TECHNOS—Julie Evans, CEO of Net Day

July 20, 2008

. . . with Julie Evans, CEO of Net Day, a national education technology nonprofit known for its school wiring programs. NetDay’s latest initiatives, Speak Up Day for Teachers and for Students, “[focus] awareness on the importance of student and teacher voices in the national dialogue on education and technology.”

AIT’s Director of Education, Elaine Larson, recently posed some questions to Julie Evans about her organization’s Speak Up Day activities.

EL: You are in the midst of NetDay’s 2004 Speak Up Day for Students. How did this special survey come about?

JE: Speak Up Day is a direct outcome of our work over the past 9 years to help schools use technology effectively for learning. One of our recent programs included placing AmeriCorps members into classrooms as technology mentors in some highly challenged communities. Our AmeriCorps members worked directly with students and teachers in those communities. One of our findings from that hands-on work was that there was a growing disconnect between how students were using and wanted to use technology for their learning, and how their teachers viewed technology. This observation was verified by work done by other groups such as the BellSouth Foundation and the Pew Institute. To get deeper into this new disconnect issue, NetDay conducted a series of focus groups in early 2003 at seven high schools in our targeted high poverty communities and asked students directly about their technology use in school and out of school, and how they think technology could be better used for education. Without knowing it, we opened up a floodgate—the students were very eager to tell us about their growing frustrations with technology use in school, and to share their own good ideas for how to better use that technology. We realized that there was not a consistent vehicle for sharing authentic, unfiltered student voices on a national scale. In addition, with the pending development of a new National Education Technology Plan by the U.S. Department of Education, it was imperative that student viewpoints be included in that report. With a small grant from the U.S. Department of Education and support from the BellSouth Foundation, we launched the first Speak Up Day for Students in October 2003 with three specific goals: 1) to collect authentic, unfiltered student viewpoints on their own technology use in school and in their personal lives to inform national policies and programs, and most specifically the National Education Technology Plan; 2) to jumpstart some new local discussions between students and teachers about technology use in school; and 3) to ignite a new national awareness on the importance of including all key education stakeholders, and most notably students, in discussions and decisions on education technology.

What surprised you most about the results of the 2003 survey?

Three things. First, the overwhelmingly positive response to the online surveys. We expected maybe 5,000 to 10,000 students to take the survey—in 2003, 210,000 K–12 students participated in the surveys. This verified the need for students to have a voice. Second, the sophistication of the students at all grades levels in using technology. As we have said, it is not simply that today’s students are using technology differently than adults; but rather that their entire approach to living and learning is different because of this technology. Today’s students are truly native to this technology, and it shows in their use of email, IM, and the Internet as an education tool. We were surprised especially by the sophistication of the younger students—and we will be watching very closely how those students expand their technology knowledge as they get older. Finally, the strong desire of the students to be more involved with technology decisions at their school. We asked an open-ended question on the survey: How would you like to be more involved with technology decisions at your school? And we were very surprised by the responses to that question. We have over 33,000 meaningful ideas from students that demonstrated their desire to be involved, their positive approach to local activism, and their need for more knowledge as to how to effectively work within their school system for change.

I was surprised at the students’ responses to and interest in being involved in their school’s technology decisions. The students, even the 1st and 2nd graders, were very insightful in their responses as to how technology could be better utilized in their schools. Have you seen any increase in the level of student participation in school technology decisions? What do you think needs to be done in this area, and how could schools best accomplish this? What are the major barriers to this happening?

This was fascinating to us. Two of our goals were to drive national awareness on student voices and to jumpstart some new local dialogues between students and educators. We have seen the impact of our national awareness efforts throughout the country. The new National Education Technology Plan, when released, will include specific recommendations on the importance of including student voices, and that is a direct result of our work and the student data. National organizations such as ISTE [International Society for Technology in Education] and the NSBA [National Schools Boards Association] are now inviting students to participate in keynote panel discussions and featuring how schools and districts are leveraging their students’ technology knowledge to drive new programs and policies and to engage new community support for schools. On the local level, we have heard about new student advisory groups that are being set up within districts and students that are forming their own clubs to make recommendations. While all of this is very positive, we also have heard from students that they need more knowledge about how to be effective at the local level and successful pathways to emulate to meaningfully impact change. Based upon those needs, NetDay is developing a new online “toolkit,” or resource center, to help engage and empower students in local activism on technology in schools. The NetDay Student Voices Resource Center, which will be launched in January, will include a how-to guide for students about school board governance, or how to read a district ed-tech budget for example, real success stories from students who have impacted change, and discussion areas so that students can learn from each other. The site will include a how-to for educators, school board members, and parents to help them learn how to best support their students in their local activism. We are very excited about this and will be enhancing the site with the help of our own Student Advisory Council and this year’s Speak Up Day data. Development of this Resource Center is being funded by the BellSouth Foundation and Advanced Network & Services.

One major theme in the findings from 2003 was that students “are approaching their [lives] and their daily activities differently because of technology.” Could you speak a little more on that point? In what ways are their lives and activities different?

We have lots of examples from both the survey and our focus-group work (both pre survey and post survey). Here is just one: We cannot talk about kids’ lives today without talking about the importance and impact of IM and email. Seventy-nine percent of the students in grades 7 through 12 in our survey set had at least one email account; 70 percent had at least one IM screen name. More interesting is the proliferation of multiple email accounts and screen names within the student set. Twelve percent of the students in 2003 had four or more email accounts; 18 percent had four or more IM screen names (we expect to see those numbers to jump dramatically this year). When asked as to why they need multiple email addresses and screen names, the students explained that it is to organize their lives and their activities. In other words, the kids told us that they use different email addresses or screen names for different social or academic groups. The “personalness” of these tools mandates that. As one student told me, he could not possibly use the same IM screen name for his football buddies as his church friends or his history study group. The students also told us that they know more of their friends IM screen names than their home phone numbers. An email or an IM chat is much more personal than a phone call to these students—the phone in their lives is just for business and quick calls. Real communications and discussions happen online. Students also told us that their teachers do not understand the importance of these communications tools in their lives. And thus they are very frustrated by the rules that prohibit email and IM at school. The students say that they are so adept at multitasking thru these mechanisms that they use email and IM to facilitate group project meetings online at the same time that they are making plans for going to a Saturday night movie. The students see less differentiation between school and personal lives, since the technology affords them the opportunity to accomplish multiple tasks at the same time and to be more efficient and better organized in that approach. This is very different than the way most adults view IM and email, and the way we segregate our personal and professional lives.

How, or in what ways, do you think the 2004 results may change from last year’s results?

In three primary ways. First, we expect to see the threshold for technology access and sophistication to be younger. Last year, 6th grade was the first year in which a majority of students had their own email address—I would not be surprised to see that threshold be lower, for example. Second, approximately 40 percent of the survey questions this year are new questions, and we are very excited to see what new insights we can [glean] from those questions. Some of the new questions cover topics such as online plagiarism, online student-to-student bullying, the impact of technology on writing, and what kids think about the education value of video or online gaming. Third, we have tied our registration process this year to the NCES [National Center for Education Statistics] database—so we hope to be able to do more in-depth comparative analysis on the data, such as looking at the differences in how students view school filters based upon the socioeconomic factors of their community.

Regarding the Speak Up Day for Teachers: From your perspective, what were the most significant findings of the teacher survey?

The teachers are using technology, both in and out of school, in more sophisticated ways than I believe has been reported before. The focus of our questions for the teachers was on their professional use for their own productivity, not specifically on how they were using technology with their students. As a professional, the teacher is using technology in many of the same ways you and I use technology at work—for email, for research, to improve productivity in writing, and for spreadsheets. At home, the teacher uses technology to make online purchases, to research medical information or get a news story, and to send emails to family and friends. The quest continues to be how to use technology effectively to impact student learning—but it is too simplistic today to say that teachers are simply not using technology as the reason that the barrier of technology integration has not been overcome.

How are teachers using technology to meet the requirements of NCLB? Are they using administrative functions for data gathering primarily, or are they incorporating technology into their lessons, or both?

Our survey did not directly cover this. Teachers told us that the primary impact of technology has been in teaching and instructional support. In another question, they told us overwhelmingly that technology is an asset to meeting federal and state standards. Finally, in a question about the impact of technology in the classroom, teachers selected “richer lesson plans,” “more engaged students,” “meeting needs of students,” and “parent communications” as the biggest impacts. All of those feed into NCLB, of course, but we did not specifically target it with that language.

I thought it was very interesting, and actually contrary to conventional wisdom, that older teachers are just as comfortable using technology as younger teachers. In general, do survey results differ based on the age of the teacher? If so, how?

In fact, this surprised us also. Across all of our questions we saw no differentiation along age or teaching experience lines except for answers to two questions. When asked about pre-service training, the younger teachers felt more positive about how well that training prepared them for using technology in their work responsibilities. That makes sense, considering the older teachers probably had no technology component to their pre-service training. And in the area of using students for technology support in the classroom, in fact, the older teachers were more comfortable with that than the younger teachers. The younger teachers were more apt to wait for professional tech support than to ask a student’s help. We attributed this to either a higher degree of realism on the part of the older teacher regarding professional tech support capacity at their school, or a younger teacher’s still developing confidence in yielding classroom power, shall we say.

“Obstacles most cited by teachers include inadequate pre-service training, lack of time in the school day to most effectively use technology, and school district firewalls and filters that limit access to valuable online educational resources.” Is NetDay planning any initiatives to address these barriers? What have you already been doing in your target communities to address them? How do you recommend schools accomplish adequate pre-service training in light of teachers’ heavy schedules and low school budgets for professional development?

It is our goal to share these results so that other organizations and agencies can use their expertise to develop solutions also. The situation with the deficiencies in pre-service training at teacher prep colleges and universities is already well known. We were more impressed that the school district based in-service training was more highly regarded by the teachers as valuable. We think that lends support to district training opportunities in which we have been involved for many years. The school filters situation is a new one for schools, and many administrators were caught off guard with that one. It, of course, speaks to the growing sophistication of the teachers using technology and the need for the schools and districts to keep up with that. We are pleased that we have been able to offer that awareness to the districts so that they can think about how to solve it for their own staffs. We continue to work with many of our partners in how to meaningfully and effectively address some of these challenges in a way that makes sense in light of tight budgets and time constraints. The public awareness of these issues is a huge first step.

How do you think technology has changed the roles of teachers and students in the classroom? How has it changed their relationship?

Those changes are still occurring and developing. I think the most significant thing is that students are taking on a new role as drivers of their own educational destiny. No longer is the school or the classroom or the teacher the sole owner of knowledge. Students are seeking out education outside of the school, and schools need to acknowledge that fact. For example, we learned from a student in one of our focus groups that he had taken an online college class in quantum physics because the curriculum in his AP Physics class did not adequately cover the topic. He was interested in learning more, and so he sought out his own learning experience online. When asked what his teacher thought about it, the student explained to us that he did not even think to tell his teacher that he was doing that. Education is no longer limited to the school for today’s tech-savvy students, and schools need to understand that, appreciate that, and adapt to [the fact] that learning happens everywhere now.

Some results of your 2003 student survey reflect a gender difference in student responses. When I mentioned this to a colleague, she shared with me a study Indiana University is doing with NSF [National Science Foundation] funding to look at the trend that fewer women are enrolling in computer majors. There seems to be a sort of resurgence in this phenomenon, and I’m wondering if you see this reflected in the students’ survey responses? And, what do you think this says about any narrowing of gender roles and biases in science, math, and technology?

We are not sure. The continuing gender gap actually surprised me personally. We are going to look more closely at our data this year on that angle and particularly to look at the elementary school responses, compared to middle school and high school responses. Just as with other topics, it is important to go deep on that analysis so that we can uncover both behavioral and attitudinal differences. Stay tuned for more on that this year.

I read your online annual report and was impressed with the successes NetDay [www.netday.org/research_netday.htm] has seen—the differences you have made not only in your target communities but also around the country. What, from your perspective, have been your most significant outcomes and success stories?

I believe that NetDay has had the greatest impact when it has been able to ignite national awareness [of] our positive brand to change pre-existing perceptions and jumpstart new dialogues in communities. With the wiring efforts in 1995–99, our greatest impact was in two areas: drawing national awareness to the new idea that every school must be connected to the Internet, and [showing] that communities can come together to impact local change. From 1999 to 2003, we beat the drum on the importance of providing technology resources to all communities, and that even in our nation’s most challenged communities, technology can and should play an important role in a high quality education. Now with our Speak Up Day efforts, we are rallying a new national cry to insure that all stakeholders, especially students and teachers, have a say in the direction of education and that local activism is still the best way to impact change. Through all of this we have modeled how to use technology to improve education and students’ futures.

AIT published an article for our TECHNOS Quarterly publication in the summer of 1996 on the inception of NetDay [www.technos.net/tq_05/2kennedysb.htm]. How has the focus of the organization changed since 1996? What changes do you foresee in the years ahead?

We pride ourselves on the fact that, like technology use in schools, we are a dynamic organization. We believe in continuous improvement, and we constantly evaluate what is needed to help K–12 educators improve education quality through the use of technology. Wiring support was important in 1995, but it is not as important to have an outside group helping with that today. In a similar way, it is our hope that with our national campaign for student voices in education, that in a few years, the role of students in education and technology decision making will be so commonplace that NetDay’s efforts will no longer be needed to drive that national awareness. We will be beating the national drum on another issue of importance to students, schools, educators, and communities at that time.

Reach Julie Evans, CEO of NetDay, at: Julie@netday.org.