Exploring the ‘digital disconnect’ between net‐savvy students and their schools

Abstract

Educational commentators have long feared a ‘digital disconnection’ between emerging generations of technology‐rich students accustomed to high levels of Internet use and their technology‐poor schools. Yet few studies have empirically examined the existence and potential implications of such a disconnect from the students' perspective. The present paper replicates Levin and Arafeh's (2002) US study which solicited online stories from students detailing how they used the Internet for school. Responses from 84 UK secondary school students show that just over half felt restricted in their Internet use at school. Unlike the original US study, the primary disconnect between UK Internet‐using students and their schools was not one of physical access but the restriction of their Internet use through school rules and content filters, firewalls and other technologies of control. Whilst some students displayed frustration and disenchantment, most gave measured and sometimes sympathetic views of their schools' less‐than‐perfect information technology provision. As such, many of our students were well aware of a digital disconnect but displayed a pragmatic acceptance rather than the outright alienation from school that some commentators would suggest.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Douglas Levin and the American Institutes for Research for their help in the planning of the project as well as their permission to replicate their original US study. Thanks also to Hannah Howells, Rachel Jurado and Lucy Parker for their work on the project.

Notes

1. The web site was promoted via a number of means. Invitations for secondary school students to submit stories were posted on Internet bulletin boards used by secondary school students (i.e. the BBC kidzone boards) and bulletin boards for teachers (i.e. the National Grid for Learning teachers' forum and the electronic newsletter hosted by NAACE—the UK organisation for school ICT teachers). Details were also included in print publications such as national newspapers' education supplements (the Times Education Supplement and the Western Mail) and magazines likely to be read by computer‐using parents and children.