O laboratório de informática e os dispositivos móveis digitais presentes na escola : desafios e possibilidades

Abstract

This research aims to understand how teachers use the computer lab and mobile devices - notebooks, tablets and smartphones - in school, as possible mediators in pedagogical practices. This is an exploratory qualitative study. The theoretical framework was constituted by Vygotsky's concepts of socio-interactionist theory (1998), articulated with Lévy's concept of cyberculture (1999), Lemos's digital culture (2003), among others. The creation of the research corpus was based on information from eight semi-structured interviews, recorded and later transcribed, with teachers from Elementary School, from a school in a city of Rio Grande do Sul. The corpus was analyzed according to the discursive textual analysis of Moraes and Galiazzi (2006), which basically uses three elements: unitarization, categorization and communication. In this process, the following categories were identified: "Computer laboratory for the search of information on the Internet"; "Computer lab to learn technical content with the computer instructor"; "Instructor-led educational games computer lab"; "Teachers who do not use the computer lab by choice"; "Teachers who do not use the computer lab because of the current technical format in which they are"; "Computer lab used for other functions"; "Use of mobile devices in classrooms"; "Factors that lead to non-use of mobile devices" and "Lack of clarification of the wi-fi and mobile device access rule at school". The metatext, in order to answer the research question, indicates that teachers consider the laboratory to search for information on the Internet by students, but do not develop pedagogical practices in this space. Thus, the syllabus developed in the classroom is disconnected from the laboratory. Only the computer instructor is responsible for the didactic activities, proposing the use of educational games and teaching computer concepts. The results suggest that teachers do not know how to use computers in their practices. The school's internet is not functioning properly and the current format of the laboratory is precarious, with obsolete computers and a lack of adequate technologies - cables, plugs, extensions -, leading to its disuse. Considering all these aspects, the pedagogical activities developed in the laboratory are inadequate to trigger interactive processes among students. In relation to mobile devices, these are used by some teachers in pedagogical practices for searching information on the internet and activities with softwares. Their verbalizations reveal that they have little knowledge of how these features work. The lack of clarification regarding the use of mobile devices and wi-fi in school can be factors that lead certain teachers not to use smartphones, tablets and notebooks in teaching and learning practices. These results suggest the need for training for teachers, so that they can re-dimension their practices, including digital technologies as mediators of the educational process.