Digital Divide or Digital Opportunity

Yeah. It is time for some critical things. Technology as a panacea for lifelong learning, economic competitiveness, and social exclusion? Some researchers do not think so. Most politicians and the public regard technology as a promise for common good, while critics question popular optimism and offer evidence of “digital divide.”  Basically, digital divide is defined as “a growing disparity between those individuals and communities that have and those that do not have easy access to new information technologies” (p. 261). Income is a highly significant factor determining individual’s access to IT, and a few studies have demonstrated widening inequalities in access to technology. Therefore, the same groups of people (e.g., the lower-class, women, or old residents) who have been excluded from educational opportunities are now also being blocked outside the promise land of technology.

From this perspective, the technological agenda is basically an economic agenda.  Expecting technology to solve everything ignores the grip of social institutions on people’s lives. When investigating the issue of technology use, be cautious not merely to divide subjects into users or non-users, but group them according to their level of access to technology. In addition, the quality and circumstantial nature of IT access as well as how technology is being used are worthy of further inquiry.

Society is too complicated for technology being a magic bullet to solve everything. Most social problems result from problematic social structure, and the elimination of them should start from structural change. We have tried to reform our school system in hopes of curing social illness but to no avail; now putting our hope again in technology to be the superman to save our society is anti-historical at all.     

Classroom Setup for Partnering Pedagogy

In Taiwan, the common setup of classrooms is parallel rows of desks and seats, which aims to send a message to students that obedience and respect for authority are two virtues they are expected to develop in school. When I was a student, I disliked never-ending lecture and sitting there taking notes all the time. I would like to see my classroom arranged in a way that facilitates cooperation, communication, and interaction. Before moving around desks and chairs, you should bear in mind that any setup is not supposed to be permanent. The arrangement depends on the purposes of different activities. Co-deciding with your students on the setup is an important step to show them that you are serious about partnering. 

I, for example, would choose inside horseshoe arrangement (figure 2.4) at the beginning of my class and post guiding questions (say, the pros and cons of using fossil oil) for my students to investigate individually or in groups with the help of computers. After 30 minutes, I would ask my students to rearrange their chairs into a circle (figure 2.3) so that they can face each other with a sense of equality and being respected, and start to share their own findings, while questioning others’. My role will be a mediator to facilitate children’s discussion and summarize and comment on their findings in the end.

Following are some figures offering you ideas about the possible arrangement of partnering model:








References
Prensky, M. (2010). Teaching digital natives: Partnering for real learning. London: Sage Publishers.

The Critical Study of Educational Technology

This author reflects on the last 25 years of educational technology literature and advocates for a critical inquiry into this field. Most researchers in this field used to devote themselves to the effective and better use of technology in educational setting, while ignoring the educational reality. That is, many efforts were spent on the exploration of the potential of educational technology without serious consideration of how social, political, economic, and cultural institutions impede technology’s flow into classroom. This paper aims to remind educational technologists to look at educational technology from a broader perspective and to uncover power, resistance, and conflicts hidden in the social milieu of techonogy use. 

If you have read the article “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, you must have the idea of the differentiation of curriculum working in different schools serving children from different social classes. You might as well connect her article with this one and think about the possibility that educational technology may reproduce, instead of alleviating, in school the unequal relationship of our society. Certain schools, especially those for elite students, are allocated more monetary and technological resources to enact their dream classroom of 21st century. However, for lower-class schools educational technology may be only a theoretical promise, not a reality happening every day.   

Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

http://cuip.uchicago.edu/~cac/nlu/fnd504/anyon.htm

     

Podcasting and Vodcasting

Podcasts and vodcasts are really powerful tools to enrich curriculum and accomplish social justice in education. You cannot help but come up with various ideas to engage children with them. Educators now are able to get rid of the monotonous ways of teaching with the addition of audio and visual impacts. Students with disability can have access to educational resources from a local place to the whole world, which are not limited to written forms anymore. The power of educational technology is that students are not given the same things, but they can get as much as they want from the Net so that those who lag behind in the first place can catch up and have an equal opportunity to become successful in school and, later, in their lives.

Another important notion about podcasting and vocasting is that they challenge traditional definition of literacy, which used to emphasize on written-linguistic modes of meaning. Are you ready to embrace other modes of literacy practices by your students: audio, visual, and spatial semiotic systems? Are they allowed to submit their homework in various forms so that pluriliteracy practices are affirmed in your class and multiple intelligences are treated as equally valuable?

When knowledge is legitimatized to be displayed only in certain form, it automatically becomes hegemony suppressing other ways of understanding this world, which, in return, strips certain groups of people of their right to participate in knowledge production.   

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