An investigation of middle school science teachers and students use of technology inside and outside of classrooms: considering whether digital natives are more technology savvy than their teachers

The purpose of the study is to investigate the popular assumption that the ‘‘digital natives’’ generation surpasses the previous ‘‘digital immigrants’’ generation in terms of their technology experiences, because they grow up with information and communication technology. The assumption presumes that teachers, the digital immigrants, are less technology savvy than the digital natives, resulting in a disconnect between students’ technology experiences inside and outside of the formal school setting. To examine the intersection of these generations and their technology experiences, this study used a mixedmethods approach to survey and compare middle school science teachers’ (n = 24) and their students’ (n = 1,060) inside–outside school technology experiences, and conducted focus group interviews to investigate any barriers that prevented them from using technology in school. The findings imply that the concept of digital natives may be misleading and that the disconnect between students’ inside–outside school technology experiences may be the result of the lack of sufficient teacher training concerning technology integration strategies. S.-K. Wang (&) H.-Y. Hsu School of Education, New York Institute of Technology, Northern Blvd, Old Westbury, PO Box 8000, New York, NY 11568-8000, USA e-mail: [email protected] H.-Y. Hsu e-mail: [email protected] T. Campbell Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, Mansfield, USA e-mail: [email protected] D. C. Coster College of Science, Utah State University, Logan, USA e-mail: [email protected] M. Longhurst School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Utah State University, Logan, USA e-mail: [email protected] 123 Education Tech Research Dev DOI 10.1007/s11423-014-9355-4 Author's personal copy