Representations of ICT uses and practices of freshman university students: the case of an education department in Greece

The purpose of this research is to investigate the representations of ICT uses and practices of freshmen in the department of early childhood education of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. The sample consisted of 147 freshmen students. This study explores students’ ICT skills, the ways in which these skills are learned and the students’ perception of the usefulness of ICT in terms of their studies and future careers.The vast majority of students appear to be able to surf the net and communicate on-line, while a smaller majority can handle word processing. Almost half the students had never worked with databases or web authoring programmes. The students believe that using ICT will play an important part in their future studies and recognize the crucial role of ICT in their professional lives, regardless of their own ability to use software programmes.