I substitute taught in Pittsburgh for nearly three years starting back in 2011.  I mention this because while reading Yardi & Bruckman and Warschauer & Matuchniak, I was brought back to the days of teaching one day in the inner city, and the next in the suburbs.

When teaching in the city, I noticed that teachers were lucky if they had a very (very) old desktop in their rooms (let alone enough chairs or books).  While in the suburbs, teachers had personal laptops, students had access to laptop carts, and some even had started to integrate 1-to-1 devices (mostly ipads).

I remember thinking to myself – “How, can two schools 10 minutes away from each other be so different”?

Now that I teach for an online school, the access to technology is more uniform (although some of my students also have personal phones while others do not), but I still notice the wide variety of technical abilities among my 10th-grade students.  For some – I can spend days (DAYS) trying to get them to make and share correctly a Google folder, or worse, trying to explain to them how to just open a new tab or right click with their touchpad.  Don’t even get me started on explaining to them how important it is that they actually put their work in said folder, use a dropboxes, or how to copy and paste..

While others are comfortable writing code, probably know more about technology than I ever will, and are already bored when I am showing how to do these simple things the first time.

I knew that some of my students struggled more than others, and I, of course, noticed patterns in their SES, etc., but it was very interesting to see in print the research that has been conducted on the digital divide in relation to these variables.  So I really liked the point that was made in the Warschauer & Matuchniak reading, when they said that  “the most important technology discrepancies in U.S. schools are not in whether computers and the Internet are used, but for what purpose,” (20).  They went on to say that “the original digital divide is largely resolved, at least in the United States. Today the digital divide resides in differential ability to use new media to critically evaluate information, analyze, and interpret data, attack complex problems, test innovative solutions, manage multifaceted projects, collaborate with others in knowledge production, and communicate effectively to diverse audiences—in essence, to carry out the kinds of expert thinking and complex communication that are at the heart of the new economy,” (30).

One of my goals as an online teacher is to help guide all of my students to use their devices to explore learning opportunities on their own.  This year, in particular, I’m focusing on helping my students think outside of the content presented and to use their devices to look deeper into the content and pursue learning outside of what is just “given” to them.

Of the two readings, I was more drawn to the study conducted by Yardi & Bruckman.  I feel that their findings were perhaps more current, since restrictions, rules, expectations etc. may be more easy to research over a period of time, while technology access itself and use are more likely to continue to improve.

I really related to the survey portion, since part of my job is calling my students and their parents on a very regular basis.  I find that when I call, some parents are very aware of what their child is doing on their computers during the day while others just assume that if the computer is open, they’re working “on school.”  I always find this interesting and really enjoyed the findings discovered in this study.

The two readings we had this week got me thinking about cyber schools and how they may or may not be helping this new digital “learning” divide.  Here are a few additional resources I discovered.

Higher Ed Findings:

https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/08/16/is-online-education-widening-the-digital-divide/

Traditional Brick and Mortar: http://neatoday.org/2016/04/20/the-homework-gap/

Edutopia had a great list of further resources on this topic that cover a variety of contexts! https://www.edutopia.org/digital-divide-technology-access-resources

Yardi, S., & Bruckman, A. (2012). Income, race, and class: exploring socioeconomic differences in family technology use. In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3041-3050). ACM.

Warschauer, M., & Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds. (pages 179 through 225).