edna.edu.au

How do new teachers use ICT?

edna recently commissioned market research with first year teachers about how they currently use ICT in their teaching, and how their pre-service training prepared them for using ICT.

The focus group participants were mostly Gen Y from Adelaide and Melbourne.

Albeit limitations of focus group method,  these early career teachers:

• were 'digital natives' with much greater reliance on ICT than their more experienced colleagues;
• use the web much more in lesson planning than directly in their teaching - Google and Wikipedia predominate;
• mostly described their pre-service ICT training as patchy and inconsistent;
• experienced similar barriers to previous teacher market research  - limited school infrastructure, site blocking;
• advised owners of websites to 'keep it simple'.

Some lessons for future planning of me.edu.au and other collaborative services - somewhat surprising from the Facebook generation were  reservations about sites that require logins and disclosing information to their colleagues.

Further research on opportunities to support beginning teachers is scheduled for this quarter.

Beginning teachers and ICT market research report