Surprising Tech Statistics of Today

Things That Make Me Go "Hmmm...."

In a recent blog post I spoke about Edgar Dale's "Cone of Experience" and its progression from passive to active learning. A handful of times since then I have quietly smirked when I paraphrased them to say, "so you would like to encourage active learning in your classroom." 

It is no wonder that when reading Digital Learning: Peril or Promise for Our K-12 Students by Julie A. Evens, Ed.D., I paused with some of the statistics. Take this one for example: 84% of middle school and 78% of high school students indicated that they regularly use YouTube to access online videos. Obviously my initial reaction is, "holy cow, that is a lot!" mixed with "oh no, I've seen some of the videos out there and they are not.good." 😬 

However, I pushed aside my personal feelings and continued to read. Middle school and high school students' experience was broken down further in how they use YouTube, and then disaggregated by gender. They represented it in Table 3 as shown below:

Photo Credit: Project Tomorrow 2019

Most of the data stays pretty much the same throughout for each activity for both girls and boys. There is a little more discrepancy with girls being more likely to use YouTube to seek homework help and boys being more likely to have their own YouTube channel.

Here is what struck me: I felt as though the higher percentages (recommending to a friend, watching videos) would fall in the the "passive" part of Edgar Dale's "Cone of Experience." Here students are mostly hearing and watching, which only makes up for about 50% of what students generally remember. Yet the percentages that reflect how students are using YouTube starts to decrease as the learning becomes more active. When students are asked to say and write (posting a comment on a video), create (their own channel or posting a self-created video), the percentages begin to decline to nearly the teens. 

So how can we use this to our advantage? Have students take on a more active role on YouTube. Give them opportunities to design collaborative lessons, model a learning experience that they can share with their subscribers, or performing a presentation.

Another startling statistic came from the Pew Research Center's article on Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018. The article describes a survey that was given to teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 in early spring of 2018 which indicated most popular online platforms among teens. Facebook, once a dominant outlet, was in fourth place behind YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. They also noted how most of the teenagers were pretty much across the board on the effect that social media has on their lives: 31% thought it had a mostly positive effect, 24% a mostly negative effect, and 45% thought that is was neither positive nor negative. They also stated how over 75% of teenagers have access to a computer at home and more than 93% had a smartphone, with 45% of the teens stating they are online almost constantly.

As educators, why not use this to our advantage?

Knowing how readily accessible and present these technology tools are at their fingertips, no matter their level of income or background, levels the playing field. It doesn't matter if you are in a low-income school or not: we are giving all students a chance. My school district does a wonderful job helping with this as they resell used computers to the community at an affordable price. We also provide our middle school students the opportunity to take their computers home after school at a very reasonable price to cover the cost of insurance. Knowing that we have the opportunity to enhance and enrich our students outside of the class period is an incredible thing.

Let us use technology and their preference to social platforms to our advantage. Let us create Instagram challenges that are related to the books that they are reading and recommended. Let us create Snapchat to send announcements or reminders about an upcoming test. If these children are going to be walking around with devices and access 24/7, I think we could create ways to use it towards education purposes that pushes them and challenges them to learn.

How else can we use the preferable platforms to our educational advantage?