Title Slide: Digital Divide- Socioeconomic Impact on Educational Technology

My name is Jeff St. Andre, I am the Director of Technology at City View ISD in Wichita Falls, Texas. My district is almost 70% economically disadvantaged and also resides in an area that could be described as both urban and rural. I see issues relating to the digital inequality daily. Divide is, by definition, "to separate into parts, groups, sections, etc." ("Dictionary.com," n.d.). Inequality is, by definition, "the condition of being unequal; lack of equality; disparity" ("Dictionary.com," n.d.). Considering these definitions, it is my opinion, that these two terms are almost interchangeable, as our current issues relating to access to information are fueled by both geographic and socioeconomic factors.

The reality in todays K-12 landscape is that there are both geographic and socioeconomic factors that create difficulties in closing the "digital divide." I will visit some of these factors, giving some examples of what I have seen, moving forward through this presentation and give some of my thoughts on how my district has begun to move towards a more connected future.

Factor 1: Culture and Expectations

Coming from a district that has a very high percentage of low-income families, I can see a mentality that has been built that says "Only 10% of our students are going to pursue post-secondary education." This outcome is accepted year after year and everyone seems to just expect it. Why? The only feasible reason that I can see is that it has always been this way, and indeed, the statistics for our district show that. This mentality also leads to a feeling that 21st century skills are not as important as just passing the tests to graduate for the other 90%.

My question is this, if these statistics are built on this cultural mindset, what can we as educators do to help create a paradigm shift that will lead to systemic change?

Factor 2: Limited Access to Resources

My district has students that have no access to high-speed internet at home, for geographic or financial reasons. This is a large problem globally. There are rural areas that physically do not have access to high-speed internet. At the same time, there are families, both urban and rural, that can not afford to pay $20 per month for internet access. As technology becomes more ubiquitous and cellular coverage continues to grow, the number of people without any internet access at home has fallen greatly since the year 2000("ICT Facts and Figures," 2015), but those households that don't have any access still exist. For many of these homes, the only access to technology that the children have is at school. How do we prepare unconnected students for a connected future?

Factor 3: Technology Inequality and Bullying

The biggest indicator of digital inequality can be found in our students pocket. The number of students in my district that have a smartphone is higher than the number of students that have high-speed broadband access in their home. For most students, their cellphone is their only access to the internet outside of school. That being said, not all of our students have cellphones. This is one of the one of my problems with the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement that was so popular 4-5 years ago. Our (City View ISD) students come from a wide socioeconomic background. Their device is perceived as a status symbol, just like their house, family car, and clothes. If we implement a BYOD program, there would inevitably be kids that come to class with the newest iPhone, iPad, or Macbook and there would be another group of students that have their parent's 5 year old flip-phone or no technology at all. What we are left with is the have and the have nots. It does not take much imagination to predict that this inequality would lead to even more bullying than what is already prevalent in the our current K-12 environment.

What can we do?

When we look at the factors that help propagate this idea of digital inequality, it is my opinion that there are things that we can do and new emerging technologies that allow us, at least locally, to begin closing the "Digital Divide".

The advent of low-cost technology makes a 1-to-1 initiative a much more realistic proposition in public schools now than it was even 5 years ago. My district is in the first year of a 1-to-1 Chromebook initiative that puts the same device in the hand of every student. There have been many things to consider as we have planned and implemented this program, and I know that we have new things come up daily that were not thought of beforehand. My district will need to tweak things as we find out what works and what doesn't moving forward, but just like the technology, we must keep moving forward.

Internet access and available bandwidth have always been a bottleneck both at home and at school. However, as the cost of bandwidth and network hardware drops, access to WiFi becomes more ubiquitous. We doubled our bandwidth last summer and did so in a way that will scale up as needed. With the help of E-rate funding, we have also been able to completely modernize our network infrastructure. This allows us to offer reliable, high-speed WiFi access throughout our district. While this doesn't help students at home, our district has found that there are programs, one of which being Everyoneon.org, that offer free or low-cost WiFi for families that are part of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). We have promoted these programs whenever possible.

One of the biggest changes that was made in my districts move towards our 1-to-1 program was a change in pedagogy. Our district hired a Assistant Superintendent- Director of Curriculum and an Instructional Coach to help push "Understanding by Design" and streamline the use of technology in our classrooms. It is our hope that this will lead to classrooms that push for deeper understanding, rather than just "teaching to test." By teaching the 4 C's (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity), our students will be better prepared for "success in college, career, and citizenship in the 21st century" ("Preparing 21st Century Students," n.d.)

With all the changes taking place in our district, we recognize that professional development is a must if we want to begin changing the culture in our district. If we are going to expect our students to become more connected with technology, we need our teachers to be more productive and efficient with technology. In our district, we had and continue to offer professional development sessions that focus on general technology skills, subject-specific technology use, and understanding by design. Beyond that, we are pushing our teachers to build professional learning networks on social media sites like Twitter and at technology conferences throughout the year.

In my district, there was initially a lot of mixed feelings towards all of the changes taking place while planning our 1-to-1 initiative. There were negative comments from staff, parents, and students. As the implementation has started to take shape, that negativity has begun to subside. A special group of educators within our district bought into the change and embraced it. While our district administrators are the one's that pushed the change, those teachers are the ones who lead the shift in mindset. They are the people that you must locate and push to become leaders in your district. Change can be powerful if done in a positive way.

When I was researching 1-to-1 programs, I noticed something. I visited schools and talked to administrators from schools that had both successful and unsuccessful technology initiatives. The districts that had successful initiatives underway all had two things in common; accountability and communication. These schools had policies and procedures, guidelines, and excellent communication channels in place. All of the districts that had poor technology rollouts were missing this structure. We collected as much information as possible from other districts and spent countless hours setting up this structure for our district. While ours is not perfect and may never be, it is extremely obvious to us that the time spent setting up this structure for accountability and communication is of the utmost importance to successful technology initiative. Just as it was important to have this structure in place, it is just as important to revisit it and tweak it as needed.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

― Benjamin Franklin

In this presentation, I have discussed some of the things that my district has done to eliminate digital inequality locally. However, what we have implemented is just a start. We have a long way to go, both locally and globally. To really eliminate digital inequality, programs like One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the net neutrality movement, and the open source movement need to be promoted globally. I am confident that growing 21st century students that are competitive global citizens will push technology further in the future and eventually close the "Digital Divide" once and for all.

Resources

Divide. (n.d.). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/divide?s=t

Inequality. (n.d.). In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Inequality?s=t

ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. (2015). ICT Facts & Figures [PDF]. Retrieved from http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures2015....

National Education Associatio. (n.d.). Preparing 21st Century Students for a Global Society [PDF]. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf