The Digital Divide can take many forms, apart from access to digital resources, one of these is about the level of ICT knowledge as it affects education.
Peña-López states “the digital divide in education – and especially as we move along and up the educational system until reaching university – is not a matter of physical access but a matter of digital skills and how competent students (and teachers) are at computer and Internet usage.” He discusses the types of digital skills needed including technological, information, media literacies and awareness.
A TES article mentions a Microsoft survey in which 6 out of 10 pupils reckon they know more about technology than their ICT teachers. The article suggests that in some aspects this may be true, but that teachers can help young people be more critical and give them the skills to understand the information they find.
I used to work for Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) developing educational software, at the time we viewed educational software as a tool which used digital resources to bridge the academic divide. We developed additional resources for learners and allowed people to find different ways of learning, perhaps more appropriate to their own learning style. LTS has been instrumental in developing GLOW, the intranet for Scottish education, it’s purpose: “Glow is transforming the way the curriculum is delivered in Scotland. It breaks down geographical and social barriers and provides the tools to ensure a first-class education for Scotland.”
Initiatives like GLOW, and good quality freely available resources, such as Wikipedia are good ways of bridging the digital divide in education. GLOW however is a closed environment (or walled garden) and schools in other countries can't access the resources developed for GLOW - creating another divide.
Of course, if all else fails in rural areas we could fall back on ferrets!
It is certainly an interesting issue. Most of the time now we talk about the 'net generation' or 'digital natives' that are immersed in ICT from an early age and so are all advanced users.
ReplyDeleteThis is not always the case and indeed very often groups of adult learners increasingly show themselves to be often as switched-on to ICT as the younger new-start students.
In rural areas certainly if one is to access Higher Education opportunties then ICT knowledge must be crucial. So if you do not have the ICT skills what do you do? - ECDL?
Is GLOW a Course Mangement System for schools like Blackboard for Higher Educations?....the question would be why create something new when Moodle (freeware) and Blackboard already exist?
For Higher Education in rural areas I guess the Open University still provide paper based courses, but I suspect that these days (it's a while since I completed one) internet access will be needed. Learning Centres also try to fill a gap and do provide courses like ECDL.
ReplyDeleteGLOW is more than Blackboard or moodle, but since it is closed it's hard to know what it is exactly. I know that in the early days it was planned that communities could be involved and use the resources provided, but I heard recently of complaints that communities were being excluded, and feel that they are missing out on access to publicly funded resources.
According to the Digital Economy Rankings 2010 (http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/EIU_Digital_economy_rankings_2010_FINAL_WEB.pdf) the use of ICT as a platform for building capacity in education services is an area where the emerging world is evolving faster than the developed world. I hope this helps for better digital inclusion and a comparative advantage for remote and rural areas
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