Once again, at the end of the US school year, we asked for input about how teachers are using Doceri. What we’ve learned is not surprising – the more teachers use Doceri, the more integral it becomes to their classrooms.

K-12 Teacher Survey Highlights

Though the survey itself was open to everyone, these results are based on the 500 responses of K-12 teachers in North America. Of these, just over 60% began using Doceri within the past year, and just fewer than 40% have been using Doceri for 2-3 years.

There are a lot of options with Doceri! Many teachers began using Doceri primarily to control their computers remotely from their iPads, so they could move around the room and be closer to their students while they teach. In fact, 92% of survey respondents said this is true for them.

Doceri as a mobile whiteboard using a computer and projector continues to be the primary application among users. Since we incorporated screencasting in 2012 teachers can use the iPad app without connecting to a computer to create and record lessons. There is a significant advantage, however, to having access to all the pedagogical resources housed on the teacher’s desktop or laptop computer. Therefore, we are still seeing that connection through Doceri Desktop as a key driver.

What Subjects is Doceri Being Used to Teach?

No surprise, Doceri remains popular with STEM teachers because it makes it easy to hand-write lessons using the language and structure of math and science that has been difficult to create with a standard keyboard. Language arts as a core subject area is not far behind STEM. In fact, it’s elementary teachers that are the largest users of Doceri with the students for English language arts lessons. One way we’ve heard many ELA teachers using Doceri is to grade papers via screencast. They mark their comments on the student’s work while explaining verbally. This creates a video screencast that the student – and the parent – can review. What a great idea!

 How are iPads Being Used in K-12 Schools?

While we were on the subject of iPads, we wanted to find out what’s really happening in the trenches of schools around the US.

Almost two-thirds of the teachers surveyed said their schools have provided iPads either to all faculty, select faculty or for students in a 1:1 classroom. 14% of those who responded said they currently work in a 1:1 iPad classroom.

What’s really going on in the Doceri classroom?

We asked teachers whether they are using Doceri exclusively to present lessons in class, only to create screencast videos, or both. As much interest that has been generated in the flipped classroom, and creating video screencasts, the results show the overwhelming use for Doceri remains as a mobile interactive whiteboard, for presenting lessons in class.

Breaking down the data shows that 88% of teachers surveyed use Doceri to present lessons in class, and of those, nearly 30% also create Doceri screencasts. Only 12% of teachers surveyed use Doceri only for creating screencasts.

What is being presented in class?

We asked teachers about their primary use of Doceri in the classroom on a day to day basis.
We asked this question a slightly different way last year, but the results were about the same with 91% of teachers using annotation in some way this year, vs. 89% last year.

To Flip or Not to Flip?

This year, 46% of teachers answering the survey told us they had at least experimented with the flipped classroom model. That group breaks down to 8% saying at least one of their classes was fully flipped, 17% saying they had used flipped classroom techniques but did not fully flip any of their classes and 16% who said they had experimented with the flipped classroom approach. In addition, 41% said they are interested in flipping their classrooms but haven’t tried it yet and 13% said they are not interested in flipping their classrooms.

How are Screencast Videos Made Available to Students?

We asked those teachers who create Doceri screencast videos how they make them available for students and parents to view. The answers spread across the spectrum of possibility – which makes us realize that we were ‘right on’ when we decided not to lock Doceri users into uploading their work to a proprietary website for viewing. Doceri teachers clearly want control over whether their work is public or private, and want to choose the best way for their students and their parents to view their videos.

Sending the Whiteboard Home

In addition to videos, many teachers use Doceri’s PDF and Image export to ‘send the whiteboard home’ with their students. Of those who said they use this technique, social media was not a primary choice, with Twitter, Facebook and Google+ combined accounting for only 4%. Use of email was more prevalent than with screencast videos – presumably because the file size for images and PDF files is smaller than for videos.

What do Teachers Feel are the Advantages of Doceri?

We are always so thrilled to read what teachers have to say about Doceri, and use the Wordle.net tag cloud create to see a visual of all the comments, which you see below. In addition to the open comments, we asked teachers in the survey if they agreed with these statements, if they disagreed, or if they hadn’t had this experience.

• Using Doceri, I can move around among my students while I teach rather than being tied to the whiteboard at the front of the room - 92% agreed
• I am able to create engaging lessons with Doceri’s annotation tools - 73% agreed
• My Doceri screencasts help my students because they can review the material as often as they need to - 48% agreed; 51% had not had this experience
• Doceri has changed the way I teach - 71% agreed