Bridging the Digital Divide

Before I read these two articles about the digital divide in public schools, I imagined the "divide" meant that low-income schools in urban areas had little to no access to technology, so their students performed poorly, compared to high-income schools with lots of technology.  Parts of my initial understanding were true; low-income schools do not have access to as much technology as high income schools.  And low-income students are often identified as needing remedial help on state/national exams.

However, the most important thing I learned about the digitial divide is that the "divide" has nothing to do with how much technology students are exposed to.  Minority students in low-income schools have laptops and cellphones, and use them often.  No, the "divide" has to do with the type of technology these low-income schools are given.  Furthermore, just because kids are given remedial computer programs to raise test scores doesn't mean those programs will work!  Computers do not euqal amazing performance. 

They can, if computer programs are used in tandem with excellent instruction from a competent teacher.

As Alec MacGillis writes in his article Law, Softward Fuel 'Digital Divid', "When students are drilled over and over on the same standards that they're going to be tested on, skeptics say, one would expect that their scores would go up somewhat. What is more important is whether the software is benefiting students in ways that will stick after the tests are done" (Macgillis).

If a bad teacher is drilling students on testing materials, it doesn't mean the students will score higher because they were drilled over and over again.  Students will score higher if an exceptional teacher is drilling them, and hopefully, teaching them some useful reading, writing, and math skills along the way they can use after the test is over.  The same rule applies to technology.  It's not enough to give a school millions of dollars to use a computer program if that program is ineffective and not backed by research.     

In her article Understanding the New Digital Divide, Mary Beth Hertz explains the Divide can be understood if we consider the kind of access students have to technology, not whether they have access at all.  So as teachers, we need to be wary of any remedial programs that come our way.  Just because it's been funded by millions of dollars and promoted around the district does not mean it will help our students.  Schools and teachers should not be so "desperate," as MacGillis describes, to get our kids in front of computers because we want to raise test scores.  There is no substitute for excellent, hands-on teaching.  One excerpt from MacGillis' article really struck me:

"At one station, a student from an eighth-grade special-needs class was doing an exercise on identifying the roots of words, a skill included in New Jersey's state content standards. The exercise was dressed up as a baseball game: a word appeared on a base on a diamond, and the boy, the "batter," had to choose one of four words that described the meaning of the word's root. The word "missile" appeared on first base. Confused, the boy clicked on the "help" icon, and was told by the computer that the root of "missile" means "send." But he didn't understand that he was being given the answer, and instead clicked on a wrong choice, "miss." The program proceeded to the next example anyway: "dictation" appeared on second base. Again, the boy clicked for help, which told him the nswer was "say." This time he realized he was being given the answer, and he dutifully picked that choice. The program congratulated him: He had hit a double! Despite the boy's troubles, he wasn't about to get any help from his teacher, Sharae Huff. She was watching the class from a distance, holding back from approaching those who were stuck. For Huff, the Compass period was a time to let someone else - the computer - do the teaching."

We can't allow computer programs to do the teaching for us!  Technology should be used to enhance teaching, not take the place of it. 

Don't even get me started on standardized testing and the pressure it puts on school systems.  Or on its ability to waste months of meaningful teaching time.  If this country weren't so focused on getting those "great" scores, the digitial divide would be easier to bridge.