While I had heard about the digital divide, and could gather the basic idea just from the title, the statistics in the article didn't overwhelm me as much as the activity we did in class. I always knew schools were different amongst the same county, state even, but I was truly amazed at the differences in the amount of, and usage of technology throughout the districts we cover amongst our class. Even further, I think the digital divide can be looked at among schools and individual classrooms. We mentioned a few times in our class discussion how materials are purchased for the whole school and shared. Realistically for a student, it really comes down to which teacher you have will determine the use of technology in a school setting. Similar to my school, not every classroom has a smartboard, or more than one computer. This bothers me because all of my students moving to third grade next year who have had access to a smartboard and various experiences on the netbooks, the majority will not even have a smartboard in their room next year. One entire class of students will not ever get to pick up the netbooks for another school year, simply because the teacher refuses to use them. In our society today, I truly believe students need more than 40 minutes a week in a computer lab learning how to type correctly on computers that are losing power left and right, and not being replaced. As a teacher who likes to integrate technology into my instruction, I can see a grant writing experience in my near future.
Lisa Durchik
The purpose of this blog is to help teachers get experience with what it feels and looks like to create a blog post or add comments to another person's blog posting.
2 comments:
Lisa - You are right, there is a digital divide just within many schools for the reasons you mentioned. That is quite disturbing to me, and I think it is the responsibility of the building leaders to find ways to remedy that. On the other hand, at least you are doing right by your students to give them early exposure to technology as a tool for learning. Lots of primary grade teachers think their students are too young to be able to do anything meaningful on computers. Of course, I don't think so, and you have proven it.
I loved the activity we did in class where we compared ourselves and where we fell on the digital divide. I know I had kept interrupting, but I really wanted to see whose county they belonged in, which were Title 1, etc. After we determined that information it was very interesting to hear where the money was coming from and how their school obtained certain funds. I now see that every child is not equal when it comes to educating them according to certain leaders. Who is to say that a certain population needs more funds than others. I guess I can see if a school is failing or trouble meeting "scores" and they need a boost of best strategies and practices that includes technology to help them along. However, being an opt-out school, I see both sides! I have a wide range of students varying in ability and economic background who need the same help as everyone else. It is almost as if they are the disadvantage because they are forced to learn by overhead and regular whiteboards. We are leaving them behind in this 21st century world because someone decided they didn't need it as much. Is this fair?
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