Always Online: Using Mobile Technology and Social Media at Home and at School by Modern Teenagers

Abstract

16–18-year-old students of Moscow schools and other educational institutions were surveyed to assess how the Russian school uses modern methods of e-learning, mobiles technologies and social media in the learning process. The sample covered 3,194 respondents. The study describes three waves of Russian school informatization and the challenges the system has been facing over the last five years: the extensive use of mobile phone s and PDAs with high-speed access to the internet by students, the active use of social media services for communication, search and storage of information. The article demonstrates the obvious progress of the schooling system: present-day teachers communicate with their students by email and via social networks and occasionally give homework assignments to be done online or using internet services. Yet, school remains an extremely conservative institution. The education system is insensitive to the rapidly development of technologies, and the process of modernization is essentially inhibited by sticking to conventional teaching practices and ignoring the innovative ones.