Education/training
Internet a vital homework toolComputers and the Internet are scoring top grades as homework-helping tools, with Canadian parents and teens alike citing "better access to information", "more efficient use of homework time", "great preparation for university" and "heightened desire to learn" as just some of the benefits of home PC ownership. |
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 [ 2002-09-25 ] |
Intel Canada's Teens, Education and Computer Use at Home Survey 2002, conducted by Ipsos-NPD Canada, shows that a computer with Internet access has become an invaluable homework-helping resource for Canadian kids.
Nine out of 10 parents surveyed believe having a computer and Internet access has had a positive impact on their child's learning ability, with 78% also believing it has improved the quality of their child's homework.
"My daughter gets more interested in her projects with the Internet to search for information," said survey respondent Helen, from Kamloops, BC. "She has learned a lot that she never would have without it. Searching for information is now fun for her and homework is no longer a chore."
Teens with Internet access are now spending more than half (57%) of their total homework time on the computer gathering information for school assignments and writing reports and papers, up from 42% in 1999, when the survey was last conducted.
Today's teens claim to spend an average of six hours per week doing their homework (down from 7.6 hours in 1999), with girls spending an average of 6.7 hours and boys spending an average of 5.4 hours per week on homework assignments.
"Assuming the volume of homework that's being assigned to teens has remained constant, the results seem to indicate that computers and the Internet are helping Canadian teens spend homework time more efficiently," said Doug Cooper, country manager, Intel Canada.
"The Internet means information is readily available at the click of a mouse, instead of the kids having to travel to the library or pore over books or back copies of magazines.
"And with a wealth of homework-helping Web sites available to today's teens, children who might otherwise struggle to complete homework assignments are now able to benefit from online tutorials, encouragement and detailed explanations from expert teachers. Computers are becoming essential educational tools, both in the classroom and at home," Cooper added.
The survey revealed that male teens are significantly more likely to have their own PC (29%, compared with 20% for girls). But despite this inequality, teenage girls still spend more time on their homework and more hours using the computer for homework assignments than teenage boys.
Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves are teens' preferred search engines and portals, with Encarta, National Geographic, dictionary.com and NASA being other favourite homework-helping Web sites.
Intel, the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer networking and communications products. -- Canada Newswire
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