The importance of the Internet in a 21st century education is a given. It is barely possible to do research without the Internet. The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, Black History, Latina History, pictures, videos, speeches—the main source of knowledge is no longer found in books, it’s found on the web.
We also know the digital divide is real. Recently, researchers from Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy presented an overview of their report on Digital Inclusion in San Francisco done with the Department of Technology and Information Services (DTIS). I won’t go in-depth here, but the findings are clear and pointed:
A digital divide does exist and clearly follows racial and economic lines. Significant gaps in libraries and technology centers are found in the neighborhoods where technology is least pervasive. A double whammy.
Without 24/7 connectivity as the norm, young people, especially students who dream of a college education, are at an overwhelming disadvantage. Material for high school exit exams and other standardized tests is in great abundance on the web, but try to locate offline help—it’s expensive, difficult to find, and often outdated. Entrance requirements and applications to college? Found on the web. Help and support for health issues? Found on the web.
Kids without access at home might get an hour online at school, maybe a couple of hours at the library. Not enough time to read or create blogs, wikis, podcasts, or RSS feeds; they won’t know VoIP, web 2.0, 3GP, MPEG-4, or any number of terms that are confusing now, but will be part of the lingua franca in five years. The scene plays out in obvious ways. Limited access to the Internet equals limited access to the information and inevitably limited access to the tools for success. It’s a no-brainer.
Look at the numbers and do the math: According to recent figures there are 58,216 students in San Francisco Unified School District, with a dropout rate of 23.6 percent, that translates roughly into 13,739 kids who never finish high school. How many of these kids wouldn’t have given up if they had been more connected, both figuratively and literally? If the dropout rate was even 10 percent, that’s almost 8,000 kids.
If we were talking to educators, we’d cite constructivism as the relevant educational philosophy. Constructivist framework says that knowledge and understanding is “constructed” or built using earlier knowledge. In the real world that philosophy translates into the truism: the present prepares you for the future. The corollary: no present knowledge, nothing to build on for the future.
Kids without access today won’t be part of the discourse tomorrow; they won’t have the background to build upon. Yet another lost generation—voices not heard, skills not developed, a generation not able to compete. And worse for us, a generation whose contributions will never come to fruition. This is in stark contrast to those students on the other side of the divide who are living with all manner of digital media devices. With access anywhere, anytime, success is theirs.
North Forest Independent School District (NFISD) in northeast Houston is noteworthy. In a district that is 95 percent economically disadvantaged and 100 percent of the students are on free or reduced lunches, they have tapped into ubiquitous wi-fi and developed a strong digital inclusion program. In doing so, they have connected their students to learning, their teachers to students, and have extended the classroom into the home by including parents in the educational experience. Files are shared, homework assignments are always available, and project-based learning is facilitated.
In this day and age it is nearly impossible to succeed in school, or in the economic realm, without ubiquitous access to the Internet. But more importantly, without access to the information and ideas it possesses, it’s modern day illiteracy. Those students will be able to get jobs at the local Home Depot, but not at Google.
