JOURNAL ARTICLE REVIEW - 1

North American University

Education Department
M.Ed. in Educational Leadership
Name: Meral Duran

Date: 9/25/2016

Cite the reviewed article in APA format:

Dogan, B., & Almus, K. (2014). School Administrators Use of iPads: Impact of
Trainingand Attitudes Toward School Use. Computers in the Schools, 31(3), 233
250.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
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study. In addition, some of the questions of the pre-survey were repeated in the postsurvey 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, note-taking, 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.
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 ttest 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.
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%).
In order to understand the differences in participants responses by gender, age, years of
experience in school administration and education, highest degree attained, school
classification, and school size, six one-way ANOVA tests and one t test were conducted
for two items of the pre-survey. One of these items measured the self-reported level of
iPad skills and knowledge and the other item measured participants beliefs whether
iPads are effective tools for the school administrators regarding administrative tasks and
personal organization.
Participants were asked in the post-survey which iPad applications they found most
useful among those highlighted in the training session and posttraining resources.
Google Drive storage and sharing files was the most selected response (22.30%) to this
question (see Appendix). Other popular responses included syncing Google Calendar to
your iPad (16.55%), Dropbox for storage and sharing files (13.67%), and Go Tasks
with Google Tasks (10.07%). (See Appendix.) When school administrators were asked
in the post-survey which applications they actually used among those highlighted in the

training session and post-training resources, Google Drive storage and sharing files was
again the most selected response (23.53%), followed by syncing Google Calendar to
your iPad (20.59%), Dropbox for storage and sharing files (17.65%), and Evernote
for note taking/organizing (8.82%).
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): Prior to the training process, almost

68% of the school administrators rated their iPad skills and knowledge as intermediate to
advanced. After the training process, school administrators reported increases in their
iPad skills and knowledge. According to the results of the post-survey, nearly 80% of
school administrators considered their iPad skills and knowledge at the level of
intermediate to advanced. These results suggest that, overall, the Downloaded by
[76.31.198.76] at 18:17 03 November 2014 246 B. Dogan and K. Almus training process
had a positive effect on the development of iPad skills and knowledge of the school
administrators.
Results also indicated that applications in the educational category were the most used
types of iPad applications, followed by communication and books and reference
prior to the training. While the same trend was observed in the post-survey, the training
process seemed to have a positive impact on the use of applications in productivity and
tools categories as well. This result was expected, as iPad applications in categories of
productivity and tools were covered in the training session as well as in the resources
provided after training. Among the iPad applications highlighted during the training
process, Google Drive storage and sharing files, syncing Google Calendar to your
iPad, and Dropbox for storage and sharing files were the most used iPad applications.
To a lesser extent, Evernote for note taking/organizing and Go Tasks with Google
Tasks were also used by school administrators. This result suggests that iPads may have
a potential to be used for administrative tasks by school administrators.
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).
A majority of school administrators found the training process useful (92% with
combined categories of very useful and useful), and they also desired ongoing
training and resources on using iPads for administrative tasks and teaching. Overall, these
data suggest that providing ongoing training opportunities may help school
administrators success in using iPads for professional duties as well as implementing
iPads in the classroom.
Educators are often provided with technological tools but are given little instruction on
how these tools can be used meaningfully in the classroom. Even though teachers have
more resources available to them than ever before, they still do not receive sufficient
training on the effective use of technology to enhance learning (U.S. Department of
Education, 2004). Research suggests that professional development programs can help
teachers integrate new technologies into their instruction (Sivin-Kachala & Bialo, 2000).
Similar to teachers, school administrators effective use of technology depends on proper
training. Previous studies indicated that training has a direct effect on principals
proficiency in using hardware and software and, in turn, on their instructional and
administrative proficiency (Afshari et al., 2010; Hawkins, 2002). Further research
showed that there is a correlation between the amount of technology training principals
receive and the integration of technology in the school (Dawson & Rakes, 2003). In
conclusion, overall results of this study suggest that in order for school administrators to
be successful in using iPads for professional duties, especially for administrative tasks
and personal organization, sufficient and ongoing training is recommended. As school
administrators are seen as both the instructional and technological leaders of their
schools, receiving appropriate training would not only allow them to be efficient in
performing work-related tasks but also positively effect the successful implementation of
iPads by teachers and students.
REFLECTIONS
Students Reflections (changes to your understanding; implications for your
school/work): Administrators are role models for teachers aspect of all areas. As we are

at the early ages of the 21st century, there is a remarkable increase in the usage of
technology in schools. In our lives, technology makes our works much more easier. This
study shows that technology makes much more easier education, too. Because technology

gives different opportunities about teaching, learning and communication. The IPAD
increases the level of administrators connectivity to their school staff and members in
their personal learning network. It is easy to carry everywhere, and IPAD makes easier to
access tools to manage the principals and the teachers day to day activities for
administrators and teachers. Widespread usage of technology in the World, gives a chance
to everyone a connection to itself. As educators we should teach our students how to use
technology effectively and how they can protect themselves from the inaccurate usage of
technology. As a result, we cannot ignore technology in this ever-changing world and as
educators the thing which we need to is that prepare the new generation to this century.