Use of Internet to enhance learning/teaching capabilities

Nuove tecnologie italiano L2: il progetto Italiano Insieme

by Francesca Falconi

Co-authored with Simonetta De Angelis, published in "Italiano a stranieri", 13, 2012, Edilingua, pp. 16-20

Effect of Internet Use on Protest and Conventional Political Participation among Slovenian Youth

by Andrej Kirbis

Paper presented at the Center for the Study of post-Yugoslav societies (Cepyus) conference, December 1–2, Maribor, Slovenia. Co-authored with A. Naterer.

Past research on the effect of Internet use on political participation has given conflicting results. In addition, the... more Past research on the effect of Internet use on political participation has given conflicting results. In addition, the majority of research still comes from Western democracies, and less is known about the Internet and political participation link in postcommunist countries. The aim of our research was to examine the associations between Internet use and various measures of online and offline (conventional and protest) political participation among Slovenian youth. In addition, we were interested in the association between online and offline political participation. The employed data in our analysis was Youth 2010 survey – a representative sample of Slovenian youth (N = 1257, M age = 22.5 years, SD = 4.25; 48.8 % female). First, building on the work of Quintelier and Vissers (2008) we differentiated between time spent online and different types of activities performed online. As expected, time-displacement hypothesis did not receive confirmation (time spent on the Internet was not associated with neither conventional nor protest participation after control variables were included), while several types of online activities  (use of social media sites, writing opinions on forums and/or blogs, signing electronic petitions, and writing and/or forwarding emails with political content) were found positively associated with offline (conventional and protest) political participation. Secondly, building on the theory of channel complementarity (Dutta-Bergman, 2004) we also found strong positive associations between online and offline political participation (r ≥ 0.45; p < 0.001). Since the use of new technologies, especially Internet use, has been on the increase in recent years among youth and general populations in advanced modern societies, steps should be taken to include new technologies into the channels of decision-making within representative democracy.

University Students’ Problematic Internet Use and Communication Skills according to the Internet Use Purposes

by Halil Eksi

Aydoğan Aykut CEYHAN
Educational Sciences: Theory & Practice - 11(1) • Winter • 69-77

This study was carried out to investigate whether the levels of university students’ problematic internet use
and... more This study was carried out to investigate whether the levels of university students’ problematic internet use
and of perceived communication skills differ with respect to their basic internet use purposes. The participants
were 411 university students [215 of whom were females (52.30%) and 196 of whom were males (47.70%)]. In
the study, the Problematic Internet Use Scale and the Communication Skills Evaluation Scale were applied. The
analysis of the data was carried out via multivariate analysis of variance. The findings revealed that university
students’ perceived communication skill levels did not differ with respect to their main internet use purposes
but that the levels of their problematic internet use did. In this respect, it was found that in terms of basic internet
use purpose, the problematic internet use levels of the university students who “use the internet for entertainment
purposes” and of those who “use the internet to establish social relationships with unfamiliar people”
were significantly higher than that of those who “use the internet to obtain information.” This result points out
that the use of the internet for entertainment and social interaction constitutes an important risk factor for the
emergence of the problematic internet use symptoms.

CIMLE

by Annie Daniel

The Use of the Internet By High School EFL Teachers For Professional Purposes

by Osman Solmaz

published in Dicle University Journal of the Institute of Social Sciences 2011 17-28(2), co-authored with Assist. Prof. Dr. Nilüfer Bekleyen

This article reports the findings of a descriptive study that aimed to examine the websites used by high school EFL... more This article reports the findings of a descriptive study that aimed to examine the websites used by high school EFL teachers for professional purposes. The study included high school English Language Teachers working in the city centre of Diyarbakır in the spring semester of 2010-2011. Forty-five English teachers working at the Private High Schools and Anatolian High Schools in the city were taken as samples. A questionnaire prepared by the researchers was used to collect data. The results revealed that the language teachers mostly followed resource websites, forums and social networks, dictionaries, magazines,newspapers and blogs respectively. A list of the websites that are most commonly followed by EFL teachers is also presented in the study.

The Digital Divide Within Rural Communities in Mexico

by Jeffrey Swindle

This is a paper in progress - - -
Swindle, Jeffrey C. and Tim B. Heaton. (in preparation for special issue winter 2012) ‘The Digital Divide Within Rural Communities in Mexico’, Information Technologies and International Development. Cambridge, MIT Press.

Past research indicates that there are a series of digital divides—between developed and developing countries, urban... more Past research indicates that there are a series of digital divides—between developed and developing countries, urban and rural populations, and the highly and lowly educated.  We measure the social implications of Internet usage before and six months after the construction of a local Internet café by surveying over 1600 respondents in twenty-one rural communities in Mexico with over a ninety-five percent response rate, examining the presence of a digital divide within the communities themselves.  We find that young adults with higher education use the Internet the most, in fact they are essentially the only members of the communities who engage in any computer activities, both before and after construction of the Internet café.  Despite the lack of change in the demographics of Internet users, overall Internet usage increases after the construction of the Internet café and computer training courses.  Moreover, users are more likely to use the Internet as a tool for productive tasks and less for entertainment after taking a computer training course.  The contributions of the Internet café and computer training courses on usage rates and types of usage over the six-month period are analyzed and discussed.