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Student attitudes about classroom internet use.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This article presents portraits of student attitudes and understanding of Internet use at home and school. Discursive data reveal a disconnect between social uses of the Internet outside of school and linear individual uses of the Internet for information access in school. These findings suggest classroom teachers should leverage students' savvy social uses of the Internet outside school to deepen and extend access to information and knowledge in the classroom.

Introduction

Since 1999, nearly 100 percent of public schools in the United States have been wired for Internet access (NCES, 2002). However, a 2000 National Public Radio (2000) survey reported that of 81 percent of young people (ages 10-17) who had access to the Internet at school, only 58 percent actually used it at school. A 2003 National Science Foundation survey of K-12 schools similarly found that although nearly all schools had Internet access, only 47 percent of students accessed the Internet at school (NSF, 2006). Additional research reports middle and high school students perceive a strong disconnect between how they use the Internet at home and how they use the Internet with teachers at school (Levin et al, 2002). This study qualitatively examines student perceptions and attitudes of Internet use in the classroom, in an effort to bridge the growing digital divide between home and school uses of the Internet.

Methodology

The context for this study is a conservative, middle-class Urban Public Middle School (UPMS) located in the western United States. UPMS serves 800 students in grades 6-8 with a teaching staff of 48. The student population is ethnically diverse and reflects mid to high academic achievement. A major goal of the study was to dispel or confirm the assumption that a privileged school with above-average funding, moderate level of educational technology, high parent participation and relatively low student to teacher ratio might also have a higher degree of technological literacy among the student population. Since statistics show that many of the UPMS students will eventually attend college and be educators, commercial business leaders and consumers of the future, it is important to document their attitudes and understandings to learn from their successes (and failures) with the Internet.

Another goal of this study was to unravel the complexity of individual experience and to reveal the subtle undertones of spoken language in the public school classroom. Not only is thinking inextricably linked to ways of speaking, but also embedded within language are elements of a particular worldview. Of particular importance is the discourse of young people ages 11 to 13, as research indicates they spend more time with computers and the Internet than students in other age groups (Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005). It should be noted that the aim...

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