How young people use the Internet: Relations with the school context

Abstract

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14244/19827199739

This article aims to discuss how the young students of a public school in Sao Paulo use the Internet to resolve their school assignments, and thus understand how they use the resources available on the Internet as pedagogical tools. This study is part of a qualitative master's research which used interviews and questionnaires as instruments. We started from the assumption that the advent of the Internet would bring some change to school dynamics, because it would be a source of knowledge for students that would allow interaction with school culture. It would be a mechanism that could alter the relationship that young people establish with school knowledge, promoting the mobilization of students for learning. However, we noted that the use young respondents make of the available resources is only instrumental, and depends on the intuitive knowledge they already have, which is not acquired in school. School activities are still being proposed in the same way as they were before the Internet appeared as a research resource. We conclude that the internet has failed to change school dynamics so far, and that the school no longer uses the tools of the Internet to enhance students’ learning. In short, school culture does not interact with the knowledge students gathered from the Internet, failing to relate with a part of the culture of these students, who are little mobilized by the usual learning modes.

Keywords: Internet, School, Youth, School culture.