The Road to Digital

To better adapt to the world of digital content, schools need more funding, greater bandwidth and better trained teachers.

Those are the areas that were deemed essential by education stakeholders who took part in the Speak Up National Research Project, an initiative of Project Tomorrow. Its most recent report, “From Chalkboards to Tablets: The Digital Conversion of the K-12 Classroom,” was released in April.

 The research amassed the views of 39,713 parents of school-aged children, and 102,070 educators representing more than 8,000 schools and 2,400 districts. In the report, three-quarters of school technology leaders said their budgets to support instructional technology now are less than they were in 2008-09.

“Building the internal capacity of a school district to transform teaching and learning from the inside out most often requires some level of new investments in digital tools and resources, teacher professional development and infrastructure,” the report says.

Regarding computing capacity, only 15 percent of district administrators and technology leaders say they have enough connectivity to meet needs.

Converting teaching and learning to the digital world cannot succeed unless districts can provide teachers with the appropriate training, the survey concluded.