Librarians Beat Teachers and Principals in Social Networking

In my post-Thanksgiving tryptophan haze, I’m still gobblin’ up the data in this most amazing study: A Survey of K-12 Educators on Social Networking and Content-Sharing Tools conducted by edWeb.net, MCH and MMS Education.

When they queried different groups within the school community, they found that librarians were the most likely to join a social network (70%), followed by teachers at 62%, and then by principals at 54%.

Some specific observations the report makes:

• Librarians are the most positive about the value of social networking in education, but express frustration with the blocking of access to websites by school districts.
• Principals have some reservations about social networking and feel behind in the technology, but accept that it is the future.
• Teachers see how students use the technology every day and believe they will need it for success in life, but teachers feel
  they have very little time and some reservations about their privacy. 

In addition, the study finds that many educators recognize they are behind the times in terms of technology… their students communicate with these tools and educators need to learn how to integrate social networking and content-sharing tools into teaching.