If you’re very opinionated about technology and the discussions surrounding it, you might want to look into taking the Speak Up 2009 survey.

Speak Up is a program that polls students, teachers, and parents about their views on technology, and specifically, what roles technology should play in education and in the classroom today. These issues are closely related to the “cell phones in class debate” going on at Nova right now. Speak Up is one of the few survey programs that bothers to ask the students’ opinions, so take advantage of that.

The survey for high school students (9th to 12th graders) is 34 questions long and asks questions about things such as your access to computers and the Internet, what sort of technology you typically use for schoolwork, and what you wish you had access to at school. Different surveys are available for teachers, parents, and administrators, and surveys are also available in Spanish.

To enter the survey, you need the school password, “nova” (all lowercase, case sensitive). If you’re interested in taking the Speak Up 2009 survey, follow the links at the bottom of this article!

The survey is open until December 18, 2009, after which a follow-up article will be coming to the Nova Knows technology section with a summary of our school’s results. Even if you don’t have reason to help the Speak Up organization, you can take the survey for fun, and to help paint a better portrait of where views on technology lay in the Nova community.

Take the survey here: http://www.speakup4schools.org/speakup2009/
View a .pdf file of the questions here: http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/speakup_surveys.html