As Education Week‘s Alyson Klein writes, “ Educators are using digital tools to boost student learning more than ever. But few believe there’s good information available about which resources are going to be effective in the classroom.”

And that’s the conclusion of a recent NewSchools Venture Fund/Gallup survey, which found that:

  • 65% of teachers use digital tools every day;
  • 53% said they’d like to use technology more;
  • 27% said they had a lot of information about the effectiveness of the digital tools they use;
  • 25% of principals and 18% of administrators say there’s lots of evidence-based information about their effectiveness of digital learning tools.

At the same time, the survey revealed that:

  • 65% of educators tossed a digital tool initially piloted or adopted.
  • 41% cited lack of improvement in student learning outcomes as a reason for the tossing.
  • 27% mentioned cost as a reason to ditch a digital resource.

Not enough training is another problem. In fact:

  • 94% of teachers say they usually learn about digital-learning tools from colleagues.
  • 85% get such information from their school or district, with nearly 50% choosing from a district list.
  • 58% get input on new tools from social media.
  • 56% cited lack of training as a “significant/extremely significant problem.
  • Nearly 50% say some teachers believe non-digital tools are more effective.
  • 46% said they weren’t sure which tools to use.

On a brighter note, 90% of teachers find ed-tech helps with research. At the same time, 71% of teachers and 78% of principals see it as helpful in getting students to work on projects with others.

Meanwhile, an earlier Education Week survey found that only “29% of teachers felt strongly that ed-tech supports innovation in the own classrooms.”

Bottom line question: Given these stats, think that we taxpayers are getting enough bang for your billions of ed-tech bucks? Would love to know…

Many thanks, Carol