This study investigated the attitude of students towards internet at secondary level. This survey of Internet attitude by 40 secondary school students from ten schools in the Faisalabad district of Punjab province was carried out in order to assess whether the students have developed positive attitude regarding internet or if there is something missing to utilize.
Generally, it was found that most children used the Internet, were quite uncomfortable with it, a considerable majority of respondents considered themselves non-users of the Internet and want training. There was also some gender differences found in the data which in general suggested something of a male bias towards Internet use.
It was concluded that these are issues that need to be addressed for the purposes to develop positive attitude among secondary school students. A number of suggestions for further research into attitude of students towards internet are also suggested in this paper.
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Introduction, Background and Motivations For The Study
We convey information in two ways verbally and not verbally. In the past we communicate information in verbal form. With the passage of time, we learn more resources for conveying more information. In the past, we store data in written form.
e.g.; books, newspaper and magazines.
But in this modern age, technology has great progress. Now in this modern age, we use Internet to get a lot of information. Internet becomes basic need in this modern age. The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications like nothing before. Internet has become an essential tool of research. It is the one of the greatest sources of information now a day. It can be defined as a network of networks.
It is a collection of individual computers and local area network (LAN).Internet consists of tens of thousands of separate networks that are interconnected and accessed daily by millions of people. Internet has made it possible for all over the world to communicate effectively and expensively with each other. Each connected individual can communicate with anyone else on the Internet can publish ideas and can sell products with a minimum overhead cost.
Internet effects the education cycle of students by providing alternatives, learning styles and learning in a creative way. Gaining advantage is a great option for every one; Internet is an aspect of changing life in order to be further steps in life in order to be further steps in life by serving as an electronic link between students.
Internet has big impact on student’s attitude. Now students get a lot of information through Internet within a minimum time. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the attitude of students towards internet by a comprehensive case study. Variables including gender and Internet using experiences were also analyzed in this study
The problem addressed in this study is whether secondary school students have a positive attitude towards internet. As information technology training is a timely topic, it is anticipated that this study will be of benefit to the universities, the faculties, and their students.
This study analyzed Creative Tendencies, Internet Enjoyment, Internet Importance, Empathy, Study Habits, and Motivation/Persistence of secondary school students. A survey instrument was used to determine changes that occurred in the attitude of focus group. It was anticipated that overall students would positively affect their attitudes toward information technology.
Since Internet use has become a way of life for the majority of higher education students all around the world. For most college students the Internet is a functional tool, one that has greatly changed the way; they interact with others and with information as they go about their studies. They use computers to accomplish a wide range of academic tasks. Many students prepare course assignments, make study notes, tutor themselves with specialized multimedia, and process data for research projects.
Most exchange e-mails with faculty, peers, and remote experts. They keep up to-date in their fields on the Internet, accessing newsgroups and web sites posted by professional organizations. Most access library catalogs, bibliographic databases, and other academic resources in text, graphics, and imagery on the World Wide Web. Researchers have proposed that attitudes toward Internet may directly affect Internet adoption and use.
The rapid growth of Internet in overall society is made different kinds of transformations. The school environment, as a part of the social system, is not beyond these transformations derived from the inclusion of the technologies. In fact, since some years and from different institutions setting action plans are being set, as a last resort, in order to establish the adequate use of these technologies -as much in questions of educational and practical application as in those referred to its deontology-; and thus, to adapt to new social requirements.
As information technology forms the foundation of modern life, upon which government, education, business, and culture rest, the importance of productive use of Internet has become increasingly critical. Therefore, Students must adopt that willingness; consciousness is the first step in using the technological facilities. In order to use effectively, productively and efficiently, there should be correct and positive attitudes of the user. In the scope of the research, the attitudes of students were determined for resulting reflections towards Internet and technology.
The significance of this study is to examine and explore the attitudes of students towards Internet, especially how Internet is being used for study or school related activities at secondary level. The extent to which Internet is being used; the effects of Internet on student social life, benefits and problem associated with Internet. The role of Internet in student’s life, barriers in the use of Internet and level of computer proficiency as perceived by the students are also investigated.
Other findings suggest that computer may have a positive influence on student motivation at the elementary and secondary level (Schofield 1997) and depending on how computer are used, has a potential to improve academic performance. School and colleges can play a significant role in educating children for proper and effective use of the Internet. The concept of distance learning through Internet could be introduced to enhance the learning abilities of the students. Moreover a teacher refer his/her studies as additional resources available on the Internet in terms of Encyclopedia, dictionaries etc.
Furthermore Internet technology has rapidly and dramatically become more accessible over the past few years around the globe, Similarly in Pakistan by the participation of PTCL and many other private ISP’s. This quick growth of Internet has influenced the people’s life with following changes.
As a result of these changes, it is increasingly important to better understand student’s conception about these technologies and their ways of thinking about the Internet and World Wide Web. Computer and Internet use rate is an indicator of living standard.
This study will also investigate these questions and will elaborate the findings at the end.
The main aim of the researcher is to investigate the attitude of students towards internet that could serve in improving their learning skills as well help them to take many other advantages that internet offers. The following objectives are interlinked with the above goals:
The structure of the report for this study will comprise five chapters and are shown in Table 1.1.
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Chapter 1: Introduction The context of study and motivation, research questions and aims and objectives. |
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Chapter 2: Literature review Critique of the literature relevant attitude of students towards internet. |
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Chapter 3: Research methodology The methodology used for the collection of data. |
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Chapter 4: Results, Presentation and Discussions The chapter will present the findings or the results of my fieldwork. |
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Chapter 5: Conclusions and Recommendations Presentation of the summary of the end results of the study. |
Table 1.1. The structure of the research
The problem of this study revives around obstacles preventing productive use of internet in a selected school in the Faisalabad district. This chapter has presented the rationale and context for conducting the research. The use of internet in education and the need for the transformation of education in Pakistan with regard to internet was described. That was followed by presentation of the objectives of the study. The research questions were also described followed by a presentation of the structure of the research. The next chapter (two) will describe literature reviewed that is specifically related to this study.
Chapter II
This chapter will review the literature that is related to the study. It is important for the researcher to know what has been done previously about the specific topic.
According to Bell (1993:155) the value of a literature review to the reader is that it explains the context and background of the study. It is therefore important that the researcher know where his research deviates or affirms to what has been studied previously as related to the topic being studied. It assists with the advancement of knowledge and provides the researcher with a point of reference.
Merriam (1998:50) also contends that a literature’s function is to provide the foundation for contributing to knowledge. In this study, the review of the literature will assist in the development of an instrument, which will be used to determine the attitude of student towards Internet at secondary level.
According to Wikipedia, Attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual’s like or dislike for an item. Attitudes are positive, negative or neutral views of an “attitude object”: i.e. a person, behavior or event. People can also be “unsure” towards a target, meaning that they simultaneously possess a positive and a negative bias towards the attitude in question. We can also say that it is an evaluation process, where individuals rate their feelings toward an object on a number of scales. In effect, they provided the foundations for much of the Internet attitude, which is based on asking people to respond to a number of questions about different aspects of using internet.
Brand (1996) believes whole-heartedly, that putting the right hands can change the world for batter. Computer has made for greater material and energy efficiency, less need for physical transport, more widespread intelligence basically through civilization and culture. All of these things are good news for the environment.
The Internet has been recognized as producing the 4th industrial revolution in human history (Capron, 1999). In the twenty-first century, citizen’s attitudes toward using and learning the Internet may determine the educational and economical development of a society. Students’ Internet attitudes may impact their future involvement in Internet-related careers or activities.
Angel (1997) viewed that nobody in actual world is out of these influence’s sphere of internet and day by day its importance is increasing in hundreds of thousands of new users. The Internet affected their lives and their expectative about the future of this informatics community. The sample is composed for people among 14 to 45 years old, from students to professionals from United States and other countries (Mexico, Taiwan, India, Italy, Bosnia, Egypt, etc).
This sample is representative of all the people perspectives of the Internet in developed and developing countries. In fact, 35% of the survey is from any developing country and the rest from the developed countries. Women and 65.0% compose the same percentage for men. In this sample, 43% are married or with children.
But not all the persons in the survey are students.15% are professional involved in the use of the Internet in their jobs. There are many uses of the Internet not only for scholars. The entertainment, business and non-specialized information markets are going at a fast rate.
From the survey he found the fact that 100%of the actual Internet users are familiar with the use of the electronic mail (email), 92.3% use the web for information search, 70% of the people use it for entertainment; 46% for research, 38.5% for transfer of files or for education; 30.7% for virtual meeting and discussion groups (newspaper), 23% for business and 7.6% for specialized use.
Students think that the Internet is important in their lives because it makes information search easiest. People in the survey know that the freedom in the web can be used for evil purposes, like criminal use (60%), pornography (33.4%), information addiction (26.7%), hackers and cracker (20%). Only a little section of the survey shows the concerned with the tendency of the Internet towards the control of the information in some few hands (60%).
The Internet is a new word without rules and borders. How much can it change the actual behavior of people will be looked in next five years, or maybe before because the evaluation of Internet is too fast. A new underground culture is now fighting for more freedom, space and access to technology in the cyberspace.
The cyberpunks, hackers and crackers and other “information addicts” are the first fruit of the impact of the Internet over the actual society. The future is not clear maybe the slogan of the cyberpunk groups is only clear answer.” No future”.
Marseto (2000) found that today many people are wired and more and more people will be wired pretty soon. Undoubtedly this phenomenon has impacts on people’s lives. Today more and more people log on the Net. Internet plays an important role in our society, these role ranges from the economics field to how we register for classes and do our homework. As the Internet becomes more and more popular and more people log on the net, it certainly changes people’s lives.
Charles (1998) said the rise of the Internet has contributed to new varieties of criminal activities that most people scarcely could have imagined only a few years ago. For instance, several individuals have been arrested in recent years for systematically stalking children.
Rield (1998) found that those who see the Internet as positively influencing their day-to-day activities are for more likely to be current Internet users as opposed to individuals who are not currently “On-line”. There is a strong correlation between age and positive opinion.
Jeffrey (2000) tells that Internet has only been a popular communication tool for the past five years. He believes that we will have profound long-term effects that most users can’t yet detect. The internet changes everything from values to communication patterns and consumer behaviour, spending long hours surfing the web can even change how many neighbours we recognize by their faces.
The Internet enables people to access a wide range of information around the globe. The arrival of Internet has changed the way in which things have been done. Learners can benefit more by being exposed to the internet in the sense that they can be able to access more up to date information which could otherwise not be available in books.
Learning with Internet is flexible and allows learners to learn in their own pace thereby also increasing motivation to learn. Learning on the Internet can connect learners through the world and provide them with rich learning environments. Computers connected to the Internet can assist learners to benefit through their participation in activities like virtual classrooms and digital collaboration.
Importance of the Research through the Internet, students can reach real experiences learning. The idea that is learning is constructive process widely accepted; learners do not passively receive information but instead actively construct knowledge. Through these perspectives, Internet applications provide to apply and experience the facilities of constructivist view (Plomp, et al., 1996).
In addition to this, Internet helps to facilitate cooperative learning environment. Within the group heterogeneity, positive group interdependence, individual accountability and group processing components of cooperative learning, students can feel the sense of group dynamics and motivation on their learning through the Internet (Crane, 2000).
Through the constructivist approach, integrating Internet to the Education is so easy and effective. This can foster the high level of the skills for students in problem solving and analyzing information through the help of the Internet Facilities. (Roblyer, 2000) Based on constructivist and student centered sense of education, students should catch the vision and be active in building what is needed for change and growth on the issue of educational technology importance and applications. All integration of these perspectives should be in the repertoire of the students to be much better for learning.
Just as the role of computer attitude is defined in computer literacy (e.g. Tsai, 1999), Internet attitude should be regarded as a component of Internet literacy. Students’ attitudes towards the Internet may influence their motivation and interests towards learning to use the Internet, or vice versa (Cofn & MacIntyre, 1999).
As previous literature has suggested those students’ attitudes toward computers have interactions with their performance of using and learning computers (e.g. Houle, 1996), students’ Internet attitudes may also have interactions with students’ performance in employing Internet technology.
Moreover, female and male students may have different attitudes towards the Internet, including usefulness, affection, and behaviors. Although there are several scales of measuring students’ computer attitudes developed by educators (e.g. Francis, Katz, & Jones, 2000; Selwyn, 1997), due to the unique characteristics of the Internet, which are different from computers that work alone (for example, information sharing and interactive communication).
However on the other hand, time spent using computers displaces time spent on athletics and other physical activity, extensive computer use may contribute to a sedentary lifestyle that puts children at risk for obesity and associated health problems (Hill and Peter 1998; Attewell, Suazo-Garcia, and Battle 2003; also see Ho and Lee2001). Use of computer game controls or keyboards also entails a risk of injury from repetitive motion (Laester, Maxwell, and Hedge 1998; Oates, Evans, and Hedge 1998; Harris and Straker 2000; Macgregor 2000).
Other concerns include the potential for Internet use to increase social isolation among adolescents (Kraut et al. 1998; Sanders et al. 2000) and the potential for violent games to cause increases in hostility and aggression (Chambers and Ascione 1987; Schutte et al. 1988; Irwin 1995; Kirsh 1998; van Schie 1998; also see Scott 1995).
Such games are also believed by some to desensitize players to violence and to other people’s suffering (Grossman 1995; Grossman and DeGaetano 1999); others view the evidence regarding harmful effects of violent games as inconclusive (Olson 2004; Bensley and VanEnwyk 2000).
Before the internet, kids played more often outsides, chatting with our friends face to face, not on the ICQ, but although people’s lives are changed, it does not mean that it changes to be really worse not better. Critics, as reported on the U.A.News & World report, argue that the Stanford researchers underestimated the benefit from the net.
Online discussion group’s benefit may people. (From the U.S.News & World Report).Discussion in the net is a multinational discussion, involving people from anywhere and the discussion can be general or focusing on a certain topic. Children can go to the educational sites in the Internet (From Maclean’s).
Nie (2000) found the more hours’ people use the Internet, the less time they spend in contact with real human beings. Internet time is coming out of time viewing television but also out at the expense of time people spend on the phone gabbing with family and friends or having a conversation with people in the room with them. Most Internet users use email for conversation’s-mail is a way to stay in touch but you can’t share coffee or a beer with somebody on e-mail.
Enbrih (2000) said, the Internet could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces our participation in communities even more that did automobiles and television before it. This is an early trend that, as a society, we really need to monitor carefully.
The Internet is also a medium that exposes or provides access for some young people to several kinds of inappropriate material. This may include pornography and inappropriate advertising (Mitchell, Finkelhor, and Wolak 2003; Thornburgh and Lin 2002; Shields and Behrman 2000), online sexual solicitation (Mitchell, Finkelhor, and Wolak 2003), and the means to acquire cigarettes (Ribisl, Williams, and Kim 2003) or materials to facilitate cheating on school assignments (Lathrop and Foss 2000).
People argue that the net does not isolate. It brings new communities together (From NewsWeek).As people log on the net. More people work more at home without cutting their office time. He finally conclude that all of us now know that internet is becoming more and more important and people lives are changed as the impacts.
It doesn’t mean however that the changes are bad. It changes neither worse nor better .it just means that people live in different ways today. Next time when you check your e-mail. You’ll probably remember that some year ago, you did practically the same thing using paper and pen.
Wood (2000) said, Internet changing the mode through which communities emerge, it’s hard to say whether that’s good or bad, but it’s certainly going to be dramatic.
This chapter reviewed the literature related particularly to this study. It has reviewed the attitude of students towards internet at secondary level. It is important to note that the benefits of adapting Internet in teaching and learning is well documented and is overwhelming, however there are still some problem toward achieving productive use of Internet by secondary school student.
This chapter discovers the research design and methods that will utilize in this research study during the process of gathering, analyzing and interpretation of data. The chapter begins with a description of the research approach that I will apply in this research project. It continues with the description of the research method. Data collection techniques and data analysis for this particular research study are also described. This chapter concludes with a description of issues of trustworthiness for the research, which include reliability and validity.
This study will employ multiple sources for the process of gathering information. The main reason for using multiple sources for data collection is to collect a broad range of information from a variety of sources and also to enrich the quality of data for this research study. This process seeks to support and enrich the information by studying it from different sources, unlike relying only on one single method. Further than that, it reduces the risk that is usually associated with bias due to reliance on one specific method.
According to Cohen and Manion (1994:234) exclusive reliance on one method, therefore, may bias or distort the researcher’s picture of the particular slice of reality he/she is investigating. Further, to be confident that the data generated is not simply artifacts of one specific method of data collection.
Furthermore, the more the methods contrast with each other, the greater the researcher’s confidence. If, for example, the outcomes of a questionnaire survey correspond to those of an observational study of the same phenomena, the more the researcher will be confident about the findings. The use of multiple techniques in the collection of data is important and provide assistant to acquire more confidence in the validity of findings.
The main aim for this particular study is to evaluate the attitude of students towards Internet in a selected rural and urban Pakistani secondary school in the Faisalabad District in order to identify obstacles, hence the use of multiple sources for the collection of data.
Each method attempts to capture people’s words and actions, the data of qualitative research. The research is started from Faisalabad District and data is collected from schools of Faisalabad District. It will also briefly discuss documents and other sources of qualitative data.
It consists of following steps.
People collected in a group are called population. Population consists of all the teachers and students as the source of data collection.
A short portion of given population is called sample which represents the whole population and provides information about it.
10 Government school and 10 private schools were selected, as sample. From these schools 20 teachers and 40 students were included in sample, one teacher and two students per school.
All the required information is collected by teachers and students through questionnaires. For this purpose two types of questionnaires were prepared. Students and teacher were provided questionnaires separately. Teachers and students were asked to tick YES or NO.
20 copies of questionnaires were sent to teachers and 40 copies were sent to students. Researchers themselves visited the institutes. All the questionnaires were collected personally, so the collection was 100%. Their percentage was also made.
Chapter IV
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