The Digital Divide

What can be done to narrow the “Digital Divide?”

Filter or Freedom

 

Uploaded on February 7, 2010
by navarzo3

Today, Mr.Fischer has a great lesson planned for his 10th  grade students. He has created a video about the scientific method, and uploaded it on to YouTube so that his students could also refer to it from home. After activating his students’ prior knowledge about how science works, Mr.Fischer fires up the LCD projector in order to show his video. Much to his dismay, he is unable to show the video, as he has just learned that that the school filter does not allow him to access YouTube. Once his frustration becomes apparent, one of his 10^th graders approaches Mr. Fischer and offers to override the filter so that the YouTube video can in fact be shown. Which of the following would be Mr.Fischer’s best choice?

1. tell the student to override the filter because the students have the right to have access to such a great resource
2. tell the student to sit down, then proceed to talk about what the video was going to show, and never create a video for students again.
3. March over to the technology coordinator or administrator and demand that YouTube be unblocked because he and his students have a right to access that information?

This is a circumstance not uncommon in today’s classrooms and libraries, and this has become a touchy subject. As educators, how do we respect the intellectual freedoms which our children and teachers have rights to, while ensuring their protection from online dangers? Why is it so difficult to uphold these rights? Is there a solution to this battle of protection vs. freedom? And, in the future, is it  possible that we will accomplish both protection AND freedom?

Buzz Words Defined

Intellectual freedom is my ability to access the  information that will help me to solve an information problem or that will help me to have a clearer understanding of what is happening/has happened in our world. This would mean that as a professional, I would have the freedom to create authentic learning experiences for my students. If it is my role now to prepare students for living and learning in the 21^st century, is it not my right to be able to access the information and tools necessary to accomplish this? For this to happen in this day and age, I would need access to web2.0 tools like photo and video sharing sites, wikis, and blogs. These tools are available to me at home, but is it fair to assume that all students have the same access at home? If not, is it our responsibility as educators to ensure their personal intellectual freedom rights are fulfilled at school?

As I thought about how I can uphold intellectual freedoms, I also wondered, “in what ways am I NOT upholding these rights?” A censor is, “An official who examines [work] for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds,” according to www.dictionary.com. To “deem” something implies passing judgment. My thoughts have always been that I would never censor, but if a situation arose, I would simply act as a discerning professional, weighing the child’s rights with my responsibilities in loco parentis.

According to dictionary.com, the definition of discerning is, “Showing good or outstanding judgment and understanding.”  Based on this definition, I came to the realization that to discern involves judgment, which is defined as forming an opinion. This complicates things further. Is there really a difference between being a discerning professional and being a censor? Technically, no. Any time you are asked to make a judgment or form an opinion, I believe that you bring your past experiences, values, and beliefs to the table. However, there are certain strategies that could be implemented to eliminate subjectivity as much as possible. 

What’s the problem? What’s the cause?

Mary Anne Bell (2008) states in her article, “I’m Mad and I’m Not Gonna Take it Anymore,” that, “laziness combined with paranoia” are what motivates parents to pressure and policy makers to filter and block internet sites. Perhaps, we educators should focus on the root of the paranoia. This root is, most likely, a result of misinformation, and therefore, fear. Perhaps a school with intellectual freedom is one where parent education is just as important as student education. Clarifying the details and intent of the Children’s Internet Protection Act  (CIPA), passed in 2000, would be one way to dispel paranoia (Bell, 2008).

However, my observations have been that much of this paranoia comes not only from parents, but also from teachers. Teachers who feel that their professionalism and decision making are not supported. If you work in a place that is “unsafe”, one becomes more tentative to use technology with the possibility of exposing their students to something that is indecent.

The problem becomes, how do we protect students from, “Internet sewage,” as Davis (2008) describes it, while enabling access to all needed information? And how do we accomplish this while respecting teachers as professionals and ensuring their professional intellectual freedoms…and their jobs?

Possible Solutions?

Perhaps “Over sanitizing the internet,” (Davis, 2008)  is not the most effective solution to ensure that students’ and teachers’ intellectual freedoms are respected. Let us consider for a moment that our teachers are responsible professionals, capable of evaluating web sources and that our students are young people who also have the ability and will inevitably choose to evaluate and, “Discern accurate, appropriate sources of information.” If this is this is the case, then the solution that makes the most sense, is to remove filters altogether. But is this a reality? Given the pressures that parents place on schools to “protect” their children, isn’t it natural that teachers would also want to protect their jobs, and avoid complaints?

If the paranoia and panic we see among many parents regarding the internet, is a result of misinformation, perhaps Don Hall’s (2008) suggestion is the best solution. He says in his article, “Web 2.0: a Virtual Wild, Wild West,” that one of the most important things we need to do is empower parents by providing them with a strong parent education program on internet safety. Being armed with the skills necessary to protect your child and knowing that your child’s teacher also possesses these skills enables a sense of trust.

However, when all is said and done, I tend to agree that, “The best strategy for protecting students online is educating them about Internet citizenship and safety. Young people need to learn about safeguarding their personal information, handling cyber-bullying, reporting and ignoring advances from strangers, avoiding online scams, and being courteous in online communication. They must understand the dangers and consequences of making details of their private lives available to the public. This education needs to happen at home as well as in homerooms, health classes, school assemblies, technology classes and guidance counseling”   (Reich, 2009).

To protect educators and schools in the event that a child does decide to access information that is either illegal or inappropriate according to the school’s moral fibre, schools develop an acceptable use policy (AUP), like the one Doug Belshaw created. The AUP is intended to guide student decision making and ensure that subjectivity plays as small a role as possible when it comes to making information accessible and discerning whether information has been used in an inappropriate way. The AUP would need to be quite specific in order to communicate what exactly the decision makers consider to be inappropriate. Despite the best intentions of AUPs, the Media Awareness Network  “A downside of [these] is that because they emphasize surveillance and control rather than supervision and guidance, they imply an absence of trust in students. But when AUPs are properly designed and implemented, they respect the rights of both child and school - and are certainly less restrictive than filtering software.”

Implications For My Teaching

I have been thinking about how I try to balance my responsibility as a librarian to respect the rights of children with my responsibility as a prudent parent in the absence of parents. As a teacher-librarian, I feel that part of my job is to empower children to choose books that are “just right” (that’s the catch phrase we use in my elementary school). “Just right” is based on individual reading level, interest, need… regardless of the subject. So, the kids are making their own choices about the books that they read. As a parent, I do offer suggestions based on what I think the children will enjoy. While I have never forbidden a child from checking out a book, although this request has been made by parents, am I still censoring by bringing only specific books to that child’s attention? On that note, I now have so much more to consider when it comes time for annual order. Do I have a right to eliminate certain books if we are lacking this information in the library, but I don’t see it as a need of the community I serve? If we don’t physically have information in the library, I need to make sure that I am able to help my students access that information as the need arises. This will most likely be accomplished through the use of online resources…  assuming these resources aren’t blocked by our filter.

I feel like one of our biggest roadblocks to respecting the information rights of children is trust. We struggle to trust children with the responsibility of using information the way it is intended -to clarify, explain, make connections, and entertain. We think that they will abuse information, believe everything they hear, and heaven forbid…make mistakes. Most likely, they will do these things. But, parents’ fear of this reality coupled with teachers’ fear of being persecuted for not protecting students from all that is evil in the world, keeps children from developing the skills they need to coexist in a digital future.  Perhaps it is taking a leap of faith to empower children with the ability to critically evaluate websites and books and then let them loose, filter free. This is definitely a change that would require all adults to be onboard, willing to trust each other and work together to talk to and guide our children as they learn from their mistakes, reap the benefits of their experiences, and access information to make sense of our world.

Resources

Abram, Stephen. (January/February 2007).  ”Justifying the Social Tools: Improving the Conversation.” Multimedia and Internet@ Schools. Proquest Education Journals. 14;1. Pg.21.

Bell, Mary Ann. (September/October 2008). “I’m Mad and I’m Not Gonna Take it Anymore.” Multimedia and Technology @ Schools. pg.37-39. https://vista4.srv.ualberta.ca/webct/RelativeResourceManager/Template/Topic%203%20Articles/I’m%20Mad%20and%20I’m%20Not%20Gonna%20Take%20It%20Anymore!.pdf 

Davis, Vicki. (Monday, September 21, 2009). “Time to Add a Social Element to our Filtration Systems?”  The Cool Cat Teacher blog. http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2009/09/time-to-add-social-element-to-our.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+CoolCatTeacherBlog+(Cool+Cat+Teacher+Blog)

Davis, Vicki. (Saturday, March 29, 2008). “Conent Filtration: A Little Dirt for Your Health.”  The Cool Cat Teacher blog. http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/2008/03/content-filtration-little-dirt-for-your.html

Hall, Don. (May, 2008). “Web 2.0: The Virtual Wild Wild West.” Learning and Leading with Technology. pg.26 https://vista4.srv.ualberta.ca/webct/RelativeResourceManager/Template/Topic%203%20Articles/Web%202.0%20A%20Virtual%20Wild%20Wild%20West.pdf

Johnson, Doug. (June 2008). “Change From the Radical Center of Education.” Teacher Librarian. Proquest Education Journals. 35;5. pg.14

Reich, Justin. (July 2009). “In Schools, aa Firewall That Works Too Well.” Washington Post.com  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/10/AR2009071003459.html

Road Block

Road Block

Originally uploaded by JenvanW

Should teachers and librarians put their careers on the line in order uphold the intellectual freedom rights of children?

Digital Native, Digital Immigrant, and Shades of Gray

 Who are the digital natives?

According to Prensky (2001), digital natives are “those who have grown up speaking the digital language.” My interpretation of this would be that digital natives are those who are so comfortable with ever changing technologies that they are able to adapt, adopt new technologies quickly, and easily upgrade without ever becoming attached to a new technology, because they truly understand that technology is dynamic, not static.

Defying the Myths that Drive the Stereotypes

According to the defined age bracket, I fall into the Digital Native (DN) category. But I would hardly consider myself a digital native, nor do I fit the rest of Prensky’s DN mold. When considering Prensky’s (2001) characteristics of a digital native vs. a digital immigrant, I found that I was a combination of the two.  I prefer information quickly, but in a sequential order. I prefer graphics and text at the same time, and I multitask out of necessity. The problem with labels is that we are not cookie cutter people, and therefore, very few of us will fit a mold perfectly. I think that my classmate’s “tapestry” metaphor best describes the various abilities, tendencies, and preferences of technology users today.

Problems with creating the DN label?

Cheryl Oakes (2009) describes Sarah Fryer’s ability as a DN to quickly watch with her eyes, no verbal explanation, then create her own animation through trial and error. Oakes (2009) commented on the fact that verbal instruction was not necessary as Sarah Fryer learned to use Animation-Ish to create her own storyboard. I hesitate to assume that all our young students would be able to catch on to this technology so quickly, without verbal prompt. And this is one of the problems with creating the DN label: that we are attempted to make assumptions about the experiences, prior knowledge and skill set of those who appear to fall into a particular category.

Another problem with creating these very general labels is the number of people who are offended or discouraged by being slated into a “group.” Kathy Schrock makes it clear that our digital status is not black and white, native vs. immigrant, and that there is a shade of gray, which she labels, “digital pioneer.”

Barriers to teaching digital natives:

As mentioned in Greenhow’s (2008) article, “Who are Today’s Learners,” students want to be prepared for the creative use of technology that can be applied both in their recreational use after school and in potential careers. Teachers are in a really tough spot in many ways. Even if a teacher wanted to spend all of their spare time (which so many teachers don’t have a lot of) trying to keep up with new technologies, there are certain factors that are beyond teachers’ control. In many school districts/divisions, 

a. there is little funding for new technologies in schools

b. very few professional development opportunities or “time to explore” are offered

c. teachers continue to feel the pressure to control the classroom environment so that they can cover all the necessary content in order to teach the test.

Another barrier to teaching Digital Natives is the assumption that all digital natives are equally tech savvy. However, there does still exist a digital divide. How do we ensure that all students have equal access to technology? How do we ensure that all students receive the same critical literacy and information literacy skills instruction when, as we learned in last week’s discussions, standards vary from province to province and country to country?

Implications for those who teach Digital Natives:

Some might argue that the behaviours of DN’s online are guided by a set of social rules different from those expected in face to face interactions. This may be a result of the DN’s feeling comfortable with forming relationships online that exist only as long as is necessary, but can quickly be abandoned. As several of my classmates pointed out, this really isn’t a new phenomenon. As our social environment changes, so do our relationships. The only difference now is that this may be happening at a much faster pace with the help of technology. It is for this reason that I feel it is my responsibility to teach students online etiquette and the fact that their online presence should be a true reflection of who they are in person -  their values, strengths, interests, etc.

A Teacher’s Role

What is our role as educators of these “digital natives?” We are no longer “experts” at everything. We become the guide on the side while we teach our students how to learn, by learning along with them.  We need to differentiate in order to help all students, regardless of their online experience, reap the benefits of unlimited possibilities that technology provides. This means training our students to be leaders, to be able to collaborate with their peers and build on each other’s strengths.  This means letting go of control, seeking student input in the direction of our lessons, and being okay with the idea that, “I will learn something from my students today.”

Dr.John Grohol (April 2009) states that, “This task — of helping parents and teachers to understand the particular challenges of educating young people for a world of search engines, online social networks, and mobile media — is not overwhelmingly complex. It’s too bad that this kind of education is a low priority, while the moral panic that drives dangerous censorship, ineffective legislation, and frightens parents away from introducing their children to media practices that will be important to their lives in this century is overwhelmingly popular.”

Resources:

Greenhow,  Christine. (September/October 2008). “Who are Today’s Learners?” Learning and Leading with Technology.ISTE. Pg.16-17.

Grohol, Dr.John. (April 2009).  “Forum on Our Digital Future.” Digital_Nation: Life on the Final Frontier. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/blog/2009/04/live-discussion.html

Oakes, Cheryl. (February, 2009). “When was the last time you watched someone teach a digital learner?” http://cheryloakes50.blogspot.com/2009/10/digital-learner-last-week-while-someone.html

Prensky, Marc. (October 2001). “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants.” On the Horizon. MCB University Press, 9;5.

YouTube.com . Google D.C. Talks: Born Digital. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMln5GVyag

Information and Technological Literacy Standards – Do they exist in your context? If so, who knows about them?

In education, we create standards to keep our instruction focused and consistent, so that we may, in fact, help to develop contributing members of society. When I think of standards, I think of a guide. The concepts and skills are specific, but the way in which they are taught can vary. This flexibility is necessary so that standards can be applied to our evolving world, and to our ever changing technology and information needs. The American Library Association (ALA) with the American Association of School Libraries (AASL) has created the Information Literacy skills for the 21^st century learner.  According to Marcia A. Mardis (2008), the AASL standards, “Are flexible enough to adapt to local situations yet forward thinking enough to support students for years to come.” The International Society for Technology (ISTE)  also recognized the need to create and implement standards for the 21^st century learner with their National Educational Technology Standards for Students (NETS –S)  in 2007.

Both the NETS and AASL standards were created collaboratively with the intent to demonstrate the common vision of all education stakeholders: to equip students with the tools they need to become successful 21^st century learners.  But it’s not enough to publish these standards, because they won’t magically implement themselves.  

How do we implement these standards for 21^st century learners and 21^st century educators?

The next challenge is, to implement the AASL and NETS standards. The AASL blog post “Midwinter Institute: Bringing ‘Em On: 21^st Century Skills Aligning With Standards (Jan.21, 2010)  informs us that the Partnership for 21^st Century skills provide a means for implementing the AASL standards. This framework for 21^st century learning is supported by the U.S. government and is being implemented in 14 states thus far (pingback to my previous post). Implementation involves teacher training and funding for resources. It seems that stakeholders are quite serious about implementing these standards. Hopefully the Partnership for 21^st Century skills  is leading the way and providing a model for other countries to also establish and implement skills necessary for their 21^st century learners. Ideally, the AASL and NETS standards would be fair use and open for other countries to adopt and implement. This would ensure more equality in terms of which skills are taught to 21^st century learners worldwide. I can only hope that this organization continues to document and publish their results.

In Canada, it appears that each province has its own technology and information literacy standards, separate from those of AASL and ISTE, which might contribute to the digital divide. Perhaps one solution would be to adopt the AASL and ISTE standards globally, so that there is one definition of what it means to be a global citizen. If this were to happen, would it then be near impossible for certain developing countries to meet standards, especially where they are unable to afford technologies?

Assessment – the key to successful implementation

Once standards are implemented, their effectiveness needs to be assessed. Looking back at the article, “Missing: Students’ Global Outlook,”  I support Alemu’s (2010) message that standards should be measured by a combination of formative assessment, summative assessment, and informal observation, with all forms of assessment weighted equally. To produce tangible results using all forms of assessment is key to advocating further implementation of 21^st Century Skills.  I currently have a small space on every students’ report card in the elementary school, where I provide a grade for Achievement, Effort, and Behavior. I am also able to add comments. I create rubrics, assess student work, and report to teachers, students, and parents. This is how I am accountable for implementing the AASL standards in my school. Many would say that this sounds like a step in the right direction toward acknowledging the contributions of teacher-librarians in my school. I would argue that this “personal space” on the report cards sends the message that only the teacher-librarian is responsible for the implementation of information literacy skills, which is contradictory to the idea that it takes a village, or in this case a school community, to develop a 21^st century learner. Ideally I would work alongside teachers to help both students AND teachers become 21^st century learners. I would plan with the teachers, team teach, and ASSESS with the teachers.

What does this mean for me?

Because information literacy and technology standards are created separately, one might believe that these should also be implemented in isolation. In order to break down this invisible barrier to successful integration of skills, communication is key. I will continue to communicate with my administrator and each teacher in Grades 1-5, about the information literacy skills I teach each week to their students. This will raise awareness of the existence of information literacy standards in our school.

I will implement our information literacy standards by continuing to model ways that teachers can integrate these information literacy skills with what they are doing in their classrooms, by sending descriptions of our library lessons in  my weekly, “A week in review,” summaries.

In order to successfully implement our information literacy standards in a way that is meaningful and authentic, I need to assess the effectiveness of my rare opportunities for “true collaboration” (rare because of a fixed teaching schedule) and advocate true collaboration between teacher-librarian and classroom teacher as the way of the future. This means that I need to be vocal, be visible, be active.

Resources:

Alemu, Daniel. “Missing: Students’ Global Outlook.” (Winter 2010). Kappa Delta Pi Record. 46;2. Proquest Education Journals. Pg.54.

American Association for School Librarians. Standards for the 21^st century learner. http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/learningstandards/standards.cfm (accessed

Loertscher, David. (June 2008)“Tool for the 21^st Century Information Leader.” Teacher Librarian, 35;5:52-58.

Mardis, Marchia A. (June 2008 ). “Thirty Helens Agree: 2007 Research Supports AASL’s Standards for the 21^st Century Learne.”. School Library Media Activities Monthly. ProQuest Education Journals, 24;10. pg56

Pappas, Marjorie.(June 2008) “Standards for the 21^st Century Learner: Comparisons with NETS and State Standards.” School Library Media Activities Monthly. 24;10. Pg.19-26