How well prepared do teachers feel they are to use computers and the Internet in their teaching?

When teachers were asked to focus specifically on the variety of potential uses of computers or the Internet in the classroom, 23 percent of public school teachers reported feeling well prepared and an additional 10 percent reported feeling very well prepared to use computers and the Internet in their teaching (Table 3). ¹

Teachers who reported assigning students work that involved corresponding with experts, authors, or students from other schools were more likely to report feeling very well prepared to use computers and the Internet than teachers who assigned practice drills to a moderate or large extent (30 versus 14 percent).

Teachers with fewer years of experience and those with more hours of professional development felt better prepared to use computers and the Internet for classroom instruction. Teachers with 3 or fewer years of teaching experience were more likely to feel well prepared to use computers and the Internet than teachers with 20 or more years of experience (31 versus 19 percent). Teachers with more than 32 hours of professional development in the use of computers and the Internet within the last 3 years were more likely to report feeling very well prepared than teachers who had received 0 to 32 hours of formal professional development (29 versus 6 to 10 percent). Teachers without recent professional development were more likely to report feeling not at all prepared to use computers and the Internet in classrooms than teachers who had received one or more hours of professional development.

A more extensive discussion of the results of this survey will be available in a report forthcoming in Summer 2000. The report will focus on the relationships between school characteristics such as school level, school poverty level, school location, and school size and uses of computers and the Internet.

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¹ These figures differ somewhat from those presented in a previous report
(U. S. Department of Education 1999) containing similar information. These differences are discussed in the report to be released Summer 2000.

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