Children and teenagers of today have grown up with digital media. According to Olle Findahl's report "The Swedes and the Internet" (2009), adults as well as children are online more and more. Our experience is that at many workplaces as good as everyone use computers and everyone is expected to have digital skills. However at most schools the reality is far from this. According to Findahl's report from 2009, 99 percent of all pupils (in Sweden) have access to computers and Internet, yet it is rare that they get school assignments where the use of Internet is acquired (Findahl 2009). The purpose of our paper is to understand how digital media can be used as a resource for learning, through the perspective of young people. The goal of this study is to understand how pupils make meaning2of digital media as a resource for learning. Therefore we found it essential to examine how the conditions and opportunities in the schools affect young people's reflections. In order to achieve this we chose to use qualitative data collection methods such as observations and unstructured group interviews. We observed two different classes of core subjects, and conducted two unstructured group interviews with pupils from Tumba gymnasium. One of our results, and the most essential one, was a pattern of an abstract phenomenon. Teachers describe students as fed up and unmotivated, the students themselves say that "it's just boring". This is a fact that is accepted by teachers and students without deeper reflection. "It's school." We refer to this phenomenon as "the abstract tediousness" which constitutes the core of our analysis. "The abstract tediousness" is the result of what happens when teachers do not make meaning of what they are teaching their pupils, which therefore makes the pupils feel uninvolved. The absence of creative tasks and a structure of hierarchy where the presence of the pupils is of greater importance than the assignment itself, also contributes to "the abstract tediousness". Another element that can be explained by the phenomenon "the abstract tediousness" is that pupils can’t make relevant digital media because they get caught up in an endless argument about the importance of grades. Our conclusion is that the pupils cannot make relevant digital media as a resource for learning because the schools fail in explaining the importance of learning.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-15028 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Miller Phillips, Joanna, Hagström, Lise-Lotte |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kommunikation, medier och it, Södertörns högskola, Institutionen för kommunikation, medier och it |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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