Utah schools increased use of technology due to demands of COVID-19 pandemic

The Utah Education and Telehealth Network (UETN) has released the fourth edition of its Utah School Technology Inventory. Completed in collaboration with national nonprofit Connected Nation (CN), the report gives updates on technology in every school across Utah. One basic finding is that technology in the state’s schools continues to increase in response to needs created by the COVID-10 pandemic.

“We started working with Connected Nation to track technology in our schools in 2015,” said Ray Timothy, CEO and executive director of UETN. “The inventory, which is completed every other year, has consistently helped our schools identify areas that need improvement, as well as best practices.”

The 2021 inventory was completed in December and includes 80,000 new data points across 1,037 public schools. It had a 100 percent participation rate among school leadership and district-level technology directors, and focused on devices, age of hardware and software, teaching resources, and for the first time, at-home access.

Among the key findings of the study is that the number of devices per student is increasing. More than 888,800 computing devices are available to more than 675,500 Utah students. This represents about 1.32 devices per student, up from 1.19 in 2019.

Statewide, 39 percent of schools have deployed mobile computing devices on a one-to-one basis so students can take devices home. Nineteen percent of schools said the wireless networking gear used in school is newer than one year old, an improvement over the 2019 inventory, when 11 percent indicated the same response.