Please answer the following questions

My attitude toward surveys is:

1. I hate them
2. I'm allergic to them
3. They take too long to complete
4. They are a necessary evil.
5. All of the above
   
6. None of the above
7. I'm bored and getting cranky

I've spent an inordinate amount of time this weekend updating my “What Gets Measured Gets Done: A School Library Media and Technology Program Self-study Workbook" in preparation for workshops  I'll be doing for the New York SLMS Leadership  retreat next  month.  Last revised in 2001, the booklet needed some updating and this was a good excuse.  Anyone is welcome to use it or any part of it  if they'd like to do a really swell, bang-up formal library/technology program evaluation.

I also revised the "Tools" document that goes with it - sample surveys and checklists to be used for data-gathering when doing program assessments or creating long range plans. I've decided to put all the surveys I've created (that I can remember and find) into this now 53 page document. The TOC looks like this:

Surveys   
Parent survey questions    p. 2
Parent survey response summary form    p. 4
Principal survey questions    p. 5
Principal survey response summary form    p. 7
Student survey questions    p. 8
Primary student survey questions    p. 10
Student survey response summary form    p. 11
Teacher survey questions    p. 12
Teacher survey response summary form    p. 14
Program evaluation rubrics    p. 15
Inventory templates   
Budget    p. 24
Library resources    p. 25
Computer hardware    p. 26
Video and voice hardware    p. 27
Staffing    p. 28
Miscellaneous checklists   
Facilities and infrastructure    p. 29
Curriculum    p. 30
Climate    p. 31
13 point library/media program checklist    p. 32
Electronic resource checklist     p. 35

Staff survey for long-range tech planning purposes    p. 36
Media Department Year End Report     p. 42
Staff Technology Satisfaction Survey    p. 46
Mankato Survey of Professional Technology Use, Ability and Accessibility    p. 49

Yes, I should be shot.

In one of the documents I wrote: Good surveys have:

• a specific set of questions to be answered
• descriptive indicators of numerical scales
• a rapid means of compiling and reporting data

I would now add that good surveys are:

• Purposeful
• Focused
• Short
• Online
• Statistically defensible

One of the things I realized is that while I often ask respondents to identify themselves by gender and age, I've never taken the time to go back and disaggregate the data to see if gender or age made any difference in the responses. I just wasted people's time having them check the little boxes. Asking irrelevant questions is probably the biggest sin most survey makers commit.

I promise to do better in the future:

• Absolutely
• Maybe
• My intentions are good
• Like I'll remember
  

Another golden oldie

As I was transfering files, I stumbled on this that I shared in a parent newsletter in 1990...

Most educators feel students who have the greatest access to computers are the most educationally fortunate. However, Tom Snyder, an educational software developer, envisions a time when this might not be the case. As a part of a speculative timeline, he writes for a 1999 entry:

“A presidential commission has been established to study the growing inequity in computer allocation. Apparently, most computers are being used to deliver instruction to poor kids in the inner-city schools, putting these students at a clear disadvantage. All the best jobs and places in incoming college classes are going to applicants who were ‘fully teacher taught.”

from “Technology, Trends, and Gizmos: A Timeline for the ’90s and Beyond” Technology & Learning, September 1990, 92-98. 

Were you a visionary in 1990? 

If I'm not having fun...

I figure if I'm not having fun as a teacher, no one else is having fun either. - Doug

I was delighted to read the article "The Neuroscience of Joyful Education" by Judy Willis in the summer online edition of Educational Leadership. This is basically the science behind what good teachers already know - kids learn better when they are having fun, are involved, are motivated and the topic is relevant. You read the article, but one bit stood out for me:

When stress in the classroom is getting high, it is often because a lesson is overly abstract or seems irrelevant to students. Teachers can reduce this type of stress by making the lesson more personally interesting and motivating. Ideally, students should be able to answer the question, “Why are we learning about this?” at any point in a lesson.

Teachers can find valuable background materials and human interest connections in textbooks published in the 1990s, before many publishers dropped such information to make room for practice test questions. (Bold is mine - Doug.)

Is this sad or what?

One of the operative words at NECC this year seemed to be "fun." For all of Second Life's pedagogical possibilities of being the ultimate constructivist environment, what attracts me to it is that it is fun. Maybe that is what attracts me to educational technology and to libraries in the first place - both can and should be fun.

Have some fun this weekend.