The Digital Divide: It's Not All About Race and Money

When most of us hear the phrase "digital divide" we generally associate the phrase with the access and technology gap among students based on race and economics.  However, I've recently realized that there are two situations unrelated to race or economics that can create a digital divide within school buildings within a district.

 First, there are two schools in my own urban school district that have outfitted two Title I elementary schools with IPads.  One school has chosen to fully integrate technology and use it as an individual incentive for students to self regulate their own behavior.  As a result, student achievement at the school has gone up and surprisingly, discipline issues have been reduced by almost fifty percent.  The second school chose to eliminate technology use entirely for all students for an extended period of time because a few students violated the district's AUP.  Fortunately, technology use was restored after intervention by the area superintendent and parent complaints. In this instance, the digital divide was created by poor decision-making and administrators who failed to recognize the net effect of removing technology from the entire school.  Many of those students only had regular technology use at school.

Second, I was a parent volunteer at a magnet elementary school and every week I witnessed some students regularly using computers to perform computer based learning and research.  On the second floor in the same school I noticed other students never used computers other than the two weeks every quarter of a one hour technology class.  The students who used it all the time had teachers who were teck savvy and accepted the benefits technology offered to improve and supplement education.  The teachers for the non users did not make time or alter lesson plans to include technology.  They were typically not regular tech users or were afraid their students knew more than them.  Here, the digital divide was likely created by teachers based upon their own self efficacy.  The students with regular use are more likely to be better disciplined, be better students and more prepared for a 21st century education.

There are some matters within our control as individuals and as educators.    Each of us can have a lasting impact, positive or negative, on how students feel about technology.  Our goals should be to create as much positive exposure as possible and take school, education and learning beyond the hallways and walls of the school building.