Investigação sobre as habilidades para o uso de tecnologias digitais de informação e comunicação na educação básica

Abstract

The spread of Digital Information and Communication Technologies (TDIC) generates demand for digital inclusion of citizens and the school is a privileged space to develop the necessary skills for such inclusion. However, this may not be happening because there is the assumption that young people born from the 1980s onwards would have an innate knowledge of them and be able to use ICTs competently. This assumption was summarized in Marc Prensky's statements from 2001, when he defined Natives and Digital Immigrants. However, studies show that in order to understand, in an integrated and meaningful way, the different media and their functioning, it is necessary to develop specific knowledge and skills to produce meanings from the ocean of available digital information. In order to investigate the context and possible influences of this assumption in the school context, we analyze the competences of the current generation of Brazilian students regarding the use of ICT and digital literacy, inclusion and fluency based on the theoretical framework that defends the existence of digital natives. and the tacit acceptance that young people, having been born after the popularization of ICTs, dominate it and know how to use it in school and out of school contexts. A total of 210 students from sixthto ninth years old, aged between 11 and 14 years old, from a medium-sized public school located in the Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region participated in the research. The descriptive study and quali-quanti approach was carried out in two steps: in the first one a validated scale (EDTEC) was applied to identify different levels of skills in the use of technologies to study and from there we identified contrasting groups that were invited to participate in the second, qualitative step, which consisted of observing the performance of practical activities to confirm self-declared technological skills and record in the field diary, the conditions under which these technologies are used. As a result of the research,we verified the behavior of young people of the generation called Digital Natives in the use ofICT in the school context and we realized that it is necessary to (re) build the concepts related to the competence of the current generation of Brazilian students in relation to the use of ICT and literacy, inclusion and digital fluency.