Information competencies of using the Internet in education: a child’s right in schools in a networked society

Dr. Tamara Pribišev Beleslin and dr. Tatjana Duronjić Tapavički

Summary:  Information literacy, the metaliteracy of the twenty-first century, is necessary children’s symbolic tool, especially as the children grow up in the digital age. As a theoretical construct, information literacy covers a range of different skills and knowledge. Information literacy is highly interdependent with the development of technology, especially with the all-pervasive network information platform of the Web and its “socialization” as a new wave within computer culture. We have investigated the characteristics of information literacy of the transmillennial generation that are reflected in the education of students born within, for them, the natural environment established by computer culture. This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary research project conducted with 822 elementary and secondary school students in the capital city of the Republic of Srpska, Banja Luka (entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The characteristics of primary and secondary students’ information competencies and usage of the Internet are compared. Results indicate that children are information literate and exhibit a number of characteristics of so-called “millennium behavior” (Sweeney 2006). That implies an attitude of respect for the new literacy of students as their fundamental right. The research raises a series of educational implications for the education system, even though it took place in a network society strongly grounded to the analog era.