Public school students' attitudes and opinions toward the World-Wide Web (WWW) were analyzed to discover if and how they affect students' use of this new educational medium in a school setting. In response to a paper survey instrument (n = 791) administered in ten Colorado public schools, students expressed the belief that the WWW is an important part of their lives and believed that the WWW is a "good" or "excellent" source of information, means to communicate, and source of entertainment. When asked to associate the WWW with a traditional medium, more students chose "audio/visual-television" (50%) than chose "print-book/magazine" (41%). An exploratory principle components analysis of forty use statements resulted in an eight-factor solution: "for research and learning," "for easy access to entertainment," "for communication and social interaction," "for something to do when I'm bored," "for access to material otherwise unavailable," "for product information and technical support," "for games and sexually explicit sites" and "for consumer transactions." An alternative two-factor solution yielded two factors: "education" and "diversion." Student responses to a computer-administered survey instrument (n = 1083) were collected and analyzed using descriptive techniques. Cross-tabular analyses revealed significant differences in the way that students describe their use of the WWW. Gender, grade level, and amount of time spent using the WWW were used to create between-group comparisons in the seven WWW use categories that made up the computer-administered survey instrument. The final phase of data analysis was a content analysis of sites visited by students. A total of 123,071 URLs were collected and a sample of 500 sites were reviewed by media specialists. Students appear to be visiting commercial sites at a much higher proportion than the other leading domain names. Also, the commercial sites received the lowest rating for "suitability for academic research" of all the domain names. And while students reported their purpose for using the WWW as "research and learning" fifty-two percent of the time, the coders found only twenty-seven percent of the sampled sites to be "suitable" for that purpose.

 

Abstract | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | References | Appendix