Abstract
The internet is today a significant part of children’s daily lives, and digital competences have been included as basic learning goals in many school systems worldwide. In order to develop sound and effective early-age internet education programs, information about how children use the internet should be integrated with insights in how they understand it. This study investigates 8-to-10-year-old children’s understanding of the internet through the qualitative analysis of 51 drawings collected in three primary school classes in Switzerland. The results confirm that children’s conceptions of the internet are rich but often inaccurate or uncomplete. The conceptions collected in this study partially differ from those that emerged in previous studies, possibly due to the diffusion of smartphones and tablets and to the commercialization of the internet. Also, each class presents a different balance of conception types, resulting in a sort of class understanding of the internet.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Botturi, L. A. (2021). “Draw the internet”: A visual exploration of how children imagine an everyday technology. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 13(3), 35-48. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2021-13-3-3
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