Happy #ThrowbackThursday! Each Thursday we’ll spotlight past Project Tomorrow events, presentations, data, and more. In honor of our upcoming Congressional Briefing, this week we’re focusing on last year’s briefing, where we released our Speak Up 2013 data for K-12 students. Keep reading to learn more about the event and data from our 2013 student report, “The New Digital Learning Playbook: Understanding the Spectrum of Students’ Activities and Aspirations”:
On April 8, 2014 Project Tomorrow released the report “The New Digital Learning Playbook: Understanding the Spectrum of Students’ Activities and Aspirations” at a Congressional Briefing held in Washington, DC and for the first time, online in a special live stream of the event. Julie Evans, Project Tomorrow CEO, discussed selected student national findings from the Speak Up 2013 report and moderated a panel discussion with students who shared their insights and experiences with digital learning.
Key Findings from last year’s report included:
- Girls outpace boys in use of many digital tools for learning, particularly the socially based tools like texting and collaborating online.
- 29 percent of high school boys say that they are very interested in a job or career in a STEM field, but only 19 percent of girls say the same. This gap remains even among girls and boys who self-assess their technology skills as advanced. During the seven years that the Speak Up surveys have polled high school students on their interest in STEM fields, the level of student interest has not increased significantly.
- Students continue to report less regular interaction with traditional social networking sites like Facebook, while 44 percent of students in grades 6-12 report using social media apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Vine. Nearly one-third of high school students reported using Twitter.
