Emerging Uses of the Internet in Biology and Geography in Estonian Schools

Emerging Uses of the Internet in Biology and Geography in Estonian Schools

Ilta-Kanerva Kankaanrinta,

University of Helsinki

Triin Marandi

University of Tartu

Conference paper, presented at a IARTEM conference Learning and Educational Media in Tartu on September 20-22, 2001.

1. Introduction

1.1. The Internet in Estonian Schools

In 2001, Estonians had about 30 Internet connections per 1000 inhabitants (Internet Domain Survey, 2001) and about 33% of the whole population had the opportunity to be on-line (Nua Internet Domain Survey, 2001). This is a high proportion when compared to other European countries.

The Estonian government has encouraged the use of the Internet for educational purposes since 1996 when the Tiger Leap National Program was launched (cf. e.g. Tiigrihüppe Sihtasutus, 2000; Tiiger Luubis, 2001; The Estonian Tiger Leap into the 21st Century, 1999). Its goal is modernisation of the educational system, and development of open learning environments and information society.

Recent national and international investments in the Estonian educational system have supplied most Estonian schools with Internet connections. In 2000, about 200 out of 350 secondary schools in Estonia have their own computer laboratory with Internet connections. About 63% of Internet-connected schools have direct connection and 12% have dial-up connection. 25% of schools do not have Internet-connections yet (Aastaraamat 2000, 2000).

By 2001, 41% of Estonian teachers had a computer at home, 46% of them having an Internet connection. Similarly, 44% of students can use the computer at home and most of these students have Internet connections: 59% have a dial-up system and 23% a direct connection (Tiiger Luubis, 2001).

1.2. Estonian Internet Resources for Biology and Geography Education

From March 2000 the Estonian Tiger Leap Foundation has financed more than 1000 courses in basic ICT for teachers. More than half (10 500) of all Estonian teachers (17 000) have participated in them, including many biology and geography teachers. These training projects train teachers to use and evaluate educational software, to find useful information from the Internet and to prepare electronic educational materials.

Liiber & Roosaare (2001) list Internet resources for Estonian geography teachers and identify three main sites. The oldest and the largest of these is Miksike Learning Environment (1994) (c.f. Pilv, 1999). It consists of educational web pages and “miksilitators” or virtual teaching services that help teachers. This facilitates biology and geography lessons in small rural schools even without a professional subject teacher. Another service, The Teachers’ Portal (Koolielu, 2001) includes links for all subjects in schools. The third web site, The Web site of Estonian School Geography (Kooligeograafia, 1999) was established for an international distance learning programme for geography teachers (1998–2000). It has several links for school geography.

Biology teachers can use educational web pages, e.g. like Miksike (1994), Estonian Vertebrates (Sarapuu & Adojaan, 1998), Estonian Plants (Marandi, Pedaste & Sarapuu, 2000) or Hiking Across Estonia (Sarapuu, Pedaste &Hallik, 2000). They are applicable in various themes of school biology, integrated science and environmental studies according to the new Estonian Curriculum (Adojaan, Marandi & Sarapuu, 1998).

2. Empirical Study

The educational uses of the Internet have been encouraged in Estonia by the government and schools also have computers and networks. The research sought to investigate if and how these opportunities were used.

The general aim of this study was to find out how Estonian teachers in comprehensive and upper secondary schools use the Internet in biology and geography. The detailed aims were:

1.  What kind of general skills did the teachers have to use the Internet?

2.  In which ways and how often did the biology and geography teachers use the Internet?

3.  In which ways and how often did the pupils use the Internet when studying biology?

4.  What kinds of positive experiences did the teachers have when using the Internet?

5.  What kinds of problems were there in using the Internet?

6.  What kind of roles did the teachers have when they used the Internet?

The data for this study was collected in April 2001. A letter and a corresponding e-mail were sent to 120 Estonian biology and geography teachers and the address of the web-based questionnaire was delivered there. The teachers answered the questionnaire via the web and the data was sent to the researchers by e-mail and saved as an Excel file.

3. Results

3.1. The Teachers and their Schools

Altogether 56 teachers answered. 52 of them were women and 4 men. Their average age was 41 years. Most of the teachers had a degree in biology (34) or geography (21), one in chemistry. They had worked at school for 13 years on average. Most of the teachers (36) taught both in comprehensive and in secondary school, 13 taught only in comprehensive school and 7 only in secondary school. The majority of the teachers (40) teach biology, 23 geography. More than a half of the teachers (30) also teach an additional subject. The teachers were from about 50 different schools, a bigger group (27) from urban schools and 22 from rural schools. The location of 7 schools was not known.

3.2. Teachers’ General Skills in using the Internet

Many teachers evaluated their skills in information and communication technologies (ICT) either as average or rather good (Table 1).

Table 1. Teachers’ Reported Skills in using Information and Communication Technologies.

Skill to use ICT / Frequency
Very good / 3
Rather good / 16
Average / 23
Not so good / 12
Bad par: Poor / 2
Total / 56

All the teachers have participated in at least one course in ICT. Most of them (41) had participated in such courses at least twice. In these courses the teachers had learned how to find useful information on the Internet, how to save material from the web and how to use this in lessons. They also learned to use e-mail, and how to compose and publish web pages. In spite of these courses many teachers emphasised the significance of self-learning or help from colleagues or friends when acquiring skills to use the Internet.

3.3. Teachers’ and Students’ use of the Internet

The teachers were asked where they used the Internet. Choices of home and different places within the school, such as the school library, computer laboratory and teachers’ offices, were offered. The teachers used the Internet mostly in teachers’ offices and in computer laboratories. Other possibilities had only minor uses. The frequency of using the Internet was mostly several times per week (21) or every day (18). The minority used it once in a week (9) or once a month (8).

Ways of using the Internet were classified on the basis of the purpose of the use, e.g. searching for information or making contacts. Also a classification on different types of data was used.

The Internet was mainly used for updating or getting extra information on biological or geographical issues. The teachers had used a lot of educational web pages, and texts or photos. The teachers had not found animations or sounds on the web yet. Some of them knew quizzes and charts. The teachers used some e-mail for contacting colleagues or students. Co-operation between schools was rare except for some national projects, as well as distance teaching and the use of integrated distributed learning environments or groupware. Publishing on the web has begun but still most teachers have not attempted it.

On the questionnaire 22 different types of contents or ways to use the Internet were listed (Table 2). No item received a “not used at all” response.

Students used the Internet mainly as an information resource, looking for up-to-date or extra information. They mainly looked for text and photos. In general they used the applications on the web less often than their teachers did. The students were more likely to use educational games than teachers did.

3.4. Experiences during the Use of the Internet

Positive experiences included new contents, new methods, and features of multi- and hypermedia, relevance for the future, impact on the work of the teacher and the pupil (Table 3). Some of the questions elicited the teacher’s point of view, others the pupil’s point of view.

The teachers had a positive view of the educational uses of the Internet. They reported that they enjoyed teaching their students to search for and analyse new information. They thought their pupils liked the multimedia and using the Internet. The awareness of the potential positive surprises of the Internet was much appreciated by the teachers. They felt their work grew more interesting and versatile, and they enjoyed learning new things. The teachers strongly agreed on the fact that knowing the Internet gave a good starting point for the future.

Table 2. Teachers’ and Students’ Frequency of use and Ways to use the Internet. Scale: 0 – Never, 5 – Very often.

Way to use / Teachers / Students
Mean / St. dev. / Mean / St. dev.
Up-to-date materials for issues that are found in textbooks / 3.3 / 1.16 / 2.0 / 1.21
Extra information for issues that are in textbooks / 3.0 / 1.35 / 2.1 / 1.24
Information about issues that are not in textbooks / 3.3 / 1.34 / 2.5 / 1.28
Texts / 3.2 / 1.36 / 2.7 / 1.19
Databases and / or tables / 2.2 / 1.48 / 1.8 / 1.24
Maps / 1.9 / 1.29 / 1.6 / 1.17
Photos / 2.5 / 1.46 / 2.5 / 1.43
Charts / 1.7 / 1.48 / 1.3 / 1.17
Films and / or animations / 1.5 / 1.55 / 1.3 / 1.41
Sounds / 1.3 / 1.37 / 1.4 / 1.42
Geographical Information Systems (GIS, MapInfo) / 0.6 / 0.93 / 1.0 / 1.27
Puzzles / 0.7 / 1.02 / 0.7 / 0.96
Quizzes / 2.4 / 1.30 / 1.6 / 1.23
Educational games, simulations / 1.4 / 1.48 / 1.7 / 1.57
Educational web pages / 3.2 / 1.53
Contacts between teacher and students / 2.5 / 1.63
Distance teaching or learning / 1.1 / 1.34
Co-operation with national partner class or school / 1.5 / 1.65
Co-operation with international partner class or school / 0.9 / 1.39
Using groupware like WebCT / 0.5 / 0.85
Making Web pages of courses or student exercises / 0.9 / 1.17

Table 3. Positive Experiences in the Educational Uses of the Internet. Scale: 5 – I completely agree, 0 – I do not agree.

Experience / Mean / St. dev.
As a teacher I can choose content that I like / 4.1 / 1.31
For studying there are more methods which I can choose / 3.6 / 1.33
I can build new learning environments with the web / 3.0 / 1.26
Interaction with the pupils is more intensive / 2.7 / 1.48
The differences between pupils are more easy to take into account / 3.2 / 1.45
I can teach the students to find and analyse versatile information / 4.1 / 1.12
My pupils can choose between the available content / 2.9 / 1.37
My pupils can choose between different methods of studying / 2.9 / 1.27
My pupils can take more responsibility for their studies / 3.3 / 1.32
My pupils become more active / 3.4 / 1.21
Using the Internet raises the motivation of students / 3.8 / 0.98
The creativity of the students will develop / 3.4 / 1.07
Students will be more deeply involved in the subject / 3.0 / 0.97
My pupils like multimedia in general / 4.1 / 1.18
My pupils like the structure of hypertext / 3.3 / 1.32
There is always an opportunity to find something interesting on the web / 4.4 / 1.00
Knowing the Internet gives a good starting point for the future / 4.6 / 1.02
The work of the teacher becomes more interesting / 4.4 / 1.05
The work of the teacher becomes more versatile / 4.3 / 1.13
The work of the teacher is respected more by others / 3.5 / 1.26
I can learn new things all the time / 4.4 / 1.08
I can show my capacities and skills to others / 3.5 / 1.14
The work of the teacher becomes more relevant / 3.8 / 1.21

The teachers also reported about problems (Table 4).

Table 4. Problems in the Educational Uses of the Internet. Scale: 5 – Many problems, 0 – No problems.

Type of Problem / Mean / St. dev.
Problems with hardware, software and connections / 3.2 / 1.45
The pupils do not have technical skills / 2.7 / 1.24
The content is often useless for pupils / 2.3 / 1.14
Choosing relevant content is difficult / 2.8 / 1.25
Language problems / 2.9 / 1.49
The pupils do not know how to make references for the articles / 3.5 / 1.22
The pupils only copy the content / 3.8 / 0.97
Organising the work is difficult / 3.4 / 1.33
It is hard to supervise the pupils when they are on the web / 3.1 / 1.40
We have no time for it / 3.5 / 1.20
Lack of technical support / 2.5 / 1.60
Lack of pedagogical support / 2.5 / 1.40
Atmosphere in the school for educational uses of the Internet / 1.5 / 1.41
Cost of uses / 1.7 / 1.76

The main problem was that pupils only copied the contents without processing it. There were also problems in organisation, timing and with reference systems. On the other hand, students had only minor problems with the costs or the atmosphere of the school. Some teachers thought the work of the teacher became more difficult, and this was a problem for them. In general, the problems did not seem to be very remarkable compared with the positive experience obtained.

3.5. The Role of the Teacher

The teachers were offered 10 different roles (Table 5).

The teachers mostly felt that they were co-learners when using the Internet. There were also experts in searching for information and making references, but not so many experts in biology. They felt least that they were experts in copyright issues, hardware or software, but the standard deviation was largest here, as well.