Dive Brief:

• Education Week has released the latest edition of its "Technology Counts" report, exploring how teachers approach technology in their classrooms and how comfortable they are with it.
• The report found more than 50% of teachers reporting comfort with technology, but only a minority use it for interactive or collaborative activities, instead putting tech to use for testing or skill drills.
• The surveyed group of teachers see the promise of technology in schools as middling, perhaps getting bogged down in current challenges like connectivity issues, computer malfunctions and lack of training, but they report having more confidence in the future of technology.

Dive Insight:

The Education Week package of survey results and reporting includes profiles of teacher tech leaders and advice about how to move from passive to active tech use in schools. The 2016 survey found that teachers, when deciding which tech products to test or use in their classrooms, look to the experiences of other teachers rather than the recommendations of administrators or companies. Districts and higher education institutions are developing curated libraries of open educational resources, sometimes using faculty reviews of materials to provide better context. Perhaps the same structure can be replicated with tech tools. Schools that have the budgets to pay teachers to review certain products likely will find greater success than those that have to rely on volunteers to do the extra work.