Session Information
Contribution
The Lisbon European Summit in March 2000 set a new strategic goal for the Union for the new decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustaining economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion (Presidency Conclusions: European Council, 2000, para 5). However, as Venezky and Charles (2002) pointed out in their evaluation for OECD of ICT initiatives across European schools, there are major problems in implementing new school curricula to begin to meet this goal, and equally difficult challenges in identifying statistical indicators that might be capable of detecting the effective implementation of new pedagogies, particularly where these are presumed to enhance student-centred, problem-solving learning. The present study adopts an approach that tackles one of the issues raised by Venezky and Charles, by attempting to look closely at both in-school and out-of-school use of new technologies, and the impact of these very different contexts on learning.
The research reported in this paper is part of a government funded evaluation that investigated the place of social networking (commonly referred to as Web2) technologies in the lives of 1600 teenage school students from a national sample of 15 schools. Many recent UK reports, for example the Demos report (Green, H. and Hannon, C., 2007), make confident assertions about the nature of young people’s Internet activity, but are in reality based on relatively small and potentially unreliable samples. The study reported here attempted to reduce this problem by using a stratified random sample of schools, a relatively large population of learners, and a computer-based survey that was administered with a researcher present who ensured that the respondents were clear about the meaning of key terms such as ‘blog’, ‘social network’, and ‘VLE’.
The survey provided data on the computer and Internet use of boys and girls aged 13 and 15, both in and out of school. Overall, we found that, while social networking and Web2 activities were important in any students’ lives, they were much less dominant in the lives of boys than girls, were are as yet having little impact on school learning.
Method
The main data instrument was a government-commissioned national online survey investigating school students' use of computers and Web2.0 technologies (social networking, music and picture sharing, collaborative gaming, podcasting, wiki construction, etc.), both in and out of school. Participants were 1600 13-15 year old students from a national stratified random sample of 15 schools, and the survey was administered to groups in class, with an introduction by and support from a 'guide', who ensured that group members had terms such as 'wiki', 'podcast' or 'blog' explained to them. Data trends were examined using a multivariate statistical approach, but quantitative findings were also enriched by data from 50 focus group discussions that were recorded with a subset of the surveyed population.
Expected Outcomes
The survey provided data on the computer and Internet use of 1600 boys and girls aged 13-15, both in and out of school. The use of social networking sites by these students was extensive. 73% of respondents had at least one account, and 61% claimed to have used one in the past seven days. This was a highly gendered activity, with more girls reporting doing this out of school than boys. In addition to social networking, other popular ‘Web2’ activities included picture sharing, video sharing and music downloading: over 50% of respondents had completed activities ‘in the last week’, with a large in-school and out-of-school discrepancy of use for these types of activity. Girls downloaded more music than boys, uploaded and edited more photos and did more creating or writing to a blog. Email and IM were popular, with 90% of respondents using email or IM out of school. Issues of security were important to these students: there was significant traffic of messages from people “I don’t know” with 75% of students reporting receipt of such messages through IM and 68% through Email at some point. Older girls reported much greater rates than boys of receiving messages from people they did not know on instant messaging.
Overall, we found that, while social networking and Web2 activities are important in many students’ lives, they were much less dominant in the lives of boys than girls, and are as yet having little impact on school learning.
References
European Council (2000) Presidency Conclusions: European Council, 2000, para 5. http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressdata/en/ec/00100-r1.en0.htm Accessed 20 February 2008. Green, H. and Hannon, C. (2007), TheirSpace: Education for a digital generation. London: Demos. Venezky, RL and David, C. (2002) 'Quo Vadis? The Transformation of Schooling in a Networked World', Paper for the OECD/CERI Peabody College seminar, 25-26 March 2002, Vanderbilt University.
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