Technology Support: Its Depth, Breadth and Impact in America's Schools. Teaching, Learning, and Computing: 1998 National Survey Report #5.

Summary of Technology Support and Teachers’ Perceptions of Its Availability To summarize across the five elements of technology support identified in Table 1, the majority ofAmerican teachers have access to key educational technology resources like computers, printers, andfaxes. Most schools have some technology support personnel; the amount of person hours devoted totechnology support, and the background they bring to that role, varies widely. Often, this variation is theresult of specific conditions at the school site. Technology coordinators tend to provide assistance in aone-on-one format, but teachers’ access to this method of service delivery varies depending on thenumber of staff the technology coordinator must serve. Technology coordinators and others offerprofessional development programs on technology topics. However, the overall amount of time spent onprofessional development is limited, and technology topics comprise only one part of this programming.If the prevalence of teachers’ access at home to equipment and the Internet is any indication, there are fewincentives provided by schools to encourage teachers to learn to use technology. Overall, while mostteachers have some access to technology support, the amount available to them varies widely; andtechnical support is always more prevalent than instructional support for technology use.The TLC survey asked teachers to comment on the availability of each type of technology support. Wefound that teachers' impressions correspond greatly with these descriptive measures. Table 7 shows aboutone-quarter of the teachers surveyed indicated that technical support was available to them most of thetime or almost always; one-fifth of the sample (21%) felt similarly about instructional support. Less thanhalf (41%) of the teachers believed that both technical and instructional support were available to them atleast some of the times they needed it. For about 10% of the teachers, technical help was not available atall; and twice that number (20%) indicated they had no instructional help available to them.