JUNIOR INTERNET MASTER PROJECT PILOTED IN BOONE COUNTY

Don Day and Maryann Redelfs must have the same energy as the energizer bunny. At the same time the Internet Master program for adults is expanding all across Missouri and other states are clamoring for the program materials and training, the two Central Missouri regional information technology specialists are continuing to do pioneer work in technology education within the Central Missouri Extension region.

During June 1997, 19 students ages 10 to 14 enrolled in summer enrichment program Junior Internet Masters taught at Hickman High School in Columbia. The students will be entering 5th through 9th grades in the fall of 1997. One hundred percent of the students had used computers in school for such tasks as:

word processing - 100% of the Junior Internet Master Enrollees
games (which may include educational games) - 90%
World Wide Web searches - 68%
graphics - 63%
World Wide Web news services - 53%
science - 42%
E-mail - 37%
math - 25%
video - 21%

All but one participant had a home computer. The mean number of years the Junior Internet Masters have had a home computer is 4 years. Three-fourths of the learners with a home computer had Internet access.

The average number of hours of computer use among the Junior Internet Masters was 7.5 hours, although 5 of the 19 Junior Internet Masters reported utilizing a computer 20 hours or more per week. This would be the equivalent in hours of a half-time job.

The students received 56 hours of Internet instruction during business mornings the first three weeks in June. Instruction focused on E-mail, listservs, searching the World Wide Web, browsers, search engines, writing web pages, viruses and computer hardware needed to access the Internet. In addition to actively participating in the Internet training, participants are required to complete 20 hours of volunteer community education about the Internet. Facilitating community education was also an emphasis in the Junior Internet Master curriculum.

While Day and Redelfs took an active teaching role in the series of classes, Internet Masters and other volunteers taught several of the classes. "Volunteers are important in all aspects of University Extension and critical as we work to meet educational needs about the Internet in Central Missouri," explains Day and Redelfs.

Was the curriculum and learning experience effective for the Junior Internet Masters? In a word, yes. A repeated measures instrument compared knowledge and use of the Internet from the beginning of class 1 to the conclusion of class session 19. The repeated measures instrument also compared confidence in facilitating community education as a volunteer for the Junior Internet Master program.

There was a statistically significant difference in the knowledge and use of the Internet by Junior Internet Masters from the beginning of class 1 to the conclusion of class 19 (p < .0001). In addition, there was a statistically significant difference in participant's confidence to facilitate volunteer community education about the Internet from the beginning of class 1 to the conclusion of class 19 (p <.005).

While the older students in higher grades tended to increase their knowledge and use of the Internet and increase their confidence to do volunteer community education about the Internet more than the younger students, the data were not statistically significant at the .05 level. Learners in all ages and grades represented in the class were able to be successful with the curriculum.

At the conclusion of classes, the Junior Internet Masters commented on their favorite aspects of the learning experience:

* My three favorite things about the Junior Internet Masters classes are games, games, and web pages.

* Everything!!! E-mail, web pages, searching the WWW contest that we had. It usually feels like my summer school will never end. It was really, really fun here.

Students have a number of plans for serving their volunteer hours, including designing web sites, volunteering in my sisters school library, teaching younger kids about the Internet, volunteering at my school, teach HTML, search engines, listservs, teaching parents.

(Programmers: Don Day, Maryann Redelfs. Evaluation and reporting: Cynthia Crawford)

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