MSDE measured technology proficiency of all seventh grade students, teachers, and school-based administrators. The purpose of the initiative was to gain a better understanding of how technology is used in the classroom, determine the professional development needs of educators, and inform State and local policy and practice.

The project supports the objectives of the Maryland Educational Technology Plan for the New Millennium: 2007-2012 and is intended to help schools and districts improve access to and use of technology for students so they can acquire the skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace. The data also will be used by MSDE to report to the U.S. Department of Education the numbers of students, teachers (including library media specialists), and school-based administrators that are technology literate, in compliance with federal requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick said the initiative will prove to be an important focal point for the state’s educational programs. “The measurements provide an indicator of how well our students, teachers, and administrators understand and can use technology, and are valuable in helping the leadership in school systems respond appropriately to district needs,” she said. “Our students must be highly engaged in the classroom and attain the 21st century skills necessary for their future.”

Student Measure

In December and January of the 2008-09 school year, 59,303 Maryland seventh grade students completed the Maryland Measure of Student Technology Literacy online, administered by Learning.com, a provider of Web-delivered curriculum and assessment.

Supported by a federally-funded Title II-D Enhancing Education through Technology competitive grant, the Maryland Technology Literacy Consortium—a partnership of all 24 local school systems and MSDE—selected Learning.com and worked with the company to administer the measurement.

The measurement uses a combination of multiple choice and interactive performance-based items to assess student skill levels on concepts and strategies based on the technology standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The Maryland Technology Literacy Standards for Students, accepted by the Maryland State Board of Education in 2007, are aligned to the ISTE standards.

Baseline data from this measure show 50 percent of Maryland seventh graders are technology proficient, meaning they can use the computer in various education-related settings. About 86 percent of the students also responded to additional survey questions, added at the request of local school systems to provide an understanding of how students use technologies both in and out of school. Approximately 94 percent of students have a computer at home, and 95 percent of those computers are connected to the Internet. About 42 percent of students responded that they use a computer at home more than three hours per week, while only about 6 percent indicated that they spend that much time using technology in school.

Activities in which students most often engage at home are gaming, followed by social networking (e.g. Facebook or MySpace), and email. At school, student computer use more often was for research (25 percent), followed by test-taking (20 percent).

Viewed as an instructional tool rather than an assessment, the purpose of the student measurement is not for individual student accountability, but rather to gauge overall technology literacy of Maryland students.

Teachers and Administrators

Between March and May of this year Maryland classroom teachers (including library media specialists), and school-based administrators were asked to complete a technology literacy measurement. Two separate tools were developed by a consortia of local school district representatives, in collaboration with MSDE, through Title II-D grants.

The Maryland Teacher Technology Inventory was designed to assist in determining the technology knowledge and skills of Maryland classroom teachers and is based on the Maryland Teacher Technology Standards. More than 26,000 teachers responded to the measurement, which provides short scenarios for which they needed to select the most appropriate response.

In addition, over 2,400 school-based administrators responded to the Maryland School Administrator Technology Inventory, a self-rating tool to help determine their technology literacy. The questions are based on the Maryland Technology Standards for School Administrators and asked educators reflect on their own knowledge and practice, and on their leadership related to educational technology.

Both tools allowed individual teachers and administrators to download a reflection sheet to consider their own technology proficiency and develop a plan for personalized professional development based on Maryland technology standards. Local school systems will receive results of the measurements to use in their strategic planning, but scores will not be linked with individual teachers or administrators.

The data found that 89 percent of classroom teachers and 98 percent of library media specialists were technology proficient, while 84 percent of principals and 71 percent of assistant principals were similarly proficient. However, there was just a 46 percent response rate from teachers and library media specialists, and a 64 percent response rate from administrators.