As part of topic 2.3 for ELT523 we were asked to do some online searches regarding the digital divide. This is a topic that I have already looked at as part of ETL401 Introduction to Teacher Librarianship so was familiar with the general concepts and how we have moved on from the ‘haves and have nots’ to the ‘can dos and can’t dos’.
We were asked to look for articles examining the digital divide in schools and what policies are in place to bridge this gap looking at other countries as well to see what they are doing.
I found a few interesting articles on the topic of the digital divide in Australia including:
- Sora Park – Digital inequalities in rural Australia: A double jeopardy of remoteness and social exclusion which highlights that rural areas in Australia are still digitally disadvantaged because of lack of internet connectivity and lack of adoption but that they are not the only ones, there are also inner city areas “that experience similar digital inequalities due to the lack of resources and skills”
- Brett Henebery – How schools can bridge the ‘digital divide’ which notes the importance of teachers keeping up to date
- Australian Association for Research in Education – ‘Click Bait’ hijacks the real story about technology in schools which notes there is much good news about technology in Australian schools, students are doing tech well, however “connectivity in many schools is still far from ideal”, and while the Digital Education Revolution (DER) was not perfect it did place technology in the hands of students who wouldn’t have otherwise afforded it
However there seems to be limited information out there on how my state (NSW) is bridging the digital divide in schools. There seems to be a number of articles addressing the digital divide for seniors, but not much on schools. Are we to believe that schools are not experiencing the digital divide? The latest paper by the NSW Government I could find online was written in 2010 One-to-One Computers in Schools 2010 Literature Review.
So it seems to me, that at the moment schools are not a focus area for creating digital equality. It would seem that now the government has put in resources, in the form of hardware, into schools and it is now up to teachers to work out how best to use them.
This leads me to think about what my schools responsibility is in terms of addressing the digital divide. I work in a school classified as ‘low socio-economic’, we were recently informed that 47% of our parents have been unemployed for over 12 months. We know lap tops and computers are not prevalent in student homes. So it is up to the school to help bridge the digital divide. Our students are great at using the devices they do have to play games and stream video, but they are not great at harnessing the internet to find, produce and publish content. As educators we need to teach our students the skills required to be digitally fluent and give them plenty of opportunities to practice these skills. We need to use digital learning environments to teach our students.
References:
Australian Association for Research in Education (2015) ‘Click Bait’ hijacks the real story about technology in schools [Blog Post] Retrieved from https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?tag=technology-in-australian-schools
Henebery, B (2015) How schools can bridge the digital divide The Educator Ausralia Retrieved from https://www.theeducatoronline.com/au/news/how-schools-can-bridge-the-digital-divide/206493
Park, S. (2017) Digital inequalities in rural Australia: A double jeopardy of remoteness and social exclusion Journal of Rural Studies (54), 399-407 retrieved from https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0743016715300693?via%3Dihub
