Report into Student Use of Internet reveals Weakness in School System

"The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools" by Pew Internet & American Life Project categorises how students use the internet to study and suggests how schools might integrate this better.

A Pew survey suggests that three in five US children under the age of 18 — and more than 78% of children between the ages of 12 and 17 — go online. Building on these findings, the report studied the attitudes and behaviours of Internet-using public middle and high school students in America drawn from across the country. The study gathered information from 14 gender-balanced, racially diverse focus groups of 136 students, drawn from 36 different schools, supplementing this with the stories of nearly 200 students who voluntarily submitted online essays about their use of the internet for school.

'In essence' says the report, students 'told us that the Internet helps them navigate their way through school and spend more time learning in depth about what is most important to them personally.'

It identifies five metaphors employed by students to explain how they use the Internet for school:
* The internet as virtual textbook and reference library. 'This is perhaps the most commonly used metaphor of the Internet for school—held by both students and many of their teachers alike.'
* The internet as virtual tutor and study shortcut. 'For some, this includes viewing the Internet as a mechanism to plagiarize material or otherwise cheat.'
* The internet as virtual study group.
* The internet as virtual guidance counselor.
* The internet as virtual locker, backpack, and notebook.

'Many schools and teachers have not yet recognized—much less responded to—the new ways students communicate and access information over the Internet. Students report that there is a substantial disconnect between how they use the internet for school and how they use the internet during the school day and under teacher direction,' the report continues.

Reasons given include:
* School administrators — and not teachers — set the tone for Internet use at school.
* Even inside the most well connected schools, there is wide variation in teacher policies about Internet use by students in and for class.
* While students relate examples of both engaging and poor instructional uses of the Internet assigned by their teachers, students say that the not-so-engaging uses are the more typical of their assignments.
* The single greatest barrier to internet use at school is the quality of access to the internet.
* While many students recognise the need to shelter teenagers from inappropriate material and adult-oriented commercial ads, they complain that blocking and filtering software often raise barriers to students’ legitimate educational use of the internet.
* Since not every student has access to the Internet outside of school, the vast majority of students report that their teachers do not make homework assignments that require the use of the internet.

'Students want better coordination of their out-of-school educational use of the Internet with classroom activities. They argue that this could be the key to leveraging the power of the Internet for learning,' concludes the study.

Associated Link: The Digital Disconnect:

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