National Technology Survey of Students, Educators and Parents Open Through December 20th

Speak Up 2013 Asks about Technology Use in and Out of School, How Parents are Learning about Common Core State Standards and Bandwidth Capacity for Digital Content

Online Survey: http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/

Irvine, Calif. – This year’s Speak Up annual surveys continue to pave new ground in education technology research by polling K-12 students, educators and parents about the use of mobile devices, online classes, games and digital content within learning.  As more students have their own smartphones, tablets and laptops, this year’s Speak Up 2013 surveys will ask school districts and teachers about the growing trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies.  Additionally, in light of President Obama’s ConnectED initiative, Speak Up is also asking educators this year about their school’s bandwidth capacity to better understand if schools have enough Internet access to support the use of high quality digital content such as videos and animations within classroom instruction. 

For the first time, Project Tomorrow, the national organization that facilitates the annual Speak Up surveys, will also provide a special online survey for community members.  Local employers, after school providers, school board members and homeowners without children in the local schools can now provide their views on the role of technology in preparing students for the jobs and careers of the 21st century.   This new set of data will provide valuable insights for schools and districts as well as state and federal policymakers on the importance of digital tools and resources for college and career readiness.   Additionally, both parents and community members will also be asked about their awareness of the new Common Core State Standards, and the sources, both digital and non-digital, of their information about the new standards. 

With the upcoming implementations of these new curriculum standards and associated online assessments, students’ writing abilities are more important than ever.  Correspondingly, the new Speak Up surveys also ask parents, teachers and administrators to comment on the impact of technology on students’ writing abilities.  

After more than a decade and 3 million participants, Speak Up continues to be the only annual, national survey to ask students, educators and parents how they use of  – and how they would like to use – technology for learning.  Again this year, the online surveys ask students, parents and educators to envision their ultimate 21st century school and to identify the technology tools that would be essential to support increased student achievement and learning. 

“The plethora of digital tools and resources available to educators today, from tablets to digital books, makes it challenging for school leaders to know how to make the right decisions and sound investments,” noted Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow.  “Speak Up provides an easy and no-cost way for these leaders to gain valuable input from the key stakeholders in education – the students, their parents, teachers, administrators and now, even community members - to support new technology plans, policies  and decisions.”    

The national online Speak Up 2013 survey is open now until December 20th.

The Speak Up online surveys will be completed by more than 400,000 K-12 students, educators and parents around the country. The results provide important insights about education, technology and student aspirations that are used every year by individual schools, districts, state departments of education and national leaders.

The Speak Up National Research Project represents the largest collection of authentic, unfiltered input on education and technology from those ‘on the ground’ in the schools.  The annual survey about education and technology is facilitated through public, private, parochial and charter schools all around the country.

Project Tomorrow will share the national data findings from the survey in the spring with federal, state and local policymakers.  Additionally, every school or district that participates in Speak Up receives a free online report with all of their locally collected data – and the national data findings to use for benchmark comparison. All participating education entities will gain access to their own stakeholder data in February 2014. 

Individual participation and responses provided in the Speak Up surveys are completely confidential and completing the online surveys takes only 20 minutes.  Speak Up is open to every public and private school and district in the United States, American schools on military bases and other interested schools worldwide.

Since 2003, more than 3 million K-12 students, educators and parents from more than 30,000 schools in all 50 states have participated in Speak Up. The online survey is facilitated by Project Tomorrow and supported by many of our nation’s most innovative companies, foundations and nonprofit organizations including Blackboard, Inc., BrainPOP, DreamBox Learning,  K12, Inc., Rosetta Stone, Schoolwires and SMART Technologies.

Project Tomorrow partners with more than 75 different education associations, organizations and think-tanks for outreach to the schools and development of the survey questions including the American Association of School Administrators, Consortium for School Networking, Digital Learning Day, Digital Promise, edWeb.net,  iNACOL, International Society for Technology in Education, National School Boards Association, National Secondary School Principals Association, Southern Regional Education Board and State Education Technology Directors’ Association.

Past Speak Up national reports are available at www.tomorrow.org/speakup/speakup_reports.html.

For additional information, visit www.tomorrow.org.