Den abstrakta tråkigheten - Södertörns högskola

Abstract
Children and teenagers of today have grown up with digital media. According to Olle Findahl's report
"The Swedes and the internet"(2009), adults as well as children are online more and more. Our experience
is that at many workplaces as good as everyone use computers and everyone is expected to have digital
skills. However at most schools the reality is far from this. According to Findahl's report from 2009, 99
percent of all pupils (in Sweden) have access to computers and internet, yet it is rare that they get school
assignments where the use of internet is acquired (Findahl 2009).
The purpose of our paper is to understand how digital media can be used as a resource for learning,
through the perspective of young people. The goal of this study is to understand how pupils make
meaning 2 of digital media as a resource for learning. Therefore we found it essential to examine how the
conditions and opportunities in the schools affect young people's reflections.
In order to achieve this we chose to use qualitative data collection methods such as observations and
unstructured group interviews. We observed two different classes of core subjects, and conducted two
unstructured group interviews with pupils from Tumba gymnasium.
One of our results, and the most essential one, was a pattern of an abstract phenomenon. Teachers
describe students as fed up and unmotivated, the students themselves say that "it's just boring". This is a
fact that is accepted by teachers and students without deeper reflection. "It's school."
We refer to this phenomenon as "the abstract tediousness"which constitutes the core of our analysis. "The
abstract tediousness"is the result of what happens when teachers do not make meaning of what they are
teaching their pupils, which therefore makes the pupils feel uninvolved. The absence of creative tasks and
a structure of hierarchy where the presence of the pupils is of greater importance than the assignment
itself, also contributes to "the abstract tediousness". Another element that can be explained by the
phenomenon "the abstract tediousness"is that pupils can’t make relevant digital media because they get
caught up in an endless argument about the importance of grades. Our conclusion is that the pupils cannot
make relevant digital media as a resource for learning because the schools fail in explaining the
importance of learning.
Keywords
Digital media at school, digital media as a resource for learning, make meaning, digital native, digital
immigrant
2 Make something relevant within its context
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