Integrating Technology and Creating Change
What are "digital inequality" and the "participatioin gap"?
Digital inequality, a term used in discussing the digital divide, is the idea that access to the latest computer technology varies greatly within society. Low-income and non-white Americans are less likely to be able to afford and use the newest tools. This perspective holds that simply adding more machines to homes or schools will not, in and of itself, address differences in access to technology among different social groups.
A participation gap is a term by Henry Jenkins (professor at Massachusetts Insitute of Technology) used to describe the idea that students who can access technology only through the public library or a school computer, will fall behind their online peers in skill and competencies, compared to students who have 24/7 access.
Tech Tool Link
http://www.edutopia.org/adopt-and-adapt
Edutopia was a website I found to be a really good one. This website allows teachers from around the country to share their experiences as well as shares useful videos to help with the lesson planning process and the actual lesson itself. It also talks about how to adapt to the new ways of technology and slowly let go of the old ways. We all know that pretty soon, most of everything is going to be electronic. This website, I believe, would be very useful as a teacher to get new ideas and share experiences we have had with technology integration in the classroom.
Summary and Connection
I feel that chapter 4 was very good at explaning how we need to adapt to the new technology that is being introduced in the classrooms every day. It is going to be necessary for everyone going into the field to know about how to integrate this way of teaching into their lessons. As a digital native, I won't be having a problem adapting, but I know that once I start teaching, there will be teachers that have been in the profession for so long that they feel the old ways are just fine. I hope to teach them a little bit about how fun and interesting it is to integrate technology. The students as well as the teacher will benefit from this.
Remember to answer a chapter focus question with meaningful reflection and not just recitation for future. For example, is there a difference then between digital gap and participation gap and if so which one will have more future impact? And you will want to be sure to hyperlink on text, not on the URL to make it more readable and cleaner!
ReplyDeleteYour observations in the summary are good - Sometimes I think the digital natives, though, still have difficulties with technology integration because they still want to teach the way they learned....