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Educational Technology According to Teachers and Students

Technology integration is extremely important in modern education. Students need to learn technology literacy to be able to be well rounded students and as future adults in the job market. Technology is not going anywhere, in fact, if anything it will just continue to grow and become larger parts of future jobs and lifestyles.

Project Tomorrow

        Project Tomorrow is an organization that has a research project, Speak Up, that provides an annual report of the data from all stakeholders about technology use in education. Project Tomorrow is a free national research project that can be used by school and districts. The report advocates for student voices while also providing educators with helpful information about technology integration in schools. Here is the first page from the 2023-2024 Speak Up findings.

Image Source: Project Tomorrow Speak Up


        Something that stands out to me, but doesn't necessarily surprise me, is the amount of time they are passively using technology. I think that it can be more difficult to use technology with active learning in certain subjects. I also think that most teacher probably struggle with finding ways to pair active learning and technology. With the amount of digital resources that teachers have access to now it can be overwhelming to even begin considering a new program or project that would work with active learning and technology. There are also still teachers who struggle to relinquish control when teaching by allowing students to explore and learn using technology. I do find it surprising that the that teachers and students report pretty similar percentages for weekly technology usage in active learning.

Final Thoughts

        As a current educator and a future school librarian I know the importance of technology and learning. I will need to start making sure that I am providing my students with more opportunities to actively learn with technology. Particularly because most of the opportunities they currently have are passive. Maybe that's where I can come in to help supplement and provide support to classroom teachers by having active learning technology options in my library classroom based off the content in their classrooms. The school library usually has the pulse on technology and should be there to help support classroom teachers and provide reinforcement.

Works Cited

“Speak Up Data Findings.” Project Tomorrow, www.tomorrow.org/publications/speak-up-data-findings/.

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Comments

  1. Mariann the LibrarianSeptember 26, 2025 at 8:55 PM

    Hi Abi, This research study made me happy! I'm glad you were able to find practical applications and set professional goals for yourself based on the information you discovered. Though the passive technology usage is no doubt higher, it was also encouraging to see that over 50% of teacher reported using technology for active learning experience at least once a week, and up to daily!
    Did the findings information include any examples of this work? It would be interesting to know what active learning strategies the surveyed teachers are using on a regular basis.

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  2. Elizabeth M-OSeptember 27, 2025 at 8:11 AM

    Hi, I liked your point that a lot of what is done with technology would be considered passive learning and that the real hurdle for incorporating technology into education is figuring out how to make it more active. I noticed when I was substitute teaching that there were a number of students who would just randomly click through assignments until they got a passing score, which to me was concerning and showing that they are not learning anything, I wonder how this tendency could be combatted?

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