Resources and Filters - Analysing the Digital Divide in a 1:1 Environment
Publication details
| Year: | 2015 |
| DOI: | 10.20533/iji.1742.4712.2015.0118 |
| Issued: | 2015 |
| Language: | English |
| Volume: | 8 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page: | 999 |
| End Page: | 1008 |
| Editors: | |
| Authors: | Haglind T.; Godhe A.-L.; Lindström B. |
| Type: | Journal article |
| Journal: | International Journal for Infonomics |
| Publisher: | Infonomics Society |
| Topics: | Access, inequalities and vulnerabilities |
| Sample: | Six teachers and 139 students in their first year in upper secondary school in a midsized Swedish city. The school has about 1500 students attending different programmes, both vocational programmes and higher education preparatory programmes. The school in the study is a 1:1 school, e.g. the school has provided the teachers and the students with their own school computer (a small laptop). The school has a digital infrastructure and different kinds of technology devices in some of the classrooms (e.g. projectors and document cameras). The students also have personal mobile phones and some of them use it for schoolwork both at school and at home. |
| Implications For Educators About: | Other |
| Implications For Policy Makers About: | Other |
| Other PolicyMaker Implication: | Digital divide |
| Implications For Stakeholders About: | Researchers |
Abstract
Digital literacy is a priority of the European Commission and it is a priority for schools [17]. To bridge digital divides, schools have ongoing projects implementing ICT and developing digital skills. One way of implementing the use of ICT in education is through lesson designs that integrate ICT.
The findings in this paper come from an intervention study conducted in a Swedish upper secondary school in 2013; a group of teachers designed and implemented an ICT-rich lesson design. The school have an ongoing 1:1 project i.e. every student has an individual laptop. The laptop is identified as a tool for learning in accordance to The Ecology of resource Model [10]. For this paper focus group interviews, teacher interviews and results from two student surveys were used. The results are consistent: there is a difference in frequency of use of the computer between different types of programmes, i.e. between students attending higher education preparatory programmes and vocational programmes. 34% of the students attending a higher education preparatory program answered that they use their computer at school for schoolwork every day, the corresponding percentages for the vocational programs were 3%. These results raise questions about access, use and digital divide.
Outcome
"The results show that there is a difference in accordance to what type of programme the students attend. 2013, 78% of the students attending a higher education preparatory programme bring their computer to school every day and the corresponding percentages for the vocational programmes were 26%. No group from the vocational programmes was defined as high frequency of use and no group from the higher education preparatory programs were identified as low frequency of use. Students attending a vocational programme use the school computer with lower frequency and students who attend a higher education preparatory programme use the computer with higher frequency. Students who attend a higher education preparatory programme bring their computers to school and use it as a tool for schoolwork almost every day, and they can identify the benefits of having their own school computer, they see it as a tool for school and schoolwork. They identify different areas of use and they take initiative regarding when and how to use them." (Authors, 1007)