, 67% of parents said they would be willing to buy their child a mobile device for classwork, if the school opened the doors to educational gadgets. 61% of parents liked the idea of students using gadgets like the iPad and the Kindle for accessing online textbooks. 

The survey also let the students themselves sound off about technology. 53% of middle and highschool students reported that bans on mobile devices at school was the largest obstacle when using technology in school. Of course, not all students would be prone to put a school-sanctioned iPhone to use in a studious manner: for every element in a periodic table app, there's likely a text message waiting to be read. 

71% of students believe that ditching the strict firewalls that block some online content at school is the number one way schools could be more friendly to new tech. It's no surprise then that while 74% of high school teachers think technology is being implemented successfully in the classroom, only 47% of students felt the same way.

[Image credit: aperturismo]

[Via: ReadWriteWeb]

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