Two interesting sources of information about student use of technology floated across the social media channels today.

Source: Mashable and onlineeducation.net

First, an infographic from Mashable about How Students use Technology. This one surveyed college students.

Second, a report commissioned by CDW about tech use in high schools.

They both say similar things: students are using technology – a lot. Most high school students use quite a bit more outside of school than in school. College students seem to be on some digital device over 9 hours a day.

We know that teens/young adults text like crazy. Neither group seems to use the tools they use to communicate with each other to communicate with their teachers. Only 14% of high school students use technology to communicate with teachers. About 90% of college students have emailed their teacher, but only 13% have contacted teachers with their cell phones. They must text each other, but rely on that old-fashioned technology of email to contact teachers.

The high school study asked students, teachers and IT staff for input. Some interesting changes in the last year include teachers identifying wireless internet as essential – does that mean a shift to allowing student-owned devices? laptops? tablets?

The number of schools currently using digital content (textbooks) is pretty low. The percent of schools evaluating using digital texts is much higher. It will be interesting to see how quickly that number goes up.