JOURNAL ARTICLE REVIEW TEMPLATE

North American University

Education Department
M.Ed. in Educational Leadership / M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction
EDUC 5324 Integrating Technology into Education
Name: Yasemin YILMAZ

Date: 10/18/2015

Cite the reviewed article in APA format:

Dogan, B., & Almus, K. (2014). School Administrators Use of iPads: Impact of Training
and Attitudes Toward School Use. Computers in the Schools, 31(3), 233250.
doi:10.1080/07380569.2014.932660
INTRODUCTION
Research Questions (if research questions are not specifically mentioned, what is
the theoretical background or overarching theme):
1. What is the impact of the training process on school administrators use
of iPads for administrative tasks and personal organization in their professional
duties?
2. What is the impact of the training process on school administrators beliefs
regarding how teachers should use iPads in the classroom?
3. Are there any differences in school administrators survey responses based
on gender, age, years of experience in school administration and education,
highest degree attained, school classification, or school size?

Purpose of the research:

The purpose of this study is investigating the IPAD usage of school administrators and
the applications of IPAD in education before and after an IPAD training
METHODOLOGY
What is the methodology for the research or approach used to understand the
issue? Provide information regarding the following:

Participants: Elementary and secondary school administrators (i.e., principals

and assistant principals) working in one of the largest public charter school
systems in a southwestern state were the target population for the study.
Procedures: Study components included a pre-survey, a training session on the
effective use of iPads for administrative tasks and personal organization,
specially designed resources expanding the topics covered in the training

session, on-going support, and a post-survey.

The study was conducted February through May 2013. As researchers, we
developed two survey instruments as a mechanism to collect data, which were
administered online through the survey submission system hosted at the
universitys server. The pre-survey was administered at the beginning of the
spring 2013 semester and the post survey was given at the end of the four-month
study period.
The pre-survey also included questions measuring if and how school
administrators were currently using their iPads for their daily school-related tasks,
their beliefs about the effectiveness of iPads for administrative tasks, and if and
how school teachers should be using iPads in the classroom.
Designed as a
closure to the study, the post-survey instrument included questions intended to
measure self-reported improvements in certain tasks after completing the
training, as well as items regarding the evaluation of training session and
resources provided to school administrators during the Downloaded by
[76.31.198.76] at 18:17 03 November 2014 School Administrators Use of iPads
237 study. In addition, some of the questions of the pre-survey were repeated in
the post-survey to assess the change in responses during the study.
Training was designed based on feedback from participants and delivered
through an interactive webinar session. The training of school administrators
included topics intended to develop iPad skills and use certain workflow, notetaking, calendar, productivity, file-sharing, remote-desktop, presentation, and
screen-sharing applications covered specifically from a principals perspective.
Additional resources reinforcing the topics covered in the initial training session
were provided later to school administrators in the form of video and written
tutorials for their convenience. Technical support regarding the training topics and
study was available to participants on an ongoing basis. Researchers provided
technical support to school administrators via e-mail and telephone. Limitations
of the Study The participants in this study may not represent a wider popul
Data Collection Methods/Data Source:
Pre-survey, training session, ongoing support and post survey
Data Analysis:
Survey instruments included multiple choice and Likert-type scale items. The
survey responses were reported as frequencies. In addition, paired sample t-test
data analysis was conducted to understand the differences in the responses
between the pre- and post-surveys. A one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
test was conducted to see whether there were any differences in school
administrators responses by gender, age, years of experience in school
administration and education, highest degree attained, school classi- fication,
and school size. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software
was used to conduct the data analysis.
RESULTS

Findings or Results (or main points of the article):

The data analysis of this study is categorized into five main groups: analysis of
demographic and contextual data; impacts of the training process on school
administrators use of iPad and iPad applications; impacts of the training process on
school administrators beliefs regarding how teachers should use iPads in the classroom;
differences in participants responses by their demographic and contextual data (gender,
age, years of experience in school administration and education, highest degree
attained, school classification, and school size); and evaluation of training process.
A descriptive analysis of the demographic and contextual data for the presurvey
participants was conducted. The average age of school administrators who participated
was 34.16 years. The average years of experience in education was 8.45, and the
average years of experience as a school administrator was 2.04. The average school
size of participants was calculated as 618.50. All participants in this study owned an
iPad. While 27.45% of participants purchased their own iPads, the majority of the iPads
(72.55%) were given to school administrators by their school district. While all
participants used Microsoft Windows Vista, 7, or 8 as their computer platform, 52.94%
used the iPhone (iOS) as their mobile platform, followed by Android (37.25%),
BlackBerry OS (1.96%), and other (7.84%). The majority of participants schools were
classified as elementary, middle, and high school (K12) (62.75%), followed by
elementary and middle school (K8) (19.61%), middle and high school (612)
(9.80%), and elementary (K5) (7.84%). Participants were also asked in the pre-survey
about the highest level of education that they had attained. According to the results,
50.98% of school administrators held a bachelors degree and 49.02% held a masters
degree.
These results suggest that the overall training process in this study had a statistically
significant effect on participants beliefs about the effectiveness of iPads as a tool for
administrative tasks and personal organization.
School administrators were asked to report their opinions regarding how teachers should
be using iPads in the classroom. Virtually all participants in both the pre-survey (98.04%)
and the post-survey (97.30%) stated that they would like to see their teachers using
iPads for teaching in the classroom. When school administrators were asked whether
they thought that computers used in courses would be replaced by iPads in the future,
76.47% of the participants in pre-survey and 86.49% in post-survey responded yes.
The analysis of a question asking how school administrators would like to see their
teachers using iPads in the classroom revealed that there were slight increases between
the pre- and post-survey in the following responses: using iPad for class communication
(e-mail, messaging, contacting parents, etc.) (11.59% vs. 13.22%); making specific
applications (created by the teacher) that might help students (10.30% vs. 12.07%);
using specific applications (created by others) that might help students (15.88% vs.
16.67%); and projecting/streaming lessons/presentation to the iPad (17.60% vs.
18.39%). Alternately, there were slight decreases between pre- and postsurvey
regarding the number of responses selected for remaining items, such as, Requiring
creative assignments involving iPad use (18.88% vs. 16.67%), Referencing/sharing a
specific content item (picture, document, video, etc.) as an example (17.17% vs.
14.94%), and Encouraging taking notes (8.15% vs. 8.05%).
Neither the one-way ANOVA nor the t test revealed significant differences for the item
asking school administrators to rate their beliefs about iPads being effective tools. The
same result occurred for the item measuring school administrators self-reported levels
of iPad skills and knowledge, with the exception of school classification. There was a

significant difference on the item measuring the self-reported level of iPad skills and
knowledge by the school classification, F(3,47) = 3.23, p = 0.03, 2 = 0.17
School administrators were further solicited to evaluate the training process that they
participated in during the study. A majority (81.08%) responded that they would like to
continue receiving training and resources on the use of iPads for administrative tasks
and teaching. Furthermore, 48.65% of participants found the training session and the
resources provided afterward very useful, followed by 43.24% finding them useful,
and 8.11% finding them somewhat useful.
DISCUSSIONS
Conclusions/Implications (for your profession):
According to results, school administrators believed that iPads were effective tools for
administrative tasks and personal organization. Additionally, administrators were even
more in agreement with this idea after completing the training process. Overall, there
were increases in the frequency of school administrators use of the iPad for
administrative tasks and personal organization in all measured areas. Specifically, the
increases in task delegation, organization, calendar, document sharing,
researching through Internet, and using specific applications for my work areas were
statistically significant. Overall, these results were in alignment with Winslow et al.
(2012) in which school principals also believed that iPads provided measurable
productivity gains in school administrator tasks. Almost all school administrators prior to
or after this study reported that they would like to see their teachers using iPads for
classroom teaching. Specifically, administrators wanted to see their teachers project and
stream lessons or presentations from their iPads, use specific iPad applications that may
help students, and use their iPads for class communication. In addition, school
administrators desired to see teachers using iPads in the aforementioned areas more
after completing the training process. The majority of school administrators believed that
iPads would be replacing computers in the future. This belief was more prevalent in
school administrators who completed the training process. These results suggest that
school administrators in this study had positive views regarding the potential of iPad
current and future use in the classroom by teachers. The encouraging position of
principals regarding iPad use may contribute to the successful implementation of iPads
in the school, as principals are the instructional and technology leaders of their schools
(Dawson & Rakes, 2003; Lashway, 2002; McLeod, 2008).
REFLECTIONS
Students Reflections (changes to your understanding; implications for your
school/work):
This study shows that principals as an educational leaders can enhance the technology
usage by being a role model. Because IPADs are easy to carry everywhere it helps the
teachers and principals to reach all information in or outside classrooms. The
stakeholders improve their educational knowledge with provided technology tools and
students can have meaningful learning environment with technology. There are many
resources that all educators reach and implement those in their lesson plans. However
searching all the information when they needed might be a time consuming, many
people are using those apps or information and if they give a short training and an
ongoing support might help them to increase the willingness of the learners. For instance
if I ask my students to learn every topic that I am teaching from internet they will spend

many hours on it may not learn anything. However if I teach them in class and show
them what they can search to strengthen their skills, I will facilitate them to responsible
for their own learning. As a result according to the demands of technology in education
principals and teacher should increase adaptation of technology for education purposes
and help new generation how to use technology for effective and meaningful learning.
The students might know how to use technology in general but they dont know to
implement it in their education. Therefore we as educators take place to empower the
technology usage in our own professional lives and our students educational lives.