Week 2 Digital Divide
After doing more research and thinking about digital divides in my building, I have decided to focus on digital skills instead of access. I want to focus on the digital skills of teachers and how that can be addressed to support the highest level of skills for our students. This would fit with the second level of divide, skills and usage which are determinants of the use of technology especially for more creative use (van de Werfhorst et al., 2022).
This gets me into the "dividing factors" of my community members. "Dividing factors" refer to the challenges that prevent communities from accessing, using, or benefiting from digital technologies. My community does not have an access barrier. According to the Digital Divide Index (DDI) my county which I teach in has a low divide because even though I teach in a rural community, our county has a major urban area (Gallardo, 2022). We have solid infrastructure, with Wi-Fi being available to students and community members and our school provides computers to take home for students in grades 6-12. Our town is a "smart-town" meaning there is Wi-Fi available all throughout the center of town. This helps those who do not have internet at home. However, even though access is available one of the "dividing factors" is acceptance and trust. Some of our students and community members do not trust the information presented on the internet and therefore do not allow their students to access it. My community can also struggle with accepting that times have and are changing to where technology use is a necessity to function in the 21st century. The other dividing factor in my community is ability. We have students, teachers, and community members a like who have differing abilities with technology. Most who struggle with technology use are okay struggling with technology use and do not want to learn how to use it properly. Therefore, it can be difficult to teach them and get them excited to use technology. van de Werfhorst et al., 2022, supports the idea that it is important for schools to act as "compensatory agents," where we can mitigate inequalities between individual students because (my school in particular) does not need to focus on an access divide (p. 3). This means we can use technology to close the gap between students if we know how to use it properly.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced us educators to quickly digitalize our educational process and demanded us to teach in an online environment. This put a lot of pressure on the educators in my community as well as students and parents. Parents were scrambling to get internet set up at home. Teachers were in a hurry digitalizing their materials and students were finding out how to learn through a screen. The findings that students who came from lower SES environments and are males have lower skills than those who come from higher SES and females is one thing to keep in mind when designing online instruction (van de Werfhorst et al., 2022, p. 14). One thing that was surprising to learn as a teacher was that there was not significant difference in digital learning environments at schools for students of varying SES. One thing I would be interested in is the study did not tell us how COVID and school closures impacted the education of different students. In the future it would be nice to see how COVID impacted the digital divide of students and the consequences of the digital inequalities.
Gallardo, R. (2022). The State of the Digital Divide in the United States. Retrieved from: https://pcrd.purdue.edu/the-state-of-the-digital-divide-in-the-united-states/
van de Werfhorst, H.G., Kessenich, E., & Geven, S. (2022). The digital divide in online education: Inequality in digital readiness of students and schools. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9435462/pdf/main.pdf
Hello Claire,
ReplyDeleteYou identified specific issues regarding trust, willingness to accept, and differences in technical ability in your specific community. These are concerns that I also experience in my own environment in adult education, where we develop tech training content for KC-135 aircrew trainees. As with your observation about teachers not being tech-savvy, we find that low digital literacy on the part of our instructors offers gaps in teaching and learning outcomes.
This aligns with the observation that digital skills and use are based on socioeconomic and demographic factors, as identified in the literature (Werfhorst et al., 2022). In our two different communities, the issue is not simply access but also ability and confidence in effectively utilizing technology. Just as your school is closing gaps between students, we seek to close the teaching gap by providing instructors with tools and support. But just as in your illustration, when teachers don't know how to adjust or lack the appropriate competencies, it becomes difficult to integrate technology into education, and training to its potential. This shared concern underlines the need for teachers to upgrade their competencies. This would better enable them to utilize technology in instruction with confidence.
References:
van de Werfhorst, H.G., Kessenich, E., & Geven, S. (2022). The digital divide in online education: Inequality in digital readiness of students and schools. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9435462/pdf/main.pdf
Claire- I enjoyed reading your blog. I felt as if it was very similar to my community and the challenges that are faced. I look forward to reading your call to action plan.
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