This report presents findings from formative research conducted by Education Development Center's Center for Children and Technology (EDC/CCT) on behalf of WGBH Educational Foundation as part of an evaluation of the National Science Foundation‐funded project, Teachers' Domain: Pathways Stages II. EDC/CCT reviewed social media tool use on teacher‐oriented websites and conducted focus group interviews with PreK‐12 teachers, library and media specialists, and professional development staff in order to understand educators' attitudes towards and use of social media tools. More specifically, EDC/CCT asked:
(1) How do teachers use social media tools in professional contexts, and for what purposes?
(2) How are teachers likely to use social media tools in the near future?
A key finding of the focus group interviews was that teachers we spoke with have a common goal when they go online for professional purposes, which is to find high‐quality materials that enhance their students' learning experiences. They welcome the use of social media tools if, and only if, it helps them achieve this goal. They stressed that any social media tool, such as ratings, reviews, or user profiles, needs to be easy to use.
Focus group participants envisioned three main purposes for social media use:
- Finding appropriate rich media resources, activity ideas, and lesson plans more efficiently.
- Learning from and communicating with other educators.
- Storing, organizing, adapting and sharing rich media resources and related materials in one place.
As TD moves forward with its enhancement efforts, it should be careful to retain the features that make it so attractive to its current user base. Teachers appreciated that the site attracts a community of educators and, for this reason, were unenthusiastic about encouraging student access to social media tools on the site. Furthermore, they voiced concerns that new opportunities for teachers to upload content may result in resources of lower quality.
EDC/CCT's next steps include conducting a series of talk‐aloud sessions in order to gather feedback from educators using prototypes of the social media tools the TD team decides to develop.
