School children's use of computers and teachers' education in computer ergonomics

A national survey to investigate the education of teachers in computer-related ergonomics was carried out by postal questionnaire. The use of computers by primary school children (age 4-12 years) was also investigated. Data were collected from a random sample of 25% (n = 830) of primary schools in the Republic of Ireland. Questionnaires (n = 1863) were returned from 416 schools giving a response rate of 50.1%. Almost all schools (99.7%) had computers for children's use. The computers were most often (69.8%) used in the classroom. The majority (56.3%) of children worked in pairs. Most teachers (89.6%) had received computer training, but few (17.6%) had received ergonomics information during the training. Respondents were not satisfied with their current knowledge of ergonomics. Over 90% stated that they would like to receive further information by printed format or during a training course, rather than by computer (web or CD-ROM).     

Boys’ and girls’ ICT beliefs: Do teachers matter?

This exploratory study took place in the context of middle school information science in Greece, to examine possible relations between boys’ and girls’: value and efficacy beliefs about computers and information science; perceived parental support; perceived teacher expectations; and perceptions of the nature of information science instruction. The participants of the study were 301 (135 male and 166 female) students who responded to a self-report questionnaire. Regression analysis showed that perceived teacher expectations were positively associated with students’ ability beliefs, perceptions of learning activities as creative and personally meaningful was a significant predictor of students’ interest in computing, and perceived parental support was related to both value and efficacy beliefs. Unlike previous research, the findings of this study did not support the conclusion that boys have more positive ICT self-efficacy and value beliefs than girls. They indicated however, that boys’ and girls’ beliefs are differentially affected by parents, teachers, and school IS instruction.     

Gender differences in computer-related attitudes and behavior: A meta-analysis

A meta-analysis of studies of gender differences in computer-related attitudes and behavior using US and Canadian participants found that men and boys exhibited greater sex-role stereotyping of computers, higher computer self-efficacy, and more positive affect about computers than did women and girls. These effect sizes varied as a function of study population — adult, college, high school, and grammar school — with the largest differences generally found for high school students. Gender differences in beliefs about computers approached zero and did not vary by study population. Gender differences in computer-related behaviors were small and did not differ as a function of study population. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Introducing pocket PCs in schools: Attitudes and beliefs in the first year

As more schools adopt the use of handheld computers in their classrooms, research that systematically tracks their introduction is essential in order to develop a model for successful implementation leading to improved classroom teaching. This research report seeks to explore the realities of introducing and integrating handheld computers into five Victorian schools in Australia where the initiative is owned and funded by the schools themselves. The research focused on how teachers’ attitudes and beliefs evolved over about 6–7 months of implementing the pocket PCs in their teaching. The findings indicated that the effect of pocket PCs on the attitudes of primary teachers were mixed while that on the secondary teachers was uncertainty. However, both primary and secondary teachers shared similar beliefs in the motivational aspect of the technology on student engagement and its capacity to cater for weaker students, particularly in English, but not for the more academic students. Issues such as leadership roles, the time-consuming nature of lesson preparation, the need to integrate higher-order thinking tasks with pocket PC usage and personal ownership for successful integration of the technology are discussed.     

Computer attitudes of primary and secondary students in South Africa

This study investigated computer attitudes of 240 students from eight primary and secondary schools in South Africa. The student population of six of the eight schools that participated in the study can be characterised as middle or upper class. Two schools were from South African townships. All eight schools used computers for educational purposes, although the availability and use of the computers differed. The research question of the study was whether differences in computer attitude could be found between boys and girls, and to what extent these differences could be explained by student, school, and environment characteristics. In contrast to most studies on gender differences and computer attitudes, no gender differences in computer attitudes were found. However, this study showed differences in computer attitudes between students from the upper/middle class schools and students from the township schools. The latter showed a less positive attitude towards computers, but more interest in computer-related careers compared with the students in the upper/middle class schools. The study found that computer access and experience, which was significantly lower in the township schools, was also related to computer attitude.     

Exploring the link between teachers’ educational belief profiles and different types of computer use in the classroom

The purpose of the study reported in this article was to analyse the relationship between teachers’ educational beliefs and their typical approach to computer use in the classroom. In this context, the question arises whether particular profiles of teachers can be distinguished based on their beliefs about good education. A survey of 574 elementary school teachers was conducted that focused both on teachers’ traditional or constructivist beliefs about education and on different types of computer use: ‘computers as an information tool’, ‘computers as a learning tool’ and ‘basic computers skills’. Cluster analysis resulted in four distinct teacher profiles, reflecting relatively homogeneous scale scores, based on varying levels of traditional and constructivist beliefs teachers hold about education. Overall results indicate that teachers with relatively strong constructivist beliefs who also have strong traditional beliefs report a higher frequency of computer use. In addition, results point at a specific relationship between teachers’ belief profiles and how computers are used in the classroom. Implications for the role of educational beliefs in supporting teachers to integrate ICT in the classroom are discussed.     

Teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their use of digital media in classrooms: Sharpening the focus of the ‘will, skill, tool’ model and integrating teachers’ constructivist orientations

The ‘will, skill, tool’ model is a well-established theoretical framework that elucidates the conditions under which teachers are most likely to employ information and communication technologies (ICT) in the classroom. Past studies have shown that these three factors explain a very high degree of variance in the frequency of classroom ICT use. The present study replicates past findings using a different set of measures and hones in on possible subfactors. Furthermore, the study examines teacher affiliation for constructivist-style teaching, which is often considered to facilitate the pedagogical use of digital media. The study’s survey of 357 Swiss secondary school teachers reveals significant positive correlations between will, skill, and tool variables and the combined frequency and diversity of technology use in teaching. A multiple linear regression model was used to identify relevant subfactors. Five factors account for a total of 60% of the explained variance in the intensity of classroom ICT use. Computer and Internet applications are more often used by teachers in the classroom when: (1) teachers consider themselves to be more competent in using ICT for teaching; (2) more computers are readily available; (3) the teacher is a form teacher and responsible for the class; (4) the teacher is more convinced that computers improve student learning; and (5) the teacher more often employs constructivist forms of teaching and learning. The impact of constructivist teaching was small, however.     

Gender issues in technology use: Perceived social support,computer self-efficacy and value beliefs,and computer use beyond school

In this study, we examined relations between outside school computer experiences, perceived social support for using computers, and self-efficacy and value beliefs about computer learning for 340 Greek elementary school boys and girls. Participants responded to a questionnaire about their access to computer use outside school (e.g. frequency of use and nature of activities), perceived parental and peer support, and computer self-efficacy and value beliefs. Although almost all students used computers outside school, there were significant gender differences in frequency and type of computer use. Also, boys reported more perceived support from their parents and peers to use computers and more positive computer self-efficacy and value beliefs than girls. Parental support and, to a lesser extent, peer support were the factors more strongly associated with boys’ and girls’ computer self-efficacy and value beliefs, while home computer access was not related to students’ motivation. Our findings highlight the role of socialization in the gender gap in computing and the need for research and educational interventions that focus on the social practices that communicate gendered expectations to young boys and girls.     

Individual characteristics and computer self-efficacy in secondary education teachers to integrate technology in educational practice

The development of modern technologies and their extension to every domain of our daily life nowadays is an indisputable fact. The widespread use of computers renders training in these technologies necessary. Consequently, computers were soon introduced into the Greek educational system. Factors related to the nature of the teacher’s personality, such as computer self-efficacy, self-concept, attitudes, motivation and needs are considered crucial to the integration and development of modern technologies in education. This study examines the relationship between individual characteristics of secondary school teachers and computer self-efficacy as well as teacher prospects with regard to modern technologies.     

Board’s IQ: What makes a board smart?

The amount of investment that has been made in interactive whiteboards (IWB) in the Turkish educational system during the past several years is quite striking. This investment is part of a plan to integrate information and communication technologies (ICT) into the Turkish educational system, with the goal of increasing the qualitative and quantitative aspects of schooling. Prior to IWB investments, hundreds of thousands of computers, projectors, and printers were distributed to schools in efforts to raise a generation able to respond to the demands of the 21st century. In addition, 98% of secondary school students and 93% of primary school students were provided with Internet access via ADSL. The aim of this study is to analyze the emerging trend of smart board investment in Turkish primary and secondary schools, with consideration of problems that hinder the effective use of IWBs in classrooms as compared to previous ICT integration efforts by the Ministry of National Education. The research is designed as an evaluative case study. The required data are collected through online questionnaires, teacher and pupil interviews, and document searches from teachers and students from various Turkish primary and secondary schools. It is not surprising that the factors hindering the use of IWBs in education are similar to the inhibiting factors in previous ICT integration projects. The findings show that when the needs for in-service training, digital education materials, support, maintenance, and administration are not addressed, educational ICT is unlikely to deliver the expected results.     

A cyberphilosophical issue in education: Unethical computer using behavior – The case of prospective teachers

Increased use of technology for instructional purposes has caused some debates about ethical and/or moral use of computers. All teachers, as practitioners of ICT in learning settings, must feel responsible for educating students on “what is right and what is wrong?” of computer use. This study aimed to determine prospective teachers’ unethical computer using behaviors at a faculty of education in Turkey. The results showed that the participating prospective teachers are sensitive to ethical computer use. However, the general mean of the surveys is above the average by a small degree that makes the participants’ judgments of ethical use inconsiderable. It can be concluded that they undermine ethical computer use. Science teachers and computer education teachers’ judgments were less ethical than those of classroom teachers and social sciences teachers. The results also revealed that female candidate teachers were more concerned about ethical issues and that prospective teachers who had up to five years of PC experience considered ethical computer use more than those with five years and beyond. After the survey analysis, the study was completed with qualitative data gathered from semi-structured interviews with nine students.     

A longitudinal study of the use of student-owned portable computers in a secondary school

During the 1990s a significant development in computer technology has been the emergence of low-cost, high-powered portable computers. This has encouraged a number of schools to experiment with providing students with portable computers for use at both school and home. The arguments for using portable computers in schools are compelling but the field of educational technology is littered with discarded technologies which had equally compelling support. This paper presents the main findings of a three year evaluative study into the implementation of a student-owned portable computer programme by a secondary school in Perth, Western Australia. Findings of a follow-up study four years later are also included. The results were generally disappointing with severe underutilisation of the computers by most students most of the time. However, a number of teachers facilitated substantial use of the computers and in the third year the computers appeared to be used more regularly for a wider range of tasks.     

Podcasting: A new technological tool to facilitate good practice in higher education

The literature has frequently highlighted the usefulness of podcasting in higher education; however, there is an important gap between the theory on good practice in higher education and empirical studies about podcasting. With this in mind, we carried out an empirical study on an undergraduate degree course in Information Systems Management. The study consisted of the creation and broadcast of 13 podcasts, distributed over four months in which ninety distance students took part. The analysis follows the suggestions proposed in previous literature about the evaluation of technologies in a university learning environment. The findings, discussed within the framework of principles for good practice in higher education, suggest some interesting issues in distance courses, such as: (1) podcasting is a powerful tool as a complement to the traditional resources on a course, but not a substitute for them; (2) the characteristics of podcasting increase the impression of permanent contact between students and teachers, increasing students’ motivation; (3) the use of podcasting allows for a diverse range of student skills and learning methods. Other secondary findings are discussed and some suggestions for future research are proposed at the end of this paper.     

University students’ notebook computer use

Recent evidence suggests that university students are self-reporting experiencing musculoskeletal discomfort with computer use similar to levels reported by adult workers. The objective of this study was to determine how university students use notebook computers and to determine what ergonomic strategies might be effective in reducing self-reported musculoskeletal discomfort in this population. Two hundred and eighty-nine university students randomly assigned to one of three towers by the university's Office of Housing participated in this study. The results of this investigation showed a significant reduction in self-reported notebook computer-related discomfort from pre- and post-survey in participants who received notebook computer accessories and in those who received accessories and participatory ergonomics training. A significant increase in post-survey rest breaks was seen. There was a significant correlation between self-reported computer usage and the amount measured using computer usage software (odometer). More research is needed however to determine the most effective ergonomics intervention for university students.     

Little experience with ICT: Are they really the Net Generation student-teachers?

The aim of this study is to investigate the complexity of past experiences with ICT, pedagogical beliefs, and attitude toward ICT in education that the Net Generation student teachers have about their intention to teach and learn with technology. This study has a particular focus on their lived experiences as school students where ICT related policies were actively enacted in Korea and Singapore for the past decade. To unpack the profile of the Net Generation student teachers, we selected six factors (i.e., past ICT experiences, personal computer use, constructivist belief, computer efficacy, attitude toward computer in education, and prospective computer use) related to ICT use and examined them empirically with 225 first- or second-year student teachers in Korea and Singapore. Overall, our findings indicate that student teachers in both countries tend to hold fairly constructivist beliefs and positive computer efficacy and attitude; attributes that teacher educators can tap on. Student teachers' perceptions about their use of computers for personal purposes and their past experiences with ICT were not relatively high compared to the other variables examined. This study also provides empirical evidence that students teachers who hold constructivist beliefs, have strong computer efficacy, and show positive attitudes toward computers in education are more interested in using computers in future teaching practices. As a conclusion, we argue that the profile of the Net Generation student teachers shows a more heterogeneous composition than we initially expected, and that teacher educators need to be cautious about making generational assumptions solely based on the structural and technological changes.     

Gender differences in computer attitudes: Does the school matter?

In most western countries, the participation of females in ICT professional careers is not only low but is also still falling [Anderson, N., Lankhear, C., Timms, C., & Courtney, L. (in press). Because it’s boring, irrelevant and I don’t like computers’: Why high school girls avoid professionally-oriented ICT subjects. Computers & Education.]. Policy makers as well as researchers often assume that the interest of girls in computing and ICT-professions could be increased at school. For example, female teachers who are confident ICT-users, are expected to act as positive role models for girls. However, because most of the research on gender and computing has been focussing on the influence of none-school related factors, there is little empirical evidence that schools or teachers are able to influence girls’ attitude toward ICT. Using the data of a Dutch large-scale survey on ICT use in primary education (almost 4000 grade 5 students), this study explores the influence of both none-school related factors and school related factors on students’ computer attitude. Although the between-school variance of girls’ computer attitude is higher than that of boys’ computer attitude, multilevel analyses show that most of the variance in computer attitude is explained by none-school related student factors. Two school related factors turned out to have a small positive effect on the computer attitude of girls: a teacher-centred pedagogical approach and the computer experience of female teachers.     

The study on integrating WebQuest with mobile learning for environmental education

This study is to demonstrate the impact of different teaching strategies on the learning performance of environmental education using quantitative methods. Students learned about resource recycling and classification through an instructional website based on the teaching tool of WebQuest. There were 103 sixth-grade students participating in this study and broken down into three groups: traditional instruction, traditional instruction with WebQuest and WebQuest instruction with outdoors. The major contribution of this study is the introduction of WebQuest into the outdoor instruction. The results of this study show that using WebQuest in outdoor instruction influences students’ learning performance positively. Two other interesting results are: (1) when WebQuest was used in real situations, students could acquire more knowledge and experiences, and (2) in the learning activity of the experiment, the students accomplished different learning tasks and expressed their own opinions and perspectives, which could foster their critical thinking skills. On the other hands, the students in outdoor situation could be positive to participate in learning activity; furthermore, they could ponder the learning contents by observing the real context and then they began to classify/categorize the resources. These findings will contribute to the development of teaching and learning for government, schools and teachers; for instance, teachers act as assistants or tutors and provide students with others public network resources, including PDAs, smartphones, tablet personal computers or the Internet, to improve their learning in outdoor learning environments, such as campus, museums or zoos.     

Researching instructional use and the technology acceptation of learning management systems by secondary school teachers

The aim of this large-scale study was to understand the technology acceptation of learning management systems (LMS) by secondary school teachers and to investigate the instructional use of LMS, distinguishing between informational use and communicational use. The predictive model further includes: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, personal innovativeness in the domain of information technology, experience and internal ICT support at school level. Data were collected from 505 Flemish secondary school teachers. After performing satisfactory reliability and validity checks, the study was able to support all relationships among the 9 variables. Informational use was found to be a precursor for communicational use, perceived ease of use of the LMS is the strongest predictor in LMS-acceptation. Internal ICT support has a direct effect on the informational use of the LMS and on subjective norm. Implications stress that secondary school managers in education should take into account the importance of a teachers’ efforts and performance perceptions and the direct and indirect impact of internal ICT support on LMS adoption.     

Computer use and musculoskeletal symptoms among undergraduate university students

The use of computers has been shown to have the potential for detrimental effects on the musculoskeletal system. Previous research has identified risk factors for computer-related musculoskeletal symptoms (MSS) in the workforce, but the focus of investigation on university students is comparatively recent. There appears to be a relative paucity of research into computer-related MSS in European universities and none to date in Ireland. The primary aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of computer-related MSS in a cohort of undergraduate university students in Ireland. The cross-sectional study design involved a questionnaire of two parts. Part A was a questionnaire adapted from previously used questionnaires and included questions relating to demographic information regarding age, gender, year of study, hand dominance and details of computer use. Part B was a modified (to include only computer-related symptoms) Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire. A total of 312 Health Sciences students were surveyed and 241 responded, giving an overall response rate of 76.9%. All students used a computer, with 95.4% using a laptop. Although the reported duration of computer use was quite low, the prevalence of computer-related MSS was high (52.8%). Increased prevalence of MSS was significantly associated with year of college, average daily laptop use and right hand dominance. A considerable proportion of students reported that MSS impacted on their work (18.3%) and leisure activities (23.6%) and furthermore 17.1% sought medical attention. The current study suggests that further research should be carried out on students from other disciplines and on students in other European universities to facilitate a greater understanding of the risk factors for computer-related MSS in undergraduate students.     

A multidimensional approach to determinants of computer use in primary education: teacher and school characteristics

The central aim of this study was to test a model that integrates determinants of educational computer use. In particular, the article examines teacher and school characteristics that are associated with different types of computer use by primary school teachers. A survey was set up, involving 527 teachers from 68 primary schools in Flanders. A separate questionnaire was administered to information and communication technology (ICT) coordinators from the same schools to gather additional information about cultural and contextual school characteristics. The combined impact of both teacher and school characteristics was explored through a multilevel analysis. Besides the importance of school characteristics, the results reveal differential effects of specific characteristics on specific types of computer use. Cultural school characteristics for instance, such as the schools’ openness to change and the availability of an ICT school policy plan, are positively related to the use of computers as a learning tool and to the adoption of ICT in view of basic computer skills. In contrast, no cultural school characteristic seem to be associated with the use of computers as an information tool. In a comparable way, teacher characteristics are associated with specific types of computer use, e.g. the variable gender. In general, male teachers report integrating computers more often. In this study, it appears that gender differences only exist in relation to the adoption of computers as an information tool. The results demonstrate that a multidimensional approach provides more insight into the characteristics affecting computer use.