Recent Reports on the Digital Divide
I teach at a low income school where Hispanics make up 60% of the schools population, and I can relate to this article. All parents have the opportunity to receive a user id and password to log into the Internet and view their child's grades. The parents do have to physically go to the school to pick up the log in information, but they don't do it. I know that sometimes it is difficult to get away during school hours, but special hours are setup to accommodate these parents. Still these parents do not pick up the information, they wait until progress reports go home to see how their child is progressing in school. To me, this situation supports the articles written. They might not have a computer to view their child's grades or maybe they don't know how to use it and are to proud to ask their son or daughter to show them how. Hopefully, by getting to the children at a young age, they will see the importance of knowing how to use technology and eventually all homes will have a computer with Internet access.
2 comments:
The digital divide is definitely divided among adults and children. Today's children are definitely more digitally savvy than today's adults. I agree that adults need to realize that their children will know more about technology than them and let their children help them.
Part of issue here is cultural. Every culture places different values on education. I believe that these parent's want their child to get good grades, but it is not as high of a priority as say behavior or having a good work ethic. To get them on board with technology and grades are two separate issues. Technology is something these families have trouble with. If they have a computer it is often inadequate. I have also run into countless students who have computers ruined by a virus and don't know how to fix them. When there is a functional computer hooked up to the internet it is often seen as the property of one family member. Some how we need to give parents the resources to use maintain and acquire these computers. Something that would go a long way to this end is a parent work shop that transitions into a relationship with the school or other community members who can help them maintain the computers and troubleshoot problems. If this support were in place they would buy and use the computers.
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