Computer Technology In Schools Research Articles

Justifications for the study of computers on the curriculum: Neo‐vocational ideology veiled in progressive educational discourse

AbstractInterest in the study of computer technology in schools (often in the form of Computer Science subjects or coding initiatives) is seen to have undergone two waves of interest, one in the late 1970s/early 1980s and the other more recently since about 2010. Through a historical exploration of the rationales for the study of computer technology in schools in both the first wave and the second wave, this paper aimed to explore the various curriculum ideologies underpinning their justification. In doing so, the paper highlights the chameleon‐like nature of this change agenda in aligning with contemporary trends to advance the study of computer technology on the curriculum. The paper argues that current manifestations of the study of computer technology in schools are at odds with broader curriculum reform goals and international policies and raises questions about students' access to such knowledge.

Adopting Computer Technology to empower Rural School Learners: The Case for Katsande Rural School Library, Zimbabwe

In most countries, the introduction of computer technology in schools has seen the role of school libraries transformed. Adoption of new technologies are now seen to be enhancing school libraries’ ability to perform their mission, vision and role, that is, providing learners access to a wide range of reading material to enable them to acquire knowledge as well as ability to read books online. This paper will address the impact computer technology is having on rural school learners at Katsande Primary School. It will explain how embracing of computer technology has influenced learners concerning achieving quality education.

A Review on Application of Computers in Education Inside and Outside of Iran

This paper first presents an overview of the Digital Natives claim made by Prensky (2001) and its characteristics. Secondly, focusing on the Iranian context, the paper examines the reports of UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS, 2014), the present state of ICT integration in education in national research, and the present state of ICT integration in education in international research. Reports and comparisons attest to the fact that Iranian educators have failed to realize their high expectations despite heavy financial investment in computer technology in schools and colleges. This review also provides some words of caution about computer technology to help policy makers and educators aware of the negative side-effects of misapplication of technology, the imposition of computer technology to imitate high-source settings, and the misuse of technology and its serious and long-term consequences. Eventually, this paper concludes that if a generation misapplied or underused technology, they should not be added to the list of Prenskey’s digital natives so long as they are deprived of the qualitative and quantitative standards of high-source settings. Additionally, the impacts of technology on a generation need to be examined carefully before they are called digital.

Transfer of Computer Knowledge and Skills to the Workplace: The Perspective of Primary School Heads

The use of computer technology in schools has become a topical subject of enquiry among researchers globally. As in other countries, the government of Botswana has come up with policy on the use of computer technology in public schools in its effort to improve teaching and learning. For this initiative to be achieved, higher education institutions in the country are expected to provide knowledge and skills to school management teams and members of their teaching staff on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This descriptive and qualitative study sought to find out whether primary school heads are using the computer knowledge and skills they acquired during in-service training at the University of Botswana in their schools. Using purposive sampling, 22 participants out of 26 who had volunteered to participate in the study responded to the questionnaire about the use of computers by school heads in primary schools. The result of the study shows that while school heads are willing to use computers in their schools, they have encountered some challenges, many of which are external and therefore, beyond their control. Further revealed is that there are a few school heads that do not see the use of computers as a priority, in spite of the knowledge and skills they possess. The study recommends further research to find out from regional officers the intervention measures that may be put in place to enable school heads to effectively use computer technology in primary schools.

English

  This study examines the availability, accessibility and usability of computer as a form of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by student teachers in secondary schools. 44 out of 51 student teachers of Agriculture responded to the questionnaire. Means and percentages were used to analyze the data to establish the availability, accessibility and usability of computer technology in schools. The results showed that teachers’ computers were available in schools. The majority of the respondents were females: 38.6% had taught Agriculture in schools located in urban areas, while 31.8% had taught in rural-located schools. Half (50.0%) of the student teachers had taught for a period of eleven to twenty years while more than two-thirds had taught for less than ten years. The results revealed that student teachers were deficient in appropriate skills and knowledge for making use of available computer technology. Furthermore, the results indicated teachers have minimal knowledge and skills on computer and then learn how to use computers through in-service training, short courses and workshops. Based on the findings, the pre-service curriculum needs to be improved so that teachers can be more competent in using advanced technology to improve students’ learning. In-service courses on ICT should be provided to all teachers as a requirement to enhance teachers’ technical skills in the field.   Key words:  Computers, student-teachers, Agriculture, availability, accessibility and usability.

An interactive learning environment designed to increase the possibilities for learning and communicating about radioactivity

Information and communication technology (ICT) is a natural part of most people's everyday life, and has also been introduced in schools. Previous studies have tended to focus on issues related to competency of teachers and lack of computer technology in schools. Focus now seems to be moving towards studies that help us understand how ICT may be used to enhance students learning. This article explores the learning environment Radioactivity from the Norwegian Viten project in order to provide insights into how features of the environment may influence student learning. A characteristic of the features of Radioactivity is provided and discussed in light of a set of quality principles for digital learning resources developed by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency.

Technology use in reporting to parents of primary school children

The British Government emphasizes the involvement of family and parents in children's education. In parallel there is a rapid increase in the use of computer technology in schools. Primary school teachers are required to present parents with an end of year school report, which often represents the only real information parents receive. While the government assumes that teachers' communication with parents can improve through the use of computerised systems and report writing software, the evidence appears to point to primary schools and parents rejecting the use of technological communication as insufficiently personal and informative. The Government assumes that schools will implement highly sophisticated technology while it presumes that parents and teachers approach their communication from a level power base and equal technological ability. Thus the school systems reinforce social and class differences.

Information and Computer Technology Management Challenges in the Networked World: Implications for Libraries in Africa

The networked world is characterized by high-speed, universal access and application of information and computer technology in schools, government offices, libraries, businesses, health care facilities, and homes. Such a networked world is synonymous with the information society characterized by universal access and the ability of people to seek information, evaluate it, and use it meaningfully. The networked world, like the information society, affords an opportunity to use e-mail as the preferred communication method, use government Web portals to deliver information services to citizens, access to digital libraries from any point with a Web connection, and undertake electronic learning. The networked world generates and moves large amounts of electronic information. This poses great challenges for effective organization and management. This paper assesses the challenges of information management in the networked world and the implications for libraries and information centers in Africa.

Examining user acceptance of computer technology: an empirical study of student teachers

Abstract The use of computer technology in schools has made slow progress since the mid‐1980s even though governments have been generous in funding. It is therefore important to understand how and when teachers use computer technology in order to devise implementation strategies to encourage them. This study investigates student teachers' perceptions of computer technology in relation to their intention to use computers. The purpose is to shed light on more effective ways to motivate the use of computer technology in schools. Based on an expanded variation of the Technology Acceptance Model, 84 completed surveys of student teachers were collected at a local university in Sweden. Overall, the results indicated that (1) student teachers' perceived usefulness of computer technology had a direct significant effect on their intention to use it; (2) student teachers' perceived ease of use had only an indirect significant effect on intention to use; however, (3) student teachers' subjective norm, that is the possible influence of external expectations, did not have any direct or indirect significant effects on their intention to use computer technology. Theoretical and practical implications that follow from the results are discussed.

Social Capital and the Diffusion of Innovations Within Organizations: The Case of Computer Technology in Schools

Although the educational community has learned much about better educational practices, less is known about processes for implementing new practices. The standard model of diffusion suggests that people change perceptions about the value of an innovation through communication, and these perceptions then drive implementation. But implementation can be affected by more instrumental forces. In particular, members of a school share the common fate of the organization and affiliate with the common social system of the organization. Thus, they are more able to gain access to each others' expertise informally and are more likely to respond to social pressure to implement an innovation, regardless of their own perceptions of the value of the innovation. This article characterizes informal access to expertise and responses to social pressure as manifestations of social capital. Using longitudinal and network data in a study of the implementation of computer technology in six schools, the authors found that the effects of perceived social pressure and access to expertise through help and talk were at least as important as the effects of traditional constructs. By implication, change agents should attend to local social capital processes that are related to the implementation of educational innovations or reforms.

Does Computer Technology Improve Student Learning and Achievement? How, When, and under What Conditions?

There have been widespread claims that technology can make learning easier, more efficient, and more motivating. This article argues that ease and efficiency should not be the leading criteria for advocating and implementing computer technology in schools. The authors assert that to produce more meaningful learning, computer technologies need to be designed according to sound learning theories and pedagogy. When administrators, teachers, and parents understand that different computer technologies serve and augment different learning experiences, they can make informed judgments about which technologies are best suited to enhance student learning and achievement.

Computer Technology in Schools

This study identified computer competencies important for teachers. A Delphi panel developed a survey instrument of 67 computer competencies. Fifteen of these competencies related to networks, the Internet, and e-mail. Survey responses came from 437 technology coordinators, teacher educators, and secondary teachers. The most important computer competencies dealt with integration of computers into curricula and using computers in instruction. The use of networks and the Internet for research and the use of e-mail were rated important, but ranked 22nd and 23rd in the list of 33 competencies that were rated Important or Very Important.

Computer Course Enrollment, Home Computer Access, and Gender: Relationships to High School Students' Success with Computer Spreadsheet Use for Problem Solving in Pre-Algebra

The increasing use of computer technology in schools has brought with it concerns about equity of access to this new resource. Research has documented gender, social class, and racial inequalities in access to computers, and has linked computer access and experience to success in computer-related courses. This study examined the effects of home computer access and computer course enrollment on mathematically weak high school students' success in applying computers as a learning resource in a pre-algebra course. The course featured regular use of teacher-designed spreadsheet activities that engaged students in mathematical investigation and problem solving. Enrollment in a computer course was a significant predictor of success during students' early experiences in applying computers for mathematical problem solving. Home computer access was related to initial success for females, and the advantage of enrollment in a computer course was greater for females who had access to home computers than for those who did not. These initial advantages diminished with continued use of computers in the curricular context.

Critical Approaches to Information Technology in Librarians hip: Foundations and Applications ed. by John Buschman

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 199 notation a development of the mental capacity to understand and use a progressively abstract notion of numbers. It is based on the fact that the first numerical signs mostly signify measures, that is, specific quantities of specific commodities, thus attesting to a nonabstract number notion. Yet at the same time number signs were used for numbers of commodities that naturally did not occur in measures, for example, sheep and cattle. The book is recommended for anyone with an interest in state formation, urbanization, control mechanisms, information and commu­ nication, bookkeeping, food production and processing, as well as to archaeologists, Assyriologists, historians, and anthropologists. Wolfgang Heimpei. Dr. Heimpei. is Assyriologist in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and has a special interest in publications on the mythology, economy, and animal life of the early history of the ancient Near East. Critical Approaches to Information Technology in Librarianship: Foundations and Applications. Edited by John Buschman. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993. Pp. vii+228; notes, bibliography, index. $55.00. The past fifteen years have seen a significant reappraisal of librarianship from inside the profession. This reappraisal has led to the view that librarianship is a “science” and that librarians are actually information “scientists” or “technologists.” Such a restructuring, and some would say philosophical rethinking, has met both with acceptance and with rebellion by members of the profession (whatever they may call them­ selves). The results of this paradigm shift and its impact on members of the profession—and particularly those whom they serve—is explored in this collection of articles. John Buschman collected twelve essays from a wide range of contribu­ tors from within the library community as well as education, computer science, communications, and engineering. He organized the essays into two groups. The first section, “Foundations,” by the nonlibrarians, is intended to provide background apparatus for a critical analysis of technology. The second section, “Applications,” explores the impact of library technology on such traditional library issues as censorship, the civic role of libraries, labor issues, and the politics of economics. The “Foundations” section covers ground familiar to historians of technology. Norman Balabanian critiques various arguments on the assumed neutrality of technology; MichaelJ. Carbone describes the failed promise of computer technology in schools; Sue Curry Jansen, drawing on the work of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, describes the transformation of information and communication into commodities; computer mediation of labor and the deskilling of 200 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE workers in a digital world is the topic of Shoshana Zuboff’s essay; and Steve Slaby, an engineering professor, critiques the deification of tech­ nology without fully examining its long-term and long-range impact. It is in the “Applications” section that the portrait of the connected, networked, automated-information scientist parceling out knowledge to an information elite via the information superhighway is repainted with the critical approaches outlined in the first section. Buschman’s con­ tributors here depict the subtle and ongoing transformation of librarian from a nonpartisan caretaker of the cumulative knowledge of humanity (if such a beast ever truly existed) to an automata guarding capitalist information commodities. Buschman contributes an essay on how information technology increases censorship capabilities; Carolyn M. Gray outlines the civic role libraries have played in the United States for most of the past two centuries and argues that many factors in the information revolution are undermining that role; Michael F. Winter describes the impact of technology on all levels of labor in today’s libraries; the social and economic impact of the shift from print to electronic forms of information is the topic of James Haar’s essay. Buschman concludes the collection with a summation of the preceding essays and links the two sections. Like nearly all fields, librarianship has too often rushed into new technologies without considering their full and long-term impact. In an era of decreasing budgets and increasing costs ofjournals and books, the added (and continuing) cost burden of the automation of print resources and access to electronic sources of information needs to be carefully considered. Taken as a whole, the essays in this collection stress the democratic values oflibraries and...

Pupils and Computers

In the 1984/85 academic year, an experiment in the study and use of computer technology in schools was conducted in Sverdlovsk region. It was decided to give schoolchildren some idea of the enormous potential of computer technology and the prospects for its application in various areas of the production sector and of community life. We sought to acquaint the youngsters, albeit in broad terms, with the principles of computer design and to give them the initial skills necessary to deal with computers.