Just when I thought the studies surveying the landscape of computer usage by teachers was non-existent, I came across a couple of studies via Google Scholar of all places, that used a survey methodology to examine computer usage by teachers. The Teachers Talk Tech survey was commissioned fairly recently by CDW-G in 2006 and another back in ‘98 funded by the National Science Foundation titled Teacher and Teacher-Directed Use of Computers and Software.
Aside form the large scale survey on Teacher Use of Computers and the Internet Use commissioned by the National Center for Educational Statistics and a handful of dissertations and journal articles describing computer usage by teachers, I was pretty discourage that efforts to determine how teachers were actually using across their practice the massive investment made by so many schools throughout the nation.
Interestingly enough, I came across one of these studies from an interesting article found in Google Scholar titled Computer Use by Teachers: Are Cuban’s Prediction Correct? that attempts to refute Cuban’s claim that technology and teachers simply weren’t meant to mix, hence the findings from reports that cite a limited lack of usage.
More to the point, Google Scholar recently came through with another useful hit of a large scale statewide study called the Use, Support, and Effect of Instructional Technology Study (USEiT) which tackles what its name implies. This study was found though the “cited by” link from an earlier study I found, a research strategy that has become increasingly useful for finding more recent works and which has made Google Scholar handy tool in the researchers tool kit.
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