Article Summary: An Exploratory Study on K-12 Teachers' Use of Technology and Multimedia in the Classroom

Martin, F., & Carr, M. L. (2015). An Exploratory Study on K-12 Teachers' Use of Technology and Multimedia in the Classroom. Journal Of Educational Technology, 12(1), 7-14.

In this article, "An  Exploratory Study on K-12 Teachers' Use of Technology and Multimedia in the Classroom," Florence Martin and Marsha Carr, professors from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Charlotte, use five different questions to survey teachers on what technology teachers use in their classrooms, how often they use technology/multimedia, how do they integrate technology/multimedia into their lessons, what tools they use to create multimedia, and where they learned to create multimedia. The terms "technology" and multimedia" can be interpreted differently to different people, so in this article they defined technology as, "the hardware that is used in the classroom," and multimedia as, "software applications," (Carr & Martin, 7).  

The survey was given to 701 practicing K-12 teachers. Of those teachers majority reported Desktop Computers as their primary source of technology, laptop computers coming in second. This article was published in 2015 only making this data 3 years old, which is surprising that Desktops were still more common than laptops. PowerPoint and YouTube were the top sources of multimedia used in the classroom reported by teachers. Majority of teachers reported that they were interested in learning how to make multimedia presentations, however there was a surprising quarter of the teachers surveyed that said they were not interested in learning. This fact makes me wonder why those teachers were thinking that way.

When it comes to using multimedia and technology in the classroom, I believe that one of the most important things for us as teachers is to be open to learning new methods of multimedia. As times change and new tools are available to us, I think that it allows for teachers to switch up from their norm. 

As I read this article, I kept asking myself these research questions to see how my responses compared to the majority of those surveyed. Most of my responses were pretty consistent to the majority, with a few exceptions. One of my exceptions being that I use a laptop computer as opposed to a desktop. Also, The main source of multimedia that I use in my classroom would be Canvas, my LMS, as compared to the main source of the majority being PowerPoint. I would be curious to see if this survey was sent out again to see now, in 2018, what the main source of multimedia used in classrooms is. I believe that there would be some new responses added to their list. 

Overall, this article provided some insightful pieces of information regarding teachers uses of technology and multimedia in the classroom. They concluded that teachers are interested in using technology and multimedia in the classroom, as well as being interested in training to improve their multimedia and technology use in their classrooms.