The Casio America EdTech team issues an annual Educators Survey to snapshot the latest developments and trends in the educational environment. This year, the EdTech team focused on better understanding the technological environment of the classroom and identify the chief concerns and challenges teachers face using technology on a daily basis. From the results, we wanted to share three key findings.

Finding 1: The majority of educators feel that constant forced self-exposure to technology will form tech-forward habits and lead to greater literacy.

Educators have myriad options for integrating technology into the classroom, but have very little time to train or prepare for a tech transition. Respondents on our survey consistently believe that diving right into the technology despite in-depth training will result in teachers developing creative use cases and emergent best-practices. Many respondents believe that self-discovery can be supported with knowledge-sharing to develop a practicality to the technology that might not be apparent in the theoretical training of the tool or system.

In other words, tinkering with a new tool might unearth an easier approach that even the creators of the tool might not have considered.

Finding 2: Teachers in general are challenged but not stressed by the technological options today.

Tech implementation is met as an intellectual challenge and professional opportunity. Teachers were overall more enthusiastic than anxious at the prospect of introducing new technology into the classroom. While tech doesn't appear to be a source of anxiety, based on anecdotes from the survey we saw that behavioral disruption, state-level policy changes, and school safety issues are areas of continued concern and the greatest themes of daily anxiety.

For the teachers most anxious about new technology, stressors tended to be focused around the implementation and ongoing support of the technology versus the tool or service itself, emphasizing a clear need for tech developers to prioritize training and timely issue resolution.

A common theme we have found discussing challenges with teachers is the struggle of time management given all the responsibilities placed on teachers in and out of the classroom. This—combined with a plethora of options in the market and budgetary considerations—can result in a hardship for teachers to properly evaluate and select the technology solution that fits their approach.

Finding 3: Teachers are excited to see CASIO as a partner in the classroom, but they expect increased support.

Overall, teachers gave us a fair and honest rating of four out of five stars citing ease of use, access, and price. Surprisingly, our calculators received universally positive reviews even among some of the one to three star reviews. Many of the less favorable reviews touched upon a lack of personal exposure to Casio, which are fervently trying to address.

Our added-value support for educators is a topic that respondents identified as an area we can enhance to provide greater worth as a partner in the classroom. Educators were equally split among the ways we can approach support. We have already soft-launched the new casioeducation.com with many more exciting on-demand resources, ways-to-save, question/solution examples, and curricula alignments along the way.

At the end of the day, we want all teachers to know that we're passionate about providing the best possible access to a calculation tool and supporting educators in the endeavor to grow math literacy and enthusiasm for mathematics in the United States.

The survey—to us—reveals a snapshot of resilience and adaptability within the educational community. The challenges of integration are met with thoughtful strategies and enthusiastic support for continuous professional development. There's a communal aspiration to not only keep pace with evolving pedagogical tools but to master them, ensuring that students are equipped with the necessary skills for a rapidly changing world.

We look forward to doing this again. Sign up here to learn about the next survey!

Other results on LMS and online curricula:

The 2024 Casio Educator Survey was developed and distributed directly by the Casio America, Inc. EdTech division. The survey was conducted via email with 552 responses (392 math teachers, 26 science teachers, 33 dept. chairs, 29 assistant principals, 93 other roles) across the United States. The survey was conducted between February and March of 2024. These results were written entirely by a living, breathing human. Post hero image generated by DALL-E.