The Digital Lives of U.S. Teachers: A Research Synthesis and Trends to Watch

Abstract

The United States Department of Education's 2010 National Educational Technology Plan called for educators to transform learning and teaching with digital resources and tools. However, classroom teachers are especially challenged by information seeking, use, and management as well as by increased pressure to provide accountability data and serve diverse learners. In response to these challenges, the digital library community, spurred to improve science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM) education, is developing solutions that include metadata and paradata schema; highly curated, centralized collections; and integrated planning, management, and assessment tools. Still, local and external factors can hinder change and must be considered in design and implementation. In this paper, we integrate an extensive collection of research relating to educators' digital "lives," or processes; provide an overview of very recent developments in digital library technology that pose possible solutions; and illustrate essential facilitating conditions, including the vital role of the teacher librarian.