MPS Reading Consultant Vanessa Lamb recently forwarded a really thought-provoking article to me published in eSchool News about a new digital divide that exists in education and is widening as a result of some schools’ using technology in forward-thinking ways while others simply make it available to students and staff.
Here are a few snippets:
“According to William Rust, research director for the IT research and consulting firm Gartner, there is a new digital divide occurring in schools. Whereas this divide used to refer to whether or not students had access to technology, now it concerns whether schools are using technology effectively to achieve results.”
“Citing a report by Ian Jukes and Anita Dose of the InfoSavvy Group, Rust said digital native learners prefer (1) receiving information quickly and from multiple resources; (2) parallel processing and multitasking; (3) processing pictures, sounds, and video before text; (4) random access to hyperlinked multimedia information; and (5) interacting and networking simultaneously with many others. ‘The biggest shift we’re seeing right now is student preference shifting from print to digital resources,’ Rust noted. ‘It’s all about the web.'”
Click on the link above to read more. You’ll have to register for free to read the article in its entirety.
Equally thought-provoking is this recent blog post about the future of our schools from Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed. His is one of the best blogs concerning education that I’ve come across to date.
Regardless of whether you read both pieces or just the snippets above, I encourage you to leave your thoughts by posting a comment by clicking on the “Comments” link at the bottom of this post. I look forward to hearing what Madison teachers have to say about the role technology should play in our classrooms, and I think this’ll be a good venue for a variety of perspectives to be voiced and heard.
Mike,
I agree that there’s a “digital divide,” but it’s not just between the schools that use technology to the fullest and those that don’t. It’s also evident between the generations, as in between students and staff. Our students are SO digitally literate, it’s encumbent on us adult staffers to keep up! I am delighted to see those among us who are embracing technology, especially the number of “blogging staffers” we now have in our district!
Hi Mike,
I am always intrigued by the advances in technology and its seemingly endless potential in the world of education. Since I am not a “child of the digital age,” it takes me a little longer sometimes to catch on or keep up. However, I look forward to the continued technology PD opportunities to help close the gap. I intend to investigate the possibility of conducting a podcast with another CT school district, and I’m really interested in digital storage for the myriad of assessment data I keep. Here’s to narrowing the divide!