DIGITAL DISCONNECT
Doug Levin’s group sums up the core issue in, “The Digital Disconnect: The widening gap between Internet-savvy students and their schools,” with the following sentence. Simply, “Internet-savvy students are coming to school with different expectations, different skills, and access to different resources.”
I believe that like all other instructional tools, student use of the Internet differs from teacher’s intentions or expectations. I guess what I am trying to say is that students find innovative, sometime ingenious, ways to apply the latest tools for both academic and non academic purposes. To some regard, student use of the Internet far exceeds schools and teachers’ defined guidelines. Students have, taking blocks and filters into account, direct access to a wider scope of information, content, images, and other material faster, in many regards anonymously.
The discourse of digital divide between students and teachers is not a subject that is entirely unfamiliar, nor is it new. Less than a generation ago, a similar debate surrounded calculator use in class and on tests. Some may argue that this example is a stretch, however, consider the facts. Schools and teachers integrate something new in the lesson plan, or introduce their students to a new technology. In most cases, it is to enhance learning. However, through exposure outside the school, many students are already familiar with the tool or technology.
The schools and teachers learn at the same time students pick it up from the outside. And since the student grape vine is more transparent than the opaque school communication system, the student outpaces the instructor’s learning curve. Of course, there is always that one teacher, tech-guru, who knows more than everyone. But, that is beside the point.
I think it is cool, cost effective, and makes common sense that students become Internet-savvy. It develops critical job and life skills. By doing different education-related work, they build on these skills. Also cool is that, students employ the Internet as a textbook and reference, tutor, virtual study group, guidance counselor, and storage (locker, backpack, and notebook).
To address the issue that, “schools and teachers have not yet recognized—much less responded to—the new ways students communicate and access information over the Internet,” maybe the grown-ups can conduct focus groups and collaborate with the students and integrate a dynamic lesson plan suitable, as well as appropriate to students. This would seem to make sense, at least to me since according to the authors of the article, “Students’ experiences, and those of their states, districts, schools, teachers, and parents, strongly affect how the Internet is adopted in schools.”
This is a very interesting article. More interesting to learn, would be how school and teachers reconcile the digital divide between teachers and students.
I believe that like all other instructional tools, student use of the Internet differs from teacher’s intentions or expectations. I guess what I am trying to say is that students find innovative, sometime ingenious, ways to apply the latest tools for both academic and non academic purposes. To some regard, student use of the Internet far exceeds schools and teachers’ defined guidelines. Students have, taking blocks and filters into account, direct access to a wider scope of information, content, images, and other material faster, in many regards anonymously.
The discourse of digital divide between students and teachers is not a subject that is entirely unfamiliar, nor is it new. Less than a generation ago, a similar debate surrounded calculator use in class and on tests. Some may argue that this example is a stretch, however, consider the facts. Schools and teachers integrate something new in the lesson plan, or introduce their students to a new technology. In most cases, it is to enhance learning. However, through exposure outside the school, many students are already familiar with the tool or technology.
The schools and teachers learn at the same time students pick it up from the outside. And since the student grape vine is more transparent than the opaque school communication system, the student outpaces the instructor’s learning curve. Of course, there is always that one teacher, tech-guru, who knows more than everyone. But, that is beside the point.
I think it is cool, cost effective, and makes common sense that students become Internet-savvy. It develops critical job and life skills. By doing different education-related work, they build on these skills. Also cool is that, students employ the Internet as a textbook and reference, tutor, virtual study group, guidance counselor, and storage (locker, backpack, and notebook).
To address the issue that, “schools and teachers have not yet recognized—much less responded to—the new ways students communicate and access information over the Internet,” maybe the grown-ups can conduct focus groups and collaborate with the students and integrate a dynamic lesson plan suitable, as well as appropriate to students. This would seem to make sense, at least to me since according to the authors of the article, “Students’ experiences, and those of their states, districts, schools, teachers, and parents, strongly affect how the Internet is adopted in schools.”
This is a very interesting article. More interesting to learn, would be how school and teachers reconcile the digital divide between teachers and students.
posted by Raymond Kram at 10:45 PM
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