impact of literacy – digital divide literacy issues final draft
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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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