Needs+Survey

> The audience that I have chosen to target for instruction is the teachers at Fayette County High school. Last year we had projectors, eInstruction / MOBI boards, and response clickers installed in our classrooms and yet many of our teachers have still not gotten them out of the box. Of the 28 teachers that have completed the needs survey, it appears that most of them are the ones that use the new technology that has been installed in our classrooms. Our school district has a 21st century technology initiative with the goal of having projectors and eInstruction capabilities in every classroom k-12. A SPLOST was passed two years ago to fund this initiative. Elementary schools in the county received the technology first, followed by middle schools and then high schools. > > I asked the teachers in my school nine technology questions to identify the technology interests and needs of the teachers within my Fayette County High school. Many of the teachers that responded were thorough when asked to respond in a short answer text field. > > Question #1: How many times per month do you typically incorporate any web technologies when delivering content to your students? I asked this question to lead the survey because I wanted to know if the teachers in my school were even making an attempt to use technology in their lessons. I was surprise to see that many of them were using the technology in their classes as well as Internet tools. If all of the people would have answered zero on this question I think technology instruction would not be well received. > > Question #2: What technology that you have in your classroom would you like to know more about? I asked this question to see if the teachers in the school had existing technology with which they desired instruction. When I first administered the survey I did not make all the questions required to submit the form. After receiving about ten or so submission I went back and made all the questions required because the questions were not all being answered. > > Question # 3: I provided a menu of web technologies and descriptions for each one to determine possible instruction topics. I also allowed to select multiple web technologies because I thought it would be hard to select just one. Now that I have the data I realize that I probably should have limited them to just one selection. Many of them selected more than five web technologies that they were interested in. Therefore, my data for this question may not be easily analyzed. > > Question #4: Estimate how many times a week you peruse through the internet to find resources for your classroom instruction. I chose this question to help determine if teachers would be willing to go to a resource and browse it to help them discover what they need for their lesson. I thought the answers to this question may help me decide the delivery method as well. > > Question #5: Have you ever used a blog or a wiki to post information for student access outside of the classroom? I chose this question to direct them to thinking about the teacher/student and student/student communication needs outside the classroom. I thinking about specific use of Edmodo for communication outside the classroom. > > Question #6: Would you use social media in your classes if it was available? (Social media refers to blogs, facebook, twitter, edmodo, and etc.) I chose this question as an extension of question 5 to determine if teachers may be willing to use social media if they received instruction to integrate it. Facebook and Twitter are blocked in my school district, but Edmodo is a great alternate option that gives teachers control of the blog. > > Question #7: Do you assign projects that students must present orally and visually to the rest of the class? I chose this question to find out the needs of presentation tools in the teachers’ classrooms. Almost all of the teachers that completed the survey said that they require their students to do some type of presentation. This was really good to know because I can design instruction around presentation tools and there is a great chance that it will be well received and utilized. > > Question #8: What technologies do you use for students to interact with each other on projects outside of class? Again, I wanted to see what communication tools the teachers were using with their students, if they were communicating at all outside of class. The answers to this question gave me an idea of what tools they were currently using or the ones that they have tried. Most teachers that answered this questions put wiki, or website. > > Question #9: Which method of delivery would you prefer when taking a professional development course about technology tools for the classroom? This question was used because I wanted to find out the learning preference of the teachers. I was surprise to see that most of the teachers prefer a blended learning environment. I originally thought that many of the teachers would choose completely online learning because of the complaints that I hear when the teachers are required to go to PD workshops and sit face to face with a presenter. > > It was a good thing to collect this data to know what type of delivery instruction my teachers prefer. I had already made up my mind that the instruction would be completely self-paced in an online format. I quickly decided to change this as I was analyzing my data. Since most teachers seemed to prefer the blended medium, I decided that I would have a face to face session to introduce the instruction at the beginning and a final face to face session to discuss and present findings at the close of the instruction. In between the two face to face meetings instruction will be delivered through Edmodo. Using Edmodo for as a vehicle for delivery will also give the teachers the exposure to Edmodo’s wonderful social networking features. > > > As mentioned before, after about ten submission came into the spreadsheet with empty cells, I realized that I needed to make every question required to have an answer before submission could be completed. Once, I realized this I quickly edited the form to make every question required. I also tweaked my menu of Internet tools in question #3 so that each tool had a brief description in case the teacher had never heard of some of the web tools on the menu. > > > I was pleasantly surprised that so many of my coworkers answered the survey. All the answers submitted should help me make a decision on training development. In the future I will be plan the order of the questions a little better rather than jumping from thought to thought. The survey questions could be more fluid in the relationships they have with other questions that are next to them. I will probably take the information that I received and develop more specific question based on the first survey. I would like to design my second survey to target one or two specific training decisions.
 * 1) A brief summary of your audience including instructional setting
 * 1) How you arrived at your final questions and a brief comment on why you asked each specific question.
 * 1) Your selected platform for administration and why you selected that platform
 * 1) Problems that you encountered and how you overcame them.
 * 1) Were you satisfied that you were able to get the information that you needed to make a solid decision on training development? Which areas would you identify for future improvement to your survey?