It may not be surprising when you belong to a project called DPVILS, but at this time virtually every student is connected at home to the Internet. With all those connections, you might wonder what everyone is doing.
This week we took a “snapshot” of what students were doing with their tablets at home. Not surprisingly, they are having some fun. Just over 52% of them say they used their tablets for entertainment in the past day. But as a surprisingly close second, 51% report they also used their tablets to do homework. As 21st-century kids, they also report using their tablets for work on their hobbies (27%), to learn something new (27%), and to communicate with friends and family (35%). Only 7% of your students report not using their tablets at all from home the day before the survey was given.
Several months into the project, now, we also wondered if there might be evidence of greater engagement in learning—more involvement with activities that can make a difference. Seventy-six percent of your students report spending more time learning since they have their tablets. Eighty-one percent say it’s far easier to communicate with their teachers. Sixty-four percent like doing their homework more and 63% are collaborating with their peers more on school assignments. All of this adds up to a clear picture of increasing engagement in learning, a harbinger of greater success. Feeling empowered today?
What students are doing at home, of course, may be influenced by what you, the staff, are doing now that you can trust that all of your students are online. Your work is changing too. Your responses show more instructional diversification (84%), more communication (67%) and personalized feedback (65%) to students, and always important, higher expectations for student work (58%). Seventy-one percent of you feel you are encouraging students to collaborate on their work more. All of these shifts are hallmarks of classrooms and learning in the process of transformation.
