One of the first things I did with my Gr 6, Year 7, 8, 9/10 and 11 classes was give them an ICT survey so I’ve got a good understanding of what tools they have at home. The ironic thing - I gave it to them on paper. Arg! The reason for that in the end was that I wanted very specific information that had their names attached, and I needed it to be done fairly quickly and they all have access to working pens, so that’s what we did.
I wanted to know if the kids had internet at home, owned a mobile phone (and whether it had a voice recording function), owned an mp3 player (and whether it had a voice recorder), what email address they checked most often if not their school one, and what chat program they use (MSN or the like).
The results I got were not all that surprising. It was rare if a kid DID NOT have a phone or mp3 player, although there were a few in that boat. All but a few kids (I surveyed around 80 kids) have the internet at home. The great thing is that I now know what I can plan to use in class and how to overcome a few kids not having it.
The best thing is that most of my students in Year 6 and above have some sort of voice recorder which is incredibly useful in a language class! I’m really excited about the potential. Some of the recorders are on mp3 players, but a lot of them are on phones which might be an issue since our school policy is no phones at school. See if I can swing that one.
Knowing that your students have really powerful and useful computers in their pockets, will you try to use them? How?
Here is a copy of the survey. Feel free to use it yourselves if you see fit!
Thanks for the Student ICT Survey. I’ll upload it to my Virtual Classroom & await the results.