One of the most hotly debated topics regarding technology in education today is what the appropriate level of access for students? Is Facebook nothing more than a virtual bullying environment? Can Twitter facilitate more than just a discussion about what everyone had for breakfast today? Could Google docs be the avenue for which students could collaborate? What happens if this collaboration is for more sinister plots? Should we give them iPhones?
It seems everyone has a strong opinion on this topic ranging from "open access for everyone and their dog" to "lock them down so tightly that you need permission to press the power button". I personally have quite a strong tendancy to lean towards the "open" camp, as outlined in a rant from quite a few months back.
For my purposes over the course of these next few weeks, I'm only interested in the level of access to websites for both students and teachers (because God forbid we should trust the adults in our buildings).
Enter Part I -- Analysis of Our Current Levels
Regardless of whether you're on Team Free-For-All or Team Lockdown, the reality is that the level of access at school is about as standardized as our preference for ice cream flavours. I'll let you decide the correlation between Bubble Gum, Cappuccino and Plain Vanilla with side of this debate. (Hmmm...I wonder if my preference for Tiger Tiger is symbolic...)
I decided to turn to my fantastic PLN on Twitter to see what was available in their schools. After much begging pleading requesting, my awesome tweeps responded to my 5-second poll! The split between Elementary (K-6) and Secondary (7-12) was roughly 50/50 (I couldn't have planned this any better myself!)
Here are the results:
K-6 Schools
| Percentage of Teachers with Access | Percentage of Students with Access | ||
| external email (Hotmail, Gmail, etc.) | 72% | 44% | |
| YouTube | 67% | 47% | |
| Google Docs | 83% | 67% | |
| 65% | 50% | ||
| 33% | 19% | ||
| None of the Above | 3% | 25% |
7-12 Schools
| Percentage of Teachers with Access | Percentage of Students with Access | |
| external email (Hotmail, Gmail, etc.) | 73% | 57% |
| YouTube | 77% | 52% |
| Google Docs | 87% | 73% |
| 80% | 50% | |
| 48% | 25% | |
| None of the Above | 5% | 23% |
In the interest of preventing my blog posts from turning into novels, I'm going to leave it at that for today. Some of the percentages surprised me, and there were some very interesting underlying trends.
But that's a blog post for another day.
What are your initial thoughts on these results? Anything surprise you? Leave your comments...
Vanessa :)
P.S. @kjamesa - if you're reading this (which I hope you are...since I sent you a Twitter message!), thank you, thank you, thank you for your forward thinking and open access to our websites back when I was a colleague! I can't believe that 8% of teachers from this survey have NO access to any of the websites listed! Obviously, you felt strongly enough to support the teachers in the division with increased access to valuable websites =)
Images taken from http://icons.mysitemyway.com/
