Research
ED Pulse, Networking “Tools” September 12, 2013
The education media is crowded with stories about the rise of teachers using social networking for personal and professional use. Within the wide breadth of social networking tools, educators appear to be using more teacher-only, private spaces, particularly sites where students are not allowed. They are more likely to seek out and return to educator networks that offer the privacy, peer-to-peer connections, and resource sharing that meets their specific professional needs, according to a recent survey and interviews with educators.
Influenced by this attention being paid to teacher social networking, ASCD SmartBrief this week sought to understand what inroads these virtual networks have made in connecting teachers. This week’s question sheds light on the types of “tools” that ASCD SmartBrief readers prefer to use to connect with colleagues.
Clearly, the preferred method to connect with other educators remains the face-to-face in-person education conferences (40%). At a secondary level, they find that personal learning networks (18%) and professional development (17%) provide them with the opportunity to engage their peers.
Education online communities are selected as the preferred method for connecting with others in education by about 1 in 10 educators (12%), as are social media channels, such as Twitter or Facebook (9%). Very few (3%) feel that virtual or streaming online education conferences provide the greatest opportunity to connect them to their colleagues.
This survey question was included in ASCD SmartBrief, a daily education news roundup e-newsletter, which has 208,000 subscribers. Using ED Pulse, the weekly online poll, data was collected from 364 readers, starting on September 12, 2013. Online surveys do not provide a random sample, as participants are self-selected, meaning that a margin of sampling error cannot be calculated or quoted. In addition, the population and sample are limited to those with access to computers and an online network. However, online surveys have been shown to produce results that have proven to be reliable predictors of outcomes, including election results. If you have a question on education that you would like to see addressed in a future ED Pulse poll, feel free to submit it to Kit Harris.