Surveys
Data Collection Methods
In January, 1997, survey booklets were mailed to 248 schools selected to represent the 300+ schools of the NSN. (The total number was limited by fiscal resources; limits were placed on the number of schools selected from any single NSN member project or organization.) Separate booklets were identified for the School-Level Network Coordinator (a 13-page booklet with 47 questions, most with multiple sub-questions), a 5-page "Technical Supplement," and a 4-page "Administrator Supplement." In addition, a "Teachers Sampling Form" was mailed, requesting the rostering of two groups of teachers-up to 10 Internet-users and 10 other teachers, alphabetically by last name, beginning with a randomly selected letter of the alphabet. Once the Teachers Sampling Forms were returned, samples of 3 school-designated Internet-users and 2 other teachers were selected, with probabilities related to level of technology use, and survey booklets mailed to an NSN-designated contact person for distribution to the teachers. The booklet for the Internet-using teachers had 13 pages containing 54 questions, while the booklet for the other teachers was a little over 4 pages in length, with 15 questions. A professional survey organization at a university campus was contracted to do the data collection, followup, receipt, and data entry. Multiple mailings, followup phone-call reminders, and a promised gift incentive for Internet-using teachers and schools returning all booklets were implemented in the data collection design.
** The above is an excerpt from Becker and Ravitz (1997)
Proposal
Toward Universal Participation in the NII: Phase 2 of a National School Network Testbed. (1994). Proposal submitted to the Program on Networking infrastructure for Education, NSF 94-5, National Science Foundation. BBN Proposal P94-STD-354. April, 1994. Available [Online, PDF format]. URL http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/TB2_proposal.pdfFirst Year Reports
Becker, H. (1995). National School Network Testbed Phase 2: Baseline Survey of Testbed Participating Schools. Unpublished report. Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/Baseline_report_8_31.html.Hunter, B. (1994). Overview National School Network Testbed. [WWW Document] URL http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/overviewNSNT.html
Hunter, B. (1995b). Internetworking and educational reform: The National School Network Testbed. Paper presented at the 1995 INET Conference in Hawaii. Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/Hunter_INET95.htmlYear 2 Reports
Panel presentation. Becker, H. (1997, November). Two Years of Progress in the National School Network Schools. Presentation at TelEd'97. Austin, TX. Available: http://nsn.bbn.com/nsn_learnings/becker_teled97
/overheads_explained.htmlRavitz, J. (1997, November). What do Internet-using teachers say about their Internet use? In Two Years of Progress in the National School Network Schools. Presentation at Tel*Ed97 Austin, TX. Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/iut/iut.html
Goldman, M. (1997, November). School-Community Partnerships: Potential Hero in Today's Transformation. In Two Years of Progress in the National School Network Schools. Presentation at TelEd*97. Austin, TX. Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/school_community_partner.html
Year 3 Reports
Becker, Hank (1998).Summary of Expenditure and Sources-of-Funding Data: The NSN Year 3 Survey (1997) Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/HB/costreport.html.
Ravitz, J. (1998). Conditions that facilitate teachers' Internet use in schools with high Internet connectivity: Preliminary Findings. Proceedings of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. St. Louis, MO. February, 1998. Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/Ravitz_AECT98.htmlBecker, H. and Ravitz, J. (1997). The equity threat of promising innovations: The Internet in schools. Paper presented as part of the Internet and Equity in Education Symposium (Phillip Bowman, Chair), at the 1997 SPSSI Conference of the annual meeting of the American Psychological Asociation in Chicago, IL, August, 1997. Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/equity.html
Hunter, B. (1998). Internetworking and educational reform: Are these different subjects? Paper given at the annual meeting of the Committee on School Networking (CoSN). February, 1998. Washington, DC. Available: http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/cosn98_hunter/TOPAHunter, B. (1998). Fostering Collaborative Knowledge-Building: Lessons Learned from the National School Network Testbed. Proceedings of the Annual Telecommunications in Education (TelEd) Conference. Austin, TX. November 14-15, 1997. http://www.bie.org/Ravitz/Hunter_TelEd98.html.
"The research team wishes to thank the National School Network project at BBN in Cambridge, MA for use of their survey instrument(s) -- available online at http://nsn.bbn.com/nsn_learnings/survey.html"
In addition to providing the instruments, we are also making some of the raw descriptive data avaiable for those who might be interested. The following might be helpful in identifying individual survey items of interest -- Survey Items mapped to Questions.
The files are in Portable Document Format (PDF) format and can be read using Adobe's free Acrobat Reader. If you don't have this application, you can download it at Adobe's web site.
Internet Using Teachers
This survey effort provides data about the perceptions of Internet-using teachers in schools that have already achieved a high level of Internet connectivity. Lessons from these leading-edge schools may help others address issues of concern. We provide descriptive data focusing on conditions that teachers say would facilitate greater use by them and their students, both in terms of characteristics of the Internet and school-related conditions that might be more supportive of their efforts. Data is also provided concerning the reasons teachers give for their use of the Internet, how the Internet is used in the classroom, and the extent of perceived benefits for students.
Administrator Supplement
Internet Using Teachers Questionnaire
The administrative supplement survey was completed by someone knowledgeable of school organizational issues. It provides information about the background of the schools involved in NSN, including the types of eduational reforms taking place, the general characteristics of the school, and demographics. This survey provides a context for interpreting the other findings, including a perspective on the challenges of Internet implementation, sources of funding, and an overview of instructional and organizational practices.
School Network Coordinator
The network coordinator survey addresses school-level access to the Internet and email, and the purpose of Internet use, including the types of learning activities that are taking place, and uses of the World Wide Web by teachers and students. Additional sections address the availability of support and training for staff, the amount of teacher-to-teacher interactions concering the Internet, teacher participation in decision-making, and the development of an overall "internet culture" in the school. Next, it addresses sources of external support and the relationship of the local community to school activities. A final section concerns the extent of awareness of other NSN members and activities and the network coordinator's own role and assessment of Internet issues.
Technical Supplement
The technical supplement was directed to knowledgeable persons concerning technical issues, usually the network coordinator. It provides detailed information about the technical infrastructure at the school, including the extent and quality of Internet access, the location and use of different types of hardware and services including approaches to World Wide Web sites and the use of different types of software. It provides important information about the distribution of computers and Internet access across the school and addresses planning issues such as the financial investments that have been made and future directions that are anticiipated to build the school's technical infrastructure.
TOP
Summary: NSN schools are not a fully representative of U.S. schools as a whole. The schools in this study are different in the extent of educational reform activity taking place as well as the extent of technological infrastructure that they have been able to develop. Perhaps most importantly, they have institutional relationships with NSN member organizations that may set them apart. Furthermore, compared to US schools on the whole, they are less likely to be rural, and more likely to be in metropolitan areas. Furthermore, a greater percentage of NSN schools are in the highest socio-economic categories. However, in terms of racial distribution, NSN schools are very similar to US schools as a whole.
Created as a "testbed" to invent tools and exploit the resources of a worldwide, high-speed, pervasive digital communications network, the National School Network could not be expected to enlist as participants a fully representative sample of American schools. Merely the requirement that the schools be well-along in the process of building a digital infrastructure connecting many schoolrooms and computers to the outside world means that the schools, and perhaps their students, are "different" in some way. Nevertheless, from the outset, the NSN leadership had a goal of creating a network that, in so far as possible, reflected the great diversity of social class, ethnicity, and academic ability that constitutes the American school population. In the first part of our analysis, we examine the extent that the hoped-for diversity was accomplished.
Perhaps the outstanding characteristic of NSN schools is their affiliation with organizations whose mission includes substantial interest in and attention to educational reform. NSN schools, for example, are two to three times as likely as other schools to be involved in business partnerships or mentoring programs, four times as likely to have adopted outcomes-based education or school restructuring, and five times as likely to be a curricular magnet school. Schools that take on such programs and make the external affiliations required to carry out reform plans are often led by administrators and staffed by teachers who, as a whole, are exemplars of their profession.
Along with the NSN's requirements for desktop networking infrastructure, this press towards innovation may also have contributed to a demographic mix of students that differs in some ways from the country's as a whole. Innovating schools, for example, are more frequently found in metropolitan areas; therefore it is not surprising that more NSN schools are located in urban areas than is the case nationally (30% vs. 20%) and in suburbs (31% vs. 18%), and fewer NSN schools are in rural areas (11% vs. 33%).
On a zipcode-based measure of socioeconomic status (SES) that incorporates data on the education, income, and occupation data of all residents in the school's zipcode (not just enrolled students), 30% of NSN schools are in the highest SES category compared to only 9% of U.S. schools, and only 29% are in the "average" or "below average" categories compared to 58% nationwide. Consistent with this, NSN schools serve fewer students from poverty-level families than schools do on average. For example, the average NSN public school has 18% of its students eligible for Chapter I funding compared to 28% for the U.S. overall.
On the other hand, the racial distribution at NSN schools is hardly different at all from those at other US schools. In particular, the mean percentage of minority students at 225 NSN public schools for which we have data is 21.5%, which is in fact about 2 percentage points higher than across the U.S. NSN schools serve nearly exactly the same proportion of black and Latino students as other schools do and about twice as many students of Asian heritage (which accounts entirely for the 2 percentage point higher minority percentage mentioned above).
NSN schools are also somewhat more advanced in terms of computer technology than American schools as a whole. NSN schools have more potential in this area in that they have nearly 25% more discretionary expenditure dollars per pupil than the average public school (defined in terms of district-level budgets for non-salary items), $516 vs. $417. In terms of numbers of computers relative to the number of students enrolled, NSN high schools have only 5% more computers per capita than other US high schools, but NSN elementary and middle schools have roughly 50% more. The predominant type of computer in NSN schools is more likely to be a newer computer--a Macintosh or Windows-capable computer. And, not surprisingly, many more computers in NSN schools are networked than elsewhere.
** The above is an excerpt from Becker and Ravitz (1997) and includes reference to school demographic data from the files of Quality Education Data, a Denver market research firm.
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