Slovak high school students' attitudes toward computers

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. The pervasive involvement of information and communication technologies and computers in our daily lives influences changes of attitude toward computers. We focused on finding these ecological effects in the differences in computer attitudes as a function of gender and age. A questionnaire with 34 Likert-type items was used in our research. The sample consisted of 659 students from 14 high schools, aged 15–19 years attending the first, the second, the third, and the fourth years of study. The results of the questionnaire were divided into the two dimensions of concrete computer enjoyment and computer anxiety. On the first dimension both younger students and girls have positive attitudes. On the second dimension both younger students and boys have more positive attitudes. Overall, girls have more positive attitudes than boys. This is interesting because in the existing literature there is evidence that boys have more positive attitudes toward computers than girls. Perhaps a change is taking place. 1. Introduction Nowadays, computers and other information technologies have a very important place in the learning and teaching process. Computers are also an integral part of students' everyday life outside of school and within school, they are used in writing homework or essays, within every school subject, not only in informatics; as a survey recently demonstrated at almost every Slovak school (Demkanin, 2008). As a result, Slovak students are revising their opinions and attitudes toward computers and the use of computers in their lessons. The doors of new knowledge are open to students, because computers and information and communication technologies (ICT) allow immediate access to a vast array of information. We can observe things in videos, simulations and graphics, which in years before could not be seen; for example, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis, …