Digital Inequality

The last couples weeks has focused on the concepts of Digital Divide and Digital Inequality.  I chose to focus more on the Inequality concept because it seemed to relate more to my school district.  A little background information of the school is that it is a rural county school with many students living on high acreage farm land. Due to that simple fact internet access is limited to mainly satellite internet which  prohibits the streaming of videos and uploading or downloading files.  As a school district we have had 15 new teachers introduced in the last 2 years myself included. Other than about 10 teachers that have been around for ten plus years everyone else is just starting their 4-6th year in the district.

Throughout the week I learned that there are several factors that affect the inequality of technology.  The three that I focused on was location or family life of the students, the teachers, and  I looked at our training or professional developments. I found that over half of the district is on free or reduced lunch, have limited access to the internet at home, and about one fourth of the student body lives with their grandparents. Investigating fellow teachers I was caught by surprise.  I may have stereotyped that older teachers would be unwilling, out-dated with current technology, or refuse to change their teaching strategies.  What I actually learned was that it was more or less departmental than age that affected technology use.  For instance, Mathematics, science, and vocational departments are continually testing new technologies to implement into the classroom.  One that my chemistry, communication technology colleagues and myself started experimenting with is called Aurasma.  The application allows the user to upload an image to the website. Additionally, a video or other digital content can be added to that particular image. Placing that image anywhere and someone with Aurasma on their phone or tablet, following you, can then hold the camera over the image and receive the digital content you added.  It's a new fun way to help students who are scared to ask for help.  By placing different images on worksheets they can scan those images and receive a video of a quick review over that specific topic or a receive a quick tip to solve problems. It's a fun way to engage the students and interact with them.  The other side of the coin is the English, humanities departments are set in their teaching strategies.  Some seem to be willing to incorporate the technology as long as they don't have to do anything out of the ordinary.  They don't like to change their lesson plans around.

Finally, there is the need for training. If we were to incorporate new technology into the classroom we need to utilize the technology committee.  This committee has to be proactive in finding new technologies that are engaging and easy to use. They need to hold a training session and be available throughout the day to answer questions about the technology. I've found that teachers will implement technology as long as some one is around that can help them get use to the new platform. People tend to give up when they are frustrated that something isn't going the way they expected it too.

If you're interested in more information or a video walkthrough of Aurasma just let me know and I'll gladly add a video.

Below is my presentation.