FRS Urges District Leaders to Lead Conversations on Technology for Learning
Future Ready Schools® (FRS)—led by the Alliance for Excellent Education—is thrilled to support Project Tomorrow’s 2017 Speak Up Research Project for Digital Learning, which provides an easy way for students, parents, educators, and members of the community to participate in local decisionmaking about technology, as well as contribute to state and national dialogues about education technology.
Since 2003, more than 5 million K–12 education stakeholders have participated in the annual Speak Up research project. Data findings are shared each year with federal, state, and local policymakers to inform education programs, policies and funding. Last year, more than 575 FRS districts participated in the Speak Up 2016 research project resulting in more than 110,000 individual surveys from students, teachers, school administrators, district administrators, librarians, tech leaders and parents. That equals a lot of informative data! This year’s survey is open from October 16, 2017, through January 19, 2018, and we are hoping the number of Future Ready districts increases significantly. See a snapshot of the Future Ready data from Speak Up 2016.
Like FRS, Speak Up is a free service to all U.S. schools and districts. Speak Up provides education leaders with
- direct feedback from their staff members, students, and the community on needs and aspirations;
- insights on how other school leaders around the country address key digital learning challenges; and
- information on how others in the education community leverage technology to transform teaching and learning and prepare students for the future.
When asked about the value of the Speak Up survey, Sara Hall, vice president of digital learning at the Alliance for Excellent Education said, “It is not only important for Future Ready Schools to support districts in building their capacity to plan and implement student-centered learning, we must also ensure that students and educators are the center of local and national conversations about the impacts of technology on teaching and learning. Our partners at Project Tomorrow have done an excellent job over the years to collect, analyze, and publish data on ways students and educators leverage technology for learning in and out of school. Future Ready Schools (FRS) is pleased to find new ways to work together to highlight the work being done in FRS districts to improve the learning experience of all students.”
The Speak Up research project is informed by Project Tomorrow’s partners from education, private industry, and research policy fields. The data is often used by the country’s top education advocates to understand more deeply the changes in education technology implementation at the school and district levels. Through the seven FRS institutes in 2017, participants access Speak Up’s data to better understand how their peers are making progress with personalized learning aligned with the FRS framework.
“District and school leaders use the Speak Up service every year to monitor progress on strategic goals and to identify needs and trends that will guide future plans,” said Dr. Julie Evans, chief executive officer of Project Tomorrow. “We look forward to offering this service and working more closely with Future Ready districts. Speak Up will help district leaders collect feedback on technology and learning from their stakeholders and use that data to inform their work to improve outcomes for all students.”
More information on Speak Up is available at www.tomorrow.org/speakup/.
About Project Tomorrow
Project Tomorrow is a national education nonprofit organization driven by an altruistic mission and vision for changing the lives of children through science, math and technology education. The vision of Project Tomorrow is to ensure that today’s students are well prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders, and engaged citizens of the world. www.tomorrow.org
