Internet Safety News
Teen View of the Internet in School
by Anne Collier
U.S. teens are not impressed with their schools' use of the Internet, according to the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project study.1 The research found that 78 percent of U.S. middle- and high-school students use the Internet, and 30 to 40 percent of them are "Internet-savvy," which is defined as being very fluent in Internet technologies, such as instant messaging, chat, and file sharing. Those Internet-literate teens, however, "Complain that their teachers ... often don't know how, don't want, or aren't able to use online tools to help them learn or enrich their studies."2 Not that teachers' Internet naiveté stops U.S. teens from "Going home or to the library to use the Internet as a tutor, an up-to-date textbook, a guidance counselor, a storage center for papers and schedules, and a way to communicate with study groups, ... they just want an education that reflects their Internet-saturated lives."3
Referring to what might be called the other digital divide, the generational difference between what children know about the Internet and computers and what adults know, students surveyed in the Pew study said the billions of federal dollars that have gone into wiring schools are at risk of being squandered.4 Students surveyed reported a need for a "Similar commitment to improve connectivity in classrooms, help all students master computer skills, teach more sophisticated Internet literacy, make sure that high-quality information is available to them, and most important of all create assignments that take advantage of the wonderful web resources they have found on their own."5 The Pew study offers insights into how U.S. students think about and use the "Net."
As for educators, it appears some of their enthusiasm for the web, in the 1990s, as a teaching and home-school communications tool seems to have faded. "Across the country, school web sites which were once hailed as a way to let parents know what Johnny was doing in school have become a science experiment gone awry.. While some sites are useful, educators say many are nothing more than a bulletin board of lunch menus and teacher rosters that are rarely updated or not used at all."6
1The Digital Disconnect.
Pew Internet & American Life Project. August 14, 2002,
http://www.pewInternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=67.
2Stacy A. Teicher. "The Well-Connected."
The Christian Science Monitor. August 20, 2002,
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0820/p11s01-legn.html.
3Ibid.
4The Digital Disconnect. Pew Internet &
American Life Project. August 14, 2002,
http://www.pewInternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=67.
5Ibid.
6Jeffrey Salingo. "Ghosts of Classrooms Past:
A Web Teaching Tool Languishes." The New York Times.
August 15, 2002,
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/15/technology/circuits/15TOOL.html.
Anne Collier is editor of the SafeKids/NetFamilyNewsletter and president of NetFamilyNews.org, a nonprofit news service for parents and teachers of online kids.
