As I have been struggling to set up a blog, something that to many is as really as easy as turning your computer on and as I have been reading the course material. I have began to think about the issues relating to equity of access to the technologies and learning we are beginning to expect as part of our extended classroom learning.
Already in the school I work in students are expected to access information about the school and classroom via the web. I just wonder if we are going back to a time when not all students have the tools available to them to access all learning. Are we therefore beginning to marginalise some students? Is this related to economic background, cultural importance, gender, ability/skill level of the caregive etc.?
I think educators are beginning to make the assumption that everybody has equal access to a computer in their homes which just isn't true. If there is a computer available, in reality it may be used for a whole host of reasons and the student may have no or very limited access to it. This may have the effect that some students are moving ahead faster. An example of this is mathletics. A web based maths program used in my school. The teacher sets tasks for the week which student are intended to do in class. They need to complete this before they can use live mathletics which helps students with instant recall of basic facts. Some student who have free access to computers at home, complete all tasks before Monday, even before the teacher has the opportunity to discuss it with them. Other students need to use all their computer time in maths sessions to try and complete the activities. Therefore staying behind!
20th April 2010
I did a survey on my class recently and was astonished to discover the following.
20% of students had as much access to the household computer as was necessary for school purposes.
36% had to share the time available to sibling who were studying for exams in colleges and they appoximated that they had the computer 50% of the time they would like it when doing school based activites such as mathletics or knowledge.net.
28% of students had very limited access to the household computer when doing school based activities.
The remaining 16% of students had no computers in the home and therefore no access to it to complete school-based activities.
This added to my concern that some students will be marginalise due to the lack of techologies in the home and that we as educators need to be fully aware of this so that we can address the gaps.
