Digital Divide
Internet Access for All: A New Program Targets Low-Income Students
Getty Technology has often been called a democratizer in education, allowing students from all backgrounds to access the same resources and tools. Others see potential for technology to do great harm, widening an already substantial achievement gap related to issues of equity. Access to technology costs money and some fear lower-income schools and students will [...]
For Low-Income Kids, Access to Devices Could Be the Equalizer
No device should ever be hailed as the silver bullet in “saving” education — nor should it be completely shunned — but when it comes to the possibility of bridging the digital divide between low-income and high-income students, devices may play a pivotal role. Access to the Internet connects kids to all kinds of information [...]
Bridging the Digital Divide in Rural Schools
By Sarah Butrymowicz By Sarah Butrymowicz Surrounded by farmland and ranches, Colorado’s Edison School sits off an unpaved road, with tumbleweeds blowing across its dirt parking lot. As recently as a few years ago, many families relied on solar or wind power instead of electricity; today, many still haul home their water from wells. Principal [...]
Can the Flipped Classroom Benefit Low-Income Students?
By Sarah Butrymowicz When Portland, Ore., elementary school teacher Sacha Luria decided last fall to try out a new education strategy called “flipping the classroom,” she faced a big obstacle. Flipped classrooms use technology—online video instruction, laptops, DVDs of lessons—to reverse what students have traditionally done in class and at home to learn. Listening to [...]
Students Demand the Right to Use Technology in Schools
We’ve heard arguments from ed tech experts about how using technology for learning may in fact deepen the divide between wealthy and low-income kids. Students who have access to technology and are encouraged by teachers and parents to leverage it for new ways of learning, the argument goes, will leap even further ahead than low-income [...]
For At-Risk Youth, is Learning Digital Media a Luxury?
For schools in low-income communities, the idea of investing money, time, and energy into a digital media program or mobile-learning program might seem superfluous. Administrators and teachers already have so much to contend with — safety issues in high-crime communities, chronic student truancies, debilitating health issues due to poverty, families in constant state of flux, [...]
Ignore the Potential of Mobile Learning, Risk Widening the Digital Divide
From S. Craig Watkins’ blog The Young and The Digital. In the following post, Watkins talks about how he’s witnessing these trends in his field work. By S. Craig Watkins During a recent research related visit to New York City I decided to take a stroll down 125th Street in Harlem. Among the assortment of [...]
What Exactly Can You Learn on a Mobile Phone?
The mobile phone has been lauded as a tool with the potential to close the digital divide between the haves and have-nots. But what type of learning is best suited for a small mobile device?
How Do We Address the Needs of Kids Without Mobile Access?
Flickr:Shlala The $64,000 question in education: Does access to mobile technology actually help close the achievement gap? Bill Ferriter, a sixth-grade teacher in North Carolina, has been thinking about this issue, and writing about it on his blog, The Tempered Radical. In this recent post, he addresses a question from one of his readers, who [...]
Can Video Games Help Close the Digital Divide?
Applying African-American boys’ passion for sports video games toward building confidence in a learning environment. This fascinating article by Liz Losh on Digital Media & Learning looks at how video games as learning motivator can be a completely different experience for different cultures. A recent report on educational achievement among young black males describes a [...]
Follow MindShift