Acesso às novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação e inclusão digital de estudantes durante o período de aulas remotas em Palmas - PR

Abstract

The New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT) are part of the current technological advances in all sectors of society, including the education. When the access and critical use of these technologies are made available to people, NICT contributes to digital inclusion. In 2020, many sectors had to adapt to a change between the physical and digital world due to the pandemic caused by the “new coronavirus”, SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2), which causes the disease called COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019). After the social isolation actions were taken to reduce the spread of coronavirus, opinions and regulations emerged to regulate the emergency remote teaching, while many students, mostly children and adolescents, were studying from their homes. The NICT have become the main mean of knowledge accessed by the students, including culture, sports, and other areas of knowledge and systematized knowledge. Within this context, this research brings the following questionings: which NICT had students had access to during the period of remote classes? For which purposes were they being used and how does this relate to digital inclusion and exclusion? The aim of this study was to verify which NICT teachers and students had access to during the period of remote classes and how this factor impacts digital inclusion and exclusion. To achieve the objectives, the methodology used was an assorted survey gathering quantitative and qualitative data. The participants were teachers from the municipal education network in the city of Palmas-PR who worked at the Municipal School Professora Terezinha Marins Pettres, and also those responsible for the students, who participated in the emergency remote teaching in the year 2020. Data collection was carried out through an online and printed questionnaire and through a face-to-face semi-structured interview. The first part of the questionnaire presents questions about sociodemographic nature, subsequently it presents questions regarding access and use of NICT. Data were analyzed and discussed in order to identify access to NICT in comparison to digital inclusion and exclusion and their correlations with the human development. The research quantitative data showed which NICT students had access to during the period of remote classes, which purposes they were being used for and how it was related to digital inclusion and exclusion.