The Speak Up Survey of 416,000 K-12 students, parents, teachers, librarians, and administrators at more than US 5,600 schools found that…
- “Students are adopting technologies and then adapting them to support their own self-directed learning.” For example, Project Tomorrow, which conducted the 9th-annual survey, reports that 46% of high school students have used Facebook as a collaboration tool for schoolwork, 15% have informally tutored other students online or found an expert to help them with their own questions, 20% have used a mobile app to organize their school work, and 10% have Tweeted about an academic topic.
- “Parents are supporting their children’s personalized learning journeys”: 64% of them would buy a mobile device for their child’s academic use at school.
- Project Tomorrow noted a gap between what schools offer and what students want to learn: “As a result, students are looking outside of the classroom to meet their personalized learning goals … 12% of high school students have taken an online class on their own, outside of the classroom, to learn about a topic that interested them.”
- A sign that personalized learning + tech is better for career development: “In math and science classrooms where students and teachers direct learning supported by technology, students’ interest in a STEM career is 27%, compared with 20% for students in traditional math and science classrooms,” Project Tomorrow found.
- “Two-thirds of students told us in this year’s Speak Up surveys that they define school success by the achievement of their own personal learning goals, far exceeding traditional marks of success such as school honors or awards (45%) or even parent pride (55%).”
