The use of ICT in 3rd cycle of primary education: an exploratory study in Vila Real city, Portugal
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A descriptive and exploratory investigation was carried out to examine the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) according to student and teacher perspectives. Two self-completion questionnaires were used to collect data. Before the questionnaires application, an authorization to the schools´ Executive Board was requested. Respondents were informed that the response to the questionnaire was voluntary, confidential and anonymous and that data would be treated in an aggregated way. Students were selected from two classes from the 3rd cycle in two schools from Vila Real, a city located in Northeast of Portugal. Questionnaires were administered in January 2010. The sample comprised 111 students and 26 teachers. Data was edited and processed with PASW Statistics 18 (Predictive Analytics Software) using descriptive statistics.
The results show that almost all students (99.1%) have computer equipment at home. The computer is, particularly, used at home on school work preparation for Project Area discipline. To prepare these works is, also, very frequent the use of Internet and most students spend more than 1 hour per week online. All students surveyed attended classes where they used ICT. The computer applications more used by students were PowerPoint, Word and Internet Explorer.
Despite incipient teacher education in computer science, computer is widespread within professors for personal and professional use. Professionally, computer is used to make exams and worksheets, to send and receive e-mails and browse in the Internet. ICT are used by most teachers, although, more frequently in the Project Area discipline. Software most, frequently, used is Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Internet Explorer in which knowledge levels are good or acceptable. Professors consider that formation and training are needed in some computer programs like Moodle, multimedia educational software, among others. Teachers believe that, the use of ICT in educational context makes their job more interesting and simple. However, the teacher´s lower level of knowledge in ICT, the lack of technical resources, the existence of extensive and inflexible programs are major obstacles to integrate and use of ICT in the classroom.
