National Technology Survey of Students, Educators and Parents Open Through December 19th
Speak Up 2014 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/
San Marcos, CA – Through December 19th, more than 400,000 K-12 students, educators and parents will complete the Speak Up 2014 online survey and share their ideas about education and technology with our national leaders. The annual survey is now open for input and is facilitated through public, private and charter schools all around the country; every school is eligible to participate. The results provide important insights about education, technology and student aspirations to individual schools, state departments of education and national leaders.
“Each year more schools sign up to be part of Speak Up because it offers them – their students, parents, staff and members of the community – a way to express their opinions about the future of learning, local and national policies, how teaching could be improved and more,” said Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, the survey’s facilitator and a national leader in empowering students to have a voice in improving education in the 21st century.
“San Elijo Middle School has been a leader in technology since opening in 2004. Now in our 11th year, we continue to provide our staff and students with access to the best technology available and the results are irrefutable.”
The 2014 online survey – open now through December 19th for all K-12 students, parents, members of the community, teachers, and administrators at http://www.speakup4schools.org/speakup2014/ – offers the largest collection of authentic, unfiltered input on education and technology from those ‘on the ground’ in the schools. For the first time, Project Tomorrow, 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 over 3.4 million participants, Speak Up continues to be the only annual, national survey to ask students, educators and parents how they use – 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.
In addition to sharing their insights, schools and districts who participate in Speak Up receive a free online report with all of their locally collected data – and the national data findings to use for benchmark comparison. National data findings will be released during two Congressional Briefings in Spring 2015.
Individual participation and responses provided in the Speak Up survey are completely confidential and completing the online survey takes only 20 minutes. The Speak Up surveys are 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 3.4 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, Fuel Education, Rosetta Stone, Schoolwires, SMART Technologies and Qualcomm Wireless Reach.
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.
About Project Tomorrow
Speak Up is a national initiative of Project Tomorrow, the nation’s leading education nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that today’s students are well prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders and engaged citizens of the world. The Speak Up data represents the largest collection of authentic, unfiltered stakeholder input on education, technology, 21st century skills, schools of the future and science instruction. Education, business and policy leaders report use the data regularly to inform federal, state and local education programs. For additional information, visit www.tomorrow.org.
