Teacher Computer Expertise and Having a Computer at Home
Many more teachers have a computer at home than have one in their classroom. (80% have a computer at home, compared to only 51% having one in
their own classroom.) The same is true for modems used for Internet access: 59% of teachers had one at home in 1998 compared to 39% having one in their classroom. Because most teachers do much of their class preparation
work at home, one would expect that teachers with home computers would also report more professional use of computers and greater computer expertise overall than those without a home computer. The truth is that while
having a computer at home does not "make" you an expert user, not
having one makes it extremely unlikely that you will consider yourself to be an expert. Only 25% of all teachers who have had a home computer for more than 10 years believe themselves to be expert on at least one computer platform. But only 3% of teachers who do not have a home computer at all give themselves that designation.
The longer the teacher has had a home computer, the more likely they are to report being an expert user of one type of computer and also the greater number of distinct computer skills they report having. For example,
teachers who have been home computer owners for more than a decade report an average of 4.8 of the seven computer skills, those with 7 to 10 years of home computer experience report 3.8 skills, the 4-6 year home users average 3.5
skills, the relatively new home computer users average 3.0 skills, and those without a home computer report only 2.1 computer skills. There is a similar, very regular relationship between years of home computer ownership and
the number of professional use criteria met by the survey responding teacher, going from 4.6 types of professional use for the longest-duration owners to 2.1 for the non-owners. Overall, the number of years of home computer
presence is correlated +.37 with both measures of computer expertise and +.32 with variety of professional uses.