Addressing The Digital Divide

Education in our society is at a turning point. The academic achievement gap is real and keeps widening despite efforts to close it. The standardized approach seems to not have been enough. On top of it a new reality is developing, a digital divide. This divide threatens to solidify the economical structure by consolidating access and success around those who have access and excluding those who lack access. Access to what?

Modern societies are centered around our social lives. Language and culture, as we already know, are living things, human constructs that change shape constantly according to the social environment. In this arrangement literacy plays a major role. Being literate is equaled to being academically successful. But what is being literate? Evidently it transcends today the definition of knowing how to read and write. Today being literate is being able to use digital tools to construct and deconstruct meaning, to be able to make original and unique contributions to society, and to adapt to ever changing environments where communication reigns. To do so, of course, one must have access to the tools that facilitate it and, most importantly, have access to the educational support that enables our mind to construct around these tools. Do we all enjoy access equally?

Studies of online usage show that minorities are connecting to the net using mobile devices instead of computers. This has a huge impact on what they use the net for. The productivity of a mobile device is null, used mostly for viewing than for writing or transforming content. Computers have software that is used to create. This points to a growing divide. While this happens we know that mobile devices are banned in most schools so the usage is obviously not academic but rather social.

In schools the same trend seems to exist. Urban schools face budget constraints that make getting innovative technologies hard to get. Even the schools who get funds from external sources and invest in innovation are faced with technologies that teachers have not been trained to use. I have seen too many interactive whiteboards sitting in classrooms, never used. A five thousand dollar investment put to waste. Other classrooms use them as a projection screen, a very expensive one. This makes educational technology seem like a way to make companies rich, not a way to close the achievement gap.

Innovation happens regardless of all these factors. It happens because it needs to happen, not because a group wants it to be. As an educational technology specialist I assist learning organizations in decision making. Using budget allocations wisely is important for closing the gaps and divides that threaten our sustainability as a society. My recommendation is to always make informed decisions. Look at research and identify promising strategies and tools that have worked in similar conditions. Discard proven failures, why would they work here and now if consistently they haven't? Avoid pricey tags, education should not be for sale and is non profit in monetary terms. The only profit obtained from learning is the ability to make a contribution to the body of knowledge that will improve the living conditions of all. In the end, it is sometimes better to invest in what works for a specific community of learners than to invest in what promises to work without solid evidence.