The Gap (not the store) :)

Long, C (2008, March). Mind the gap. NEA Today, [26 (6)], Retrieved March 15, 2008, from http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0803/digitaldivide.html

This is a great article! I actually first read this article in the “NEA Today” magazine I get each month, then searched for it online so that I could post it for everyone to read on here.

This article is specific to the United States and how the digital divide, or “gap” as they call it, effects students across different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. This article caught my attention right away because it starts out by describing a 16 year old boy who has his own computer and is online all the time, chatting, watching or posting videos, updating his blog, and many other things. Much like what most of us do all the time J! Then, it goes right into the exact opposite side of the spectrum. The article then goes on to describe a boy who has to drive 40 miles to get to a community center, so that he can use the internet for do research on colleges and students loans. How crazy is that! Most of us reading this probably couldn’t even imagine not having a computer in our own house and having to go to the library to use one. Let alone having to drive 40 miles to get there! Right away, this article hit the nail on the head with how the digital divide effects our students every day. We, as teachers with constant internet access, may not really realize the intensity of these effects on our students. Are they really getting hit harder by the divide than even we realize? YES!
What are some of the differences between students who have internet access readily available and those who don’t? “Students with round-the-clock; high-speed Internet access have more opportunity not only to be content consumers, but also content creators with a global audience – they have the chance to be ‘publishers, movie makers, artists, song creators, and story tellers’ ”(Rainie, as cited in Long, 2008). As you can see, there are HUGE differences between students who use technology and students who don’t. What really makes me sad, is that I don’t think the students who don’t get to use technology every day, even know what they are missing out on. They feel like they are fine just the way they are, and they really don’t know what their life would be like with constant internet access. We, as avid internet users, know that their life would be more informed, enlightened, and would span across more areas then just the small towns they live it. They would become more cultured, well-rounded individuals with a broader knowledge base to take with them on their future conquests.
“The more opportunity young people have to play around online, the more their experience and comfort with technology grows. They’re becoming digital innovators who will increasingly integrate technology into their everyday lives and use it to shape the future” (Long, 2008). Isn’t that what we want for our students? Don’t we want to better prepare them for the future and give them the tools they need so that they can go out into the real world and be successful? That is definitely our job! A teacher in today’s world needs to prepare his or her students technologically, if they want them to be successful in the future. That is what our world revolves around and it’s going to continue to be that way for years to come.

“Technology is too big a part of our world for kids to now know the most simple stuff, …that’s where you find the gap – it’s where kids can’t go online to just mess around, find stuff, explore. Kids want to know about technology. They want to know how it all works and what it can do. It’s everywhere, it’s the future” (Long, 2008).