ICT use at home and at school: A study on 8- to 12-year old students in Luxembourg

The proliferation of mobile computing and ubiquitous internet access creates enhanced opportunities for digital activities and interactive engagement in everyday life for adults, youngsters and children. By introducing mobile devices into formal education contexts, the present study is investigating ICT-enhanced learning opportunities of younger students in their life and school contexts. The focus of this paper is to 1) delineate the ICT environment, that 8- to 12-year old students face in their home context, 2) map the ICT-related practices this age group experiences within the family context, e.g. patterns of usage, frequency, 3) identify the kind of ICT-based activities which kids prefer and in which they are actually engaged, 4) trace differences in ICT-enhanced classroom activities between students with a strong and a weak ICT home background.
The analysis combines data from an online survey and interviews with 8- to 12-year old students. All data have been gathered in an ongoing national project on “Creative inquiries with tablet-cloud systems in elementary science”. This project aims at exploring the impact of interactive technologies on inquiry-based learning processes in elementary science education (Max & Hack, 2014; Max & Song, 2014).
The results show that the students have large use of ICT equipment at home and extended access to the internet. Children access the web through a wide range of ICT devices (e.g. PC, laptop, tablets or mobile phone). A majority of this age group goes online alone so that their internet activities are not necessarily guided and supervised by parents. Most kids use a range of different ICT devices for specific purposes on a regular basis ranging from simply consuming digital resources such as listening to music or playing games to searching information online up to creating digital content such as taking pictures and/or making videos. Considering their young age (8-12), our results show that sharing digital content through social media activities is somewhat limited. As regards the impact of a strong or weak ICT background on the students’ school-based ICT activities, we can say that both groups show a similar attitude towards ICT practices in school. The tablet-enhanced school activities are complementary to the leisure-driven activities at home and therefor beneficial for both groups of children.