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Impact of Literacy – Digital Divide Literacy Issues Joshua Schulman For a long time, literacy had a somewhat shallow definition in the classroom. If a student was able to read a book, that student was literate. Obviously it does a disservice to our forerunners to say that the process of learning how to read that book was anything but complex, but, allinall, for any student who read the book and passed the class, that student achieved literacy. Now, it is not so simple. Students who might communicate with sophisticated language on Twitter may have extreme difficulty composing a paragraph; students who cannot understand a hashtag might be brilliant readers of satire or irony. There is no longer any clearcut definition of literacy. In fact, literacy is now understood to have multiple, if not infinite, iterations. And with the growing acceptance of differentiated and individualized education, there are just as many students as there are literacies. Definition and Description With the growth of technological fluency as one significant form of literacy, there is also the growth of awareness of a ‘digital divide’. Diane Ravitch defined it in 2007 as “The gap between those who have access to computers and those who do not.” (Ravitch, 2007) Ravitch was defining a very real issue, one where students in disadvantaged communities faced additional inequity because of their limited access to computers: “The term implies that the advance of new technologies creates additional inequity between the haves and havenots.” Perhaps in the classes of the havenots there were a few working PCs or
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nearobsolete Macs; perhaps, at home, there was nothing at all. This clearly put students from technologically and economically deficient communities at a disadvantage when compared with their wealthier counterparts. More recent research, however, shows that this particular aspect of the divide may be closing. “Lowincome and children of color, those often cited as the underserved side of the digital divide, are wiring other pathways into the digital world. ‘Ten years ago it was thought [disadvantaged kids] were digitally unengaged,’ says S. Craig Watkins, author of The Young and the Digital. ‘Now we know the opposite is true: They're even more engaged than their advantaged peers.’” (McCollum, 2011) This engagement comes from the ubiquity of cell phones and other mobile devices, which has permeated typically disadvantaged communities. Students from economically diverse communities are not just using their devices to play games and chat; they are being used for homework and research, especially when seen in communities with a “high percentage of lowincome homes without computers or Internet service.” (McCollum, 2011) Problem solved? Hardly. There are still issues with the quality of the work being done on mobile devices. A study on undergraduate satisfaction with mobile learning done by Chun Mao (2014) found that “undergraduate students are not satisfied with the mobile learning resources and the video content in mobile learning.” However, on a more positive note, it continued: “the overall satisfaction of mobile learning among undergraduate students is considered high...most of the students incline to use mobile learning in future.” (Mao, 2014) The ubiquity of digital technology does not mean its use is being taught in the classroom. In fact, there is a pressing irony in that the real world is dominated by
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technology, permeating every aspect of our lives, as well as our students’ lives; classrooms limp behind, desperately trying to keep up with this advance of technology but always remaining somewhat out of touch. In a world where students will be negotiating salaries, paying bills, making decisions, researching papers, voting, meeting husbands and wives, staying in touch with distant relatives, finding recipes, composing music, reading news, planning trips, learning, and reading books online, classrooms are still groping around in the dark for some pedagogical guidance to support kids in a digital world. Students, therefore, need school librarians who can empower teachers to teach students how to use digital media constructively. Another digital divide is growing, and it exists between students who are digital natives, and teachers and administrators who fear and misunderstand technology. The school librarian is in a prime position to move a school’s faculty towards digital literacy. He or she should be at the forefront of professional development regarding technology and digital literacy both receiving professional development, and providing it to fellow faculty members. This is vitally important, since technology advances quickly and there are always new devices and apps which could revolutionize any individual teacher’s classroom. As good as a student might be at getting Twitter followers or playing
Temple Run, literacy will stagnate unless it can be channeled in an educationally productive
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direction.
Challenges and Opportunities Although there are many reasons why schools lag so far behind their students, there are three issues in particular which contribute to this situation: 1) Teachers who do not embrace technology are increasingly seen by their students as irrelevant.
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Our students’ generation is brutal court of popular opinion within which technologies are judged and sentenced to success or death. There is no regime which imposes on our students apps and extensions deemed popular or useful; our students decide for themselves. They are immersed in technology, and we are not. The lack of technology in education puts the classroom itself in danger of becoming obsolete. Students themselves are highly aware of this: “...as more students have positive affect for technology, the demand for technology in the classroom will increase, and students’ perceptions of how technology is used in the classroom will have increasing repercussions for their perceptions of teachers.” (Dornisch, 2013) As mentioned before, the digital divide among students is gradually closing. If teachers do not close the divide between themselves and their students, they will not be seen as relevant. “As more students develop higher positive affect [for technology], they will likely expect teachers to use technology much more often and for more innovative teaching than they have previously.” (Dornisch, 2013) If the real world is one of technology, how could a classroom which excludes technology be said to prepare its students for college and career readiness? Students are extremely perceptive, and they see this clearly. Dornisch’s research comes to a conclusion of which every technologicallyaverse teacher should be aware: The results of the current study suggest that the higher students’ positive affect for technology, the more likely they are to use their perceptions of teachers’ comfort with technology in their overall evaluations of their teachers...As children become increasingly familiar with technologies in their early years, however, more students are likely to have strong affect for technology, which may mean that students will evaluate their teachers more poorly if they perceive that their teachers are not comfortable with the technologies they use. (Dornisch, 2013)
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It is hard to imagine that a classroom in which students question their teacher’s competence based on their comfort with technology is one in which quality learning happens. Librarians are in a great place to aid teachers in this regard they can help integrate technology into these teachers’ lessons, and push the teachers themselves toward the levels of technological literacy which their students will increasingly demand.
2) Administrators are afraid to allow students to use their own mobile devices, thereby perpetuating the digital divide. There are many discussions now about the viability of “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policies. However, this movement to allow students to use their own mobile technology in the classroom is in its infancy, and it faces resistance by administrators,
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teachers, and parents who see mobile devices as distractions, rather than bridges over the digital divide. Unfortunately, this perception of the device helps perpetuate their reputation as a distraction, and administrators who feel this way are preventing their classrooms from being the vehicles by which these perceptions change. These devices actually are a new form of text which students interact with constantly . “It has been evident for many years that the proliferation of digital technologies has resulted in an expanding range of textual forms. Many young people and people who are not so young use electronic devices that are capable of producing a multiplicity of texts that are different from traditional print texts.” (Henderson, 2011) Teachers who do not acknowledge the significance and importance of these devices are at risk of stigmatizing an entire form of literacy, and, in turn, stigmatizing those students who are most comfortable with this form of literacy. And if teachers follow this dangerous line, students themselves may neglect their positive, constructive potential. It will then become that much harder to embrace technology and develop pedagogy which allows students to become critical thinkers and critical readers.
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3) Schools filter the internet, preventing students from learning how to be critical readers of digital information. This is probably the most difficult roadblock to bridging the digital divide. The Internet is a scary place. There is an endless amount of misinformation, inappropriate material, pornography, and distraction. It seems obvious schools to filter this out, ideally leaving only what is appropriate for a classroom setting. In fact it is not just obvious, but law: the Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2000 requires schools and libraries to put Internet filters in place. (Children’s Internet Protection Act, 2000) There is absolutely a place for Internet filters in schools. But there is a real downside to them: by filtering the internet we prevent our students from becoming filters themselves, able to criticize poor information and critically reject material that is manipulative, misleading or inappropriate. How can our students develop these skills if they are not given the opportunity to see what bad information looks like? They will, at a point in their lives,
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enter a world in which filters do not exist. If we do not prepare them, they will be at a disadvantage. It is also naive to assume that our students do not currently have unfiltered access to the Internet on their phones or mobile devices. “Don't let assumptions such as schoolwide filters go unchallenged as if the students can't circumvent them easily just by hopping on their data plan.” (Abram, 2014) Filters themselves are ineffective, as long as students have their own unfettered access via mobile devices. Impact and Implications These three issues have serious implications for education, especially for the librarian. The most pressing one is relevance. If the point of public education is to prepare our children for college and beyond, and the point of a school library is to facilitate real knowledge, we are doing students a disservice by pretending the Internet doesn’t exist, or that it isn’t the wild, untamed place it actually is. If the Internet will be something so central in their academic and professional lives, the digital divide will not manifest itself in an absence of technology, but in the inability of disadvantaged users to judge credibility. Stephen Abrams’ article “Preparing our schools for the BYOD world” contains a wealth of good information on how to educate students as to the proper use of their devices. He describes a fourthgrade class taught by his wife, in a school without wifi. The class knows she has access to websites, Wikipedia, and more on her phone, so they insist on exploring their lessons collaboratively. She works the edges of a lockeddown school. Even in primary school, the kids have phones, access, gaming devices, and more. The challenge isn't locking them down but disciplining knowledge about appropriate use and timing.
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Deciding to ignore this by pretending that it's locked down doesn't endow these kids with the skills they need to learn. (Abrams, 2014) Librarians can learn from this. A devicefree library is antiquated and out of touch. Children might not take it seriously if it ignores the most common portal for access, especially in disadvantaged communities: the cell phone. I would also add that ignoring the academic potential of mobile technology, or worse, actively condemning it, stigmatizes phones as useless for academic or professional pursuits, and renders them solely as gaming and communications devices. This kind of library might end up perpetuating a digital divide just as badly as one where certain students have no devices at all. Librarians are positioned to help bridge the divide between students and their teachers. They need to be involved with curriculum mapping and unit planning, so that they can accommodate teachers by suggesting ways of incorporating technology into their lessons. They should provide space and access to students who may need a place to use a device in order to complete an assignment, whether that device is the school’s or their own. And the goal should not be just to use technology in the classrooms librarians should always have in mind the goal of increasing literacy, so that the content of the lesson includes the use of the technology itself. It is not enough to give a student an app and call it a day the use of that app should elucidate some kind of higher order thinking which increases understanding of the app itself and its relevance. Librarians should also take advantage of their students’ natural inclinations towards games. “...in environments where all children have a digital device, they have thousands of games at their fingertips. Rather than compete with these technologies, libraries should support gamebased learning by providing spaces that allow for play, collaboration, and
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kinesthetic learning experiences.” (Lagarde & Johnson, 2014) Video and board games are a natural tool to help tactile learners, and librarians can catalogue games which they can link to curriculum just as they can catalogue books. Librarians should also work with administration to determine a policy of use. As it is naive to assume that kids do not have access to unfiltered Internet, it is also naive to assume that they will not be distracted when allowed to use their phones in class. This policy should clearly explain what the expectations for the students are in the classroom, consequences for deviating from those expectations, and what the pedagogical justification is for allowing something that many parents, administrators and teachers might not fully understand. Eventually, the digital natives will be the teachers. But we should not wait for that era to begin enhancing literacy across all spectrums. A Librarian’s Story It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But mostly the worst of times. The end of the marking period was coming, which meant every student writing a paper at the last minute was ready to bring the school’s wifi to a crawl. Soon the library would be flooded with anxious students. They started trickling in at 9:04 AM. They’re either off this period or cutting, Mr. Schulman thought. Several of them needed help finding books; thankfully there were a pair of intrepid library assistants at hand to direct his patrons to the proper shelves. Another student was diligently Googling “Why did World War Two happen?” and cutting and pasting
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text from answers.yahoo.com. Mr. Schulman patiently directed her to Gale and returned to his desk. The pace of students in need of help accelerated. Mr. Schulman was mostly occupied with a small group who needed a reintroduction to Proquest, while his assistants spread throughout the room. When he was satisfied that this group could work on their own, he wandered over to a boy working quietly on a PC. Mr. Schulman had not seen this child in the library so far this year. “What can I help you with?” He asked. The student, a ninth grader whose name was Nemo, was opened to a blank page in Microsoft Word. “I have to write a story showing setting, conflict, rising action, climax, and denouement. But I have no idea how to start it.” “Well, what is it going to be about?” Mr. Schulman asked. “I’m trying to choose between a dinosaur and a real estate lawyer.” “Those aren’t stories.” Mr. Schulman said. “They’re characters.” “I know.” Nemo replied. “See how bad I am at this?” “You need to just nail down a conflict. That’s the best way to start. You’re probably better off writing about the dinosaur. It’s a bit more compelling.” “If you say so.” Mr. Schulman pointed to the computer screen. “Why don’t you start by listing the beats of the story. What happens at each stage?”
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“Well, first of all, the dinosaur is a T. Rex. The biggest, baddest T. Rex of them all. But the problem is that he’s a vegetarian. So all the other T. Rexes are out gobbling up stegasaurs and triceratops and brontosaurs…” “Brontosaurs aren’t really dinosaurs.” “Whatever. This is fiction. So they’re all having a big Bronto BBQ, when Tony…” “Tony?” “Tony T. Rex. He’s kind of working the wall, trying to hide the fact that his plate is full of side dishes of extinct plant matter rather than dino flesh. It’s delicious but obviously no one else will understand. So he’s pretty sad about the whole thing…” Nemo continued to tell a thrilling story about Tony’s escape from the BBQ to a valley where he fell in love with Betty Bronto, an herbivore with a heart of gold. They survived the mutual disapproval of their families and settled down in a little place in Gondwanaland, and they lived happily ever after, at least until a comet landed on earth and wiped out all nonavian life. “That was great!” Mr. Schulman said. “Though the end is kind of a downer. Why don’t you write down what you just told me?” “It’s not easy. It’s like I freeze up whenever I get close to a keyboard. Telling the story is nothing, my sister and I pretend to have radio shows at home all the time. We record ourselves telling the dumbest stories.” “I have an idea.” Mr. Schulman said. “Do you have a cell phone?” “Are you going to take it from me? If I take this out it’s my third violation, I lose it for a month.”
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“Don’t worry, I’m not going to write this up. Do you have EverNote?” Mr. Schulman showed Nemo how this particular app could be used not only to convert speech to text, but could also be shared across the cloud so the resulting document could be accessed from any device. When the app was downloaded, Nemo told the story again. This time, the characters were bolder, the situations were tenser, the love story was more romantic, the climactic battle against Tony’s stepfather was more climactic, and the resolution was sweeter. The meteor narrowly missed the Earth, and mammalia never reigned supreme in the absence of the tyrant lizards. EverNote recorded his story word for word. The text was there, in front of him, on his phone. “Wow! So how do I get this to the computer?” “Just sign in to EverNote on the computer and copy and paste into your word processor. Or, if you want, you can do it on your phone and email it to your teacher.” The assignment was done. Nemo, who was much better communicating orally, managed to fulfill the requirements of the lesson with a tool in his own mobile device which accommodated his particular learning style. Later that day, when everything slowed down, Mr. Schulman emailed Nemo’s teacher. He explained how Nemo’s phone acted as a powerful tool to help broaden his own literacy, by treating his verbal prowess as just significant a method of delivery as manual writing. His grade, his self confidence, and his enjoyment all grew significantly. Score another win for the library!
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References Abram, S. (2014). Preparing Our Schools for the BYOD World. Internet@Schools, 21(2), 1011,4. Retrieved September 14, 2014, from ProQuest Central. Children's Internet Protection Act, § 2541B (2000). Dornisch, M. (2013). The Digital Divide in Classrooms: Teacher Technology Comfort and Evaluations. Computers in the Schools, 30(3), 210228. doi: 10.1080/07380569.2012.734432 Henderson, R. (2011, August). Classroom pedagogies, digital literacies and the homeschool digital divide. International Journal of Pedagogies & Learning, 6(2), 152161. Retrieved September 14, 2014, from ProQuest Central. Lagarde, J., & Johnson, D. (2014, June). Why Do I Still Need a Library When I Have One in My Pocket? The Teacher Librarian's Role in 1:1/BYOD Learning Environments. Teacher Librarian, 41(5), 4044. Retrieved September 14, 2014, from ProQuest Central. Mao, C. (2014). Research on Undergraduate Students' Usage Satisfaction of Mobile Learning. Creative Education, 5, 614618. http://dx.doi.org.libezproxy2.syr.edu/10.4236/ce.2014.58072 Mccollum, S. (2011, October). Getting Past the 'Digital Divide'. The Education Digest, 77(2), 5255. Retrieved September 14, 2014, from ProQuest Central. Ravitch, D. (2007). Edspeak: A glossary of education terms, phrases, buzzwords, and jargon. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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