Action Research Proposal Student Use of Technology At School and At Home David Chase Alexander

Submitted to Dr. Cullen The University of Oklahoma Spring 2013

Introduction
With the onset of cheap and readily available internet connectable devices, students are using and learning with technology more than ever before, As of September 2009, 93% of American teens between the ages of 12 and 17 went online, a number that has remained stable since November 2006 (Lenhart, Purcell, Smith, & Zikuhr, 2010). It is important to note that the internet over the past 10 years has changed. What was once an information hub ruled by webmasters that produced web content using difficult lines of code, has grown into a more universally friendly space where internet users were allowed to be creative and innovative within a websites confines. This internet renaissance gave schools an opportunity to incorporate technology in very interesting ways within classroom instruction. Instead of an instructor having the students mining the web for information, teachers could let students create and merge ideas they found in online scrapbooks, easily buildable webpages, blogs, and classroom wikis. It is widely known within the research that effective incorporation of technology leads to student learning within a classroom setting, but do some of these activities spark any interest with students when they are using their own technology at home? What types of school-related tasks do the students prefer to use their own technology at home to accomplish? What higher- order thinking skills are being utilized with technology at home? This particular study seeks to look into some of these questions and shed more light about student technology use at home and at school.

Review of Literature
Within the literature there have been a few efforts to track student technology use at school and at home. Kent and Facers (2004) study of comparing young peoples use of internet and

communication technologies at school and at home seems to set the trend within the area of study. The study consisted of a 200 item questionnaire given twice, one in 2001 and the other in 2003, to over 1500 participants that ranged from 5th to 12th grade. When they broke down different tasks that the students performed either at home or at school they found that there are certain tasks like writing and e-mailing are performed about equally in both environments (Kent & Facer, 2004). However they did find some differences, Looking up information on the web, using charts and graphs, and using educational software, for example, are all more widely reported as having been experienced at school than at home (Kent & Facer, 2004). They then note that downloading software or music, watching DVDs, or composing music were mostly performed at home. Coincidently at the same time as Kent and Facers (2004) investigation, a similar line of research developed that sought to study the effects of implementing these preferred home technology activities in a classroom setting. Sutherland et al. (2004) chose to review how these familiar home internet and communication technologies (ICTs) could be implemented using practices found in Vygotskys (1978) socio-cultural theory of learning. Drawing from Kent and Facers (2004) study they noticed that students preferred to compose music at home using common cutand-paste music composition software. One teacher from the Sutherland et al. (2004) study used a very ingenious way to bring this aspect into his classroom. Paul Taylor used Cubase VST 5.1 to enable the relationship between film and music. He designed a template for students to use, which contained prepared musical clichs, that had to be synchronized with a film that was placed on each computer so it could be viewed at the same time as the musical templatethe students were asked not only to arrange the fragments of music but also to cut, copy, and paste

them appropriately (Sutherland et al., 2004). This teacher went on to have the students next compose music that would fit certain sections of the movie. This aforementioned example merger between home and school technology using behaviors is evident in Grants (2011) qualitative study on using digital technologies to connect learning between home and school. Grant observes that many children perform school related tasks using technologies at home without even noticing that they are enhancing their own learning, one girl was writing a novel, a boy designed digital artwork, another boy made films on his computer, and one girl discussed her hobby of collecting ceramics on an online social network. These activities offered children the chance to develop skills and knowledge of direct relevance to their learning in school, and to experience success in learning, yet their teachers were unaware of these activities (Grant, 2011). This in turn demonstrates the need for teachers to know how to incorporate home technology into classroom lessons. Teachers need to know what their students are using at home and then seek innovative ways to have those technologies work for them either in a classroom setting or in a home environment. But it is not enough for teachers to know what technology is being used at home, another valuable piece of information is to know to what extent are the students using these students using home ICTs in higher-order thinking tasks. Knowing these two vital pieces of information will help lead teachers to possibly better incorporating a familiar piece of technology into classroom lessons and activities.

Research Purpose and Questions

Since technology at home and at school play a huge role in the lives of students, it is important for teachers to know how students use these technologies in these two separate environments and if one environment can foster higher-order thinking skills more effectively than the other. This

study seeks to investigate what technologies students have access to at home and at school and also to investigate what level of higher-order thinking takes place in either environment. This study seeks to investigate the following questions: What technologies do students have at home and at school? To what extent do students use these technologies at home and at school? Do students perform higher-order thinking tasks at in one location over another?

Methods
Students from an urban middle school will be given a short online survey that will ask them to document their home technology access and their home and school technology use especially as it relates to higher-order thinking skills. The survey will be administered to approximately 25 7th and 8th grade students that are participating in an after-school college preparatory mentoring/tutoring program that is managed by the researcher. To avoid undue influence the survey will be administered by the school counselor. Prior to the administration of the survey, the researchers will contact all the participating students parents or legal guardians with a letter that seeks their permission to collect and report data. Parents that do not respond to the permission request or opt their student out of the survey will be excluded from the study. The data will only be collected and reported with consent from the parent or legal guardian. Students will not be asked for any identifiable information and survey results will be saved on a password protected computer and a password protected account on the SurveyMonkey server.

Works Cited
Grant, L. (2011). Im a completely different person at home: using digital technologies to connect learning between home and schooljcal_433 292. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27, 292-302. Kent, N., & Facer, K. (2004). Different worlds? a comparison of young people's home and school ict use. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 20(6), 440-455. Lenhart, A., Purcell, K., Smith, A., & Zickuhr, K. (2010). Social media & mobile Internet use among teens and young adults. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved November 5, 2010, from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-YoungAdults.aspx. Sutherland, R., Armstrong, V., Barnes, S., Brawn, R., Breeze, N., Gall, M., Matthewman, S., Olivero, F., Taylor, A., Triggs, P., Wishart, J. & John, P. (2004). Transforming teaching and learning: Embedding ICT into everyday classroom practices. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 20(6), 413-425. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.