Despite the seemingly impervious rhetoric about digitally savvy youth, numerous academic studies have demonstrated that young people vary considerably in their ability to access and use the Internet effectively to support their education, pursue personal interests, socialise with their peers, obtain support, and plan their future.
Around 5-10% of 9-16 year olds in England do not have appropriate means of accessing the Internet at home and around 15% are not confident in their skills to use the Internet. Young people that fall into this group need additional support to ensure they can make the most of the Internet – yet they rarely receive it.
This talk will discuss the preliminary findings from an on-going two year initiative that provides all year 10 students with a laptop and Internet connection if they require one at home in three secondary schools in a county in England. The research team works with the IT companies, teachers, young people and their families (via one to one sessions, school workshops and home visits) to support the development of digital experiences and skills.
Through the primarily qualitative data, we have charted the complex route to getting families online, demonstrating how parents’ lack of digital skills and confidence, complex family arrangements, language barriers, and shifts in financial situations shape uptake and use of technology in the home. We have seen how this group of young people has limited perspectives on what the Internet can be used for and are not always that enthusiastic about technology. We have faced challenges in how we present the project, as some young people are teased for being part of the study. Nonetheless, despite these issues, we have also seen positive aspects of this initiative: supporting school work, improving digital skills, maintaining and developing relationships, career planning, and enhancing leisure activities.
The talk will conclude by critically examining the extent to which this project, despite the best of intentions, has really moved beyond a simplistic ‘technical fix’ to educational inequality (Robins and Webster, 1989); and the extent to which it can truly be seen as a responsible educational response for the Network Society (Biesta, 2013).
References
Biesta, G. (2013). Responsive or responsible? Democratic education for the global networked society. Policy Futures in Education, 11(6), 733-744.
Robins, K., & Webster, F. (1989). The technical fix: Education, computers, and industry. Macmillan.
Bio: Rebecca Eynon is an Associate Professor and the University of Oxford where she holds a joint academic post between the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and the Department of Education. Since 2000 her research has focused on education, learning and inequalities, and she has carried out projects in a range of settings (higher education, schools and the home) and life stages (childhood, adolescence and late adulthood). Rebecca is co-editor of Learning, Media and Technology and is co-author of Teenagers and Technology (Routledge, 2013). Her work has been supported by a range of funders including the British Academy, BECTA, the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Commission, Google and the NominetTrust. At the OII Rebecca teaches on the MSc Social Science of the Internet and at the Department of Education she is co-course convenor for the MSc Education (Learning and Technology). At both departments, she supervises DPhil students interested in learning, education and / or digital exclusion. For more information please see http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/?id=21.