Digital Information and Communication Technologies: analysis of students´perceptions of a public school

Abstract

This article presents an excerpt from a Master's research which had as general objective  investigating the perceptions of students from a public school about the use of Digital Information and Communication Technologies (DICT) inside and outside the school context. The research had a qualitative approach with an explanatory descriptive design, using a questionnaire with opened and closed questions for data collection. Seventy students from the 9th year of Elementary School, from morning and afternoon periods, of a public school, participated in the research. The frequencies and percentages resulting from closed questions and the categories of opened questions were analyzed using a theoretical reference on the advances of DICT, cyberspace and cyberculture, the characterization of generations and their relationship with technologies, the Common National Curriculum Base (CNCB), the DICT and the school. The results reveal that the research participants, young people of Generation Z, who have been living with technologies since they were born, present characteristics of information consumers, using the technologies as reproduction tools, contrary to what CNCB´s fifth competence indicates, namely, that students use and create DTIC to communicate, access and disseminate information, produce knowledge and solve problems. Understanding young people´s perceptions about the use of DICT may contribute to school actions that may favour the development of this competence.