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=** Digital-Age Issues (Part 2) **= The following quote is from the article in //The Education Digest// (May 2005), Bridge the Digital Divide for Educational Equity by Christine Y. Mason and Richard Dodds. "For students without a connection at home, schools are the primary source of computer access and often the only place they can go online."

In the program where I work we have a computer lab that is accessible only to the participants who are eligible for the program. The students in the program are from low income families, or disabled, or are first generation college students. We recently received new computer equipment, but are in the process of waiting for the IT department at the university to install them. The campus has wireless capability and, of course, there are computers in the library and other areas on campus. The students report that they prefer not to use the library because are often distracted by others or they find the computers are in use. Some are commuters and may be working a part time job, so by the time they get ready to study our computer lab is closed. Many who live on campus cannot afford a personal computer, and those who commute may not be able to afford an internet connection at home. Often when the students use our lab they find the networked computers or the connection to be extremely slow and the single shared printer not working. This creates another barrier to overcome for our students who are already disadvantaged in other ways.

I agree with the authors when they state that "the inability to keep pace has created a digital divide that continues to widen." One sister program is trying to bridge the gap by allowing their students to borrow inexpensive mini-laptops for the entire semester. Another vocational school in the area issues PDA's to their students in order to keep in contact with their students and to allow them to receive messages from employers during their job search. Once the student is employed the PDA is returned to the school. In my opinion this is taking a student-centered approach and the costs involved from loss or damage would be less than having to purchase and maintain new PC's. If a school is the only place a student can gain computer access then the result will continue to be a greater divide in educational equity.

I agree with the author when he states "just as business practices changed with electronic resources, teaching practices will change." One thing I would like to see change in education is in the area of textbooks. Think how much money could be saved by tax-payers if schools did not have to purchase new textbooks but instead could use textbook software instead. It would also keep students from having to lug around textbooks from class to class. I know that schools have solved some of these issues by allowing students to have a set of books to use in the classroom and another to keep at home, but possibly they could afford to issue Netbooks to the students if they didn't have to purchase so many textbooks. Of course, working at a university I am keenly aware that textbooks are a business all their own.

I was employed by another agency that was initially state operated as well. The decision was made to privatize the services by the state contracting out the work. That meant that although I was working for a state agency, I was not a state employee and did not receive state benefits. As a result, there was a radical paradigm shift which occurred in the agency. In many ways it became much more customer focused and service oriented. The negative result was that most contractors were more interested in making a profit at the expense of the state than they were in keeping good employees. Imagine if this scenario were repeated in the public school system. Teachers are hard to attract now, but if their jobs were contracted out, like a business, they might risk being compensated even less than they are now. On the other hand, schools might become more competitive in attracting customers to take advantage of the products they have to offer. They would do whatever they could to have the latest tools and technology in order to attract students to enroll. This is already true in post-secondary education where we see schools attracting students with sports, recreational centers, as well as the latest technology.

Thinking about how the arrangement of computers in classrooms is evolving reminds me of a training that I attended this summer in New York City. The major part of the training revolved around using Web 2.0 technology and the facilitator showed us how to set up a classroom online and she sent a text message to my cell phone inviting me to join the class at a specific time. The online classroom had a live chat feature and the instructor could post her lesson presentation on the blackboard. Students were able to ask questions or make comments as needed. I thought about how this could be used in our schools by allowing team teachers to rotate among a larger group of students. Each teacher would only have to prepare and present one lesson but it could be presented to more than one class at a time if computers were available to the students. Possibly the same lesson could even be adapted for different grade levels.

Something else about the conference that caught my attention was the number of attendees who brought their laptops with them to take notes in the workshops. Much to my surprise this seems to be becoming the norm. As it turned out, we were assigned to work in groups and each group had to do a presentation to the entire group. The groups who had a member with a laptop prepared Powerpoint presentations with YouTube videos and all the bells and whistles. Talk about feeling at a disadvantage. My point is, not only are traditional classrooms changing, and computer labs disappearing, but all types of learning environments are changing.



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