From AAPSNews Service
A total of 875 Ann Arbor Public Schools parents responded to a national survey on educational technology – the largest group of Ann Arbor parents to ever participate, according to Monique Uzelac, Director of Instructional Technology for the district.
The SpeakUp National Research Project surveys K-12 students, teachers, parents and school administrators to collect feedback and input from school stakeholders. It is conducted through Project Tomorrow, and responses were accepted from mid-October to mid-January.
Nationally, 42,267 parents responded to the SpeakUp survey.
Uzelac said that the district’s new outreach tool, School Messenger, allowed outeach to even more parents and encourage participation this year. The respondents represented families with students equally distributed across grade levels. About half considered themselves average technology users, with 38 percent considering themselves an advanced user of technology.
“I want to thank our parent community for their feedback,” Uzelac said. “We are happy to share the results and look forward to continued participation from our community.”
Some of the findings included:
- Of respondents, 99 percent have a computer with high-speed, broadband internet in the home.
- Parents feel teaching of digital citizenship and online safety is the responsibility of the school and family. Awareness of online safety and digital citizenship is best as a joint effort between family and schools.
- Half of respondents support using online textbooks.
- AAPS families tend to support their students pursuit of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) careers.
Full AAPS parent survey results can be found at www.speakup4schools.org.
