Digital Inequality

Here is my VoiceThread video on Digital Inequality:



The problem of digital inequality is not really that new to me. I have been teaching computer classes for more than a decade, and during that time, I have known students who simply could not afford to buy a computer to use at home. The problem seems to be shifting now, to a point where students are more likely to have a "computer" at home, but more and more students are choosing to rely on smart phones instead of desktop or laptop computers, with the same result that they have to come to campus to do their work for classes that require the use of a computer.

Access to technology is not an overwhelming problem, though. A bigger problem in my classes is the fact that there is a wide disparity in previous experience using computers. I do have a few students every quarter who have not used computers very much in the past. In some cases, it may be because the student is from a third-world country, and they never had any opportunity to learn how to use them before coming to the United States to attend college. In other cases, it may be an older student who has simply never had a computer because they didn't need one. Yet another set of students are people who do not like computers, and who want to have as little to do with them as possible.

Alongside these students, often in the same classroom, I have students who can't remember a time when they didn't have a computer, and who are extremely comfortable learning new skills in the class.

This range of background knowledge causes many problems, and since I teach computer education classes geared toward non-computer majors, I see it in most of my classes. On top of that, we have to fit an entire semester into ten weeks' time, so it's not always possible to slow down and let everyone catch up.

In my computer applications classes, the disparity of experience is very obvious. The students who are less experienced with computers feel very stressed with each new assignment because of the amount of work required. For these students, the textbook assignments and projects can take an extraordinary amount of time to complete, because they often need to repeat steps or review the material to get the correct results. The more experienced students don't always need the same introduction to the material that the less experienced students need, and this leads to boredom on their part.

I have considered creating videos to replace the in-class presentations, but this would be an extreme time commitment on my part, and there is no evidence that the students would actually take advantage of them. We did actually use a textbook at one point that included online demonstration videos, but to the best of my knowledge, none of the students ever used them. Less experienced students would have the challenge of finding the videos to start with, and more experienced students wouldn't believe they had the time to view them.

The solution I am presenting here may be the best solution to the problem. The less experienced students would have more time to devote to learning the skills before using them in the textbook assignment, and the more experienced students would be able to skip over the introductory material and focus on learning the new skills. All students would still take the same exams on the material, to verify that they are in fact learning the same skills.

Kim Weiss

P.S. For the record, I am not really happy with the quality of the VoiceThread video. I am much more comfortable using PowerPoint to create narrated videos, but I understand that part of the goal of this class is to learn to use new technology. It would be very cool if Google would add a tool to Google docs that allows users to export a slideshow created in Google Docs directly to YouTube.

RSS in Education

Using RSS Feeds in Education

One of the classes that I regularly teach at my university is a freshman-level Computer Concepts class. This class poses several challenges for me:

• The students have a wide range of knowledge about computers, from those who have problems understanding how to use a mouse to occasional students who have A+/Net+ certification and who have decided to take the class as an "easy" elective. This makes it difficult to find activities that can engage everyone in the class without leaving anyone behind.
• It is designed as a general education class, required by many different majors in the university, and as a result, many students are there simply because it is a required course, with no real interest in the topics we cover. It can be challenging to find activities that will engage everyone in the class.
• Our university has a focus on trying to improve the reading and writing skills of students, and this class lends itself to that kind of activity well. I typically ask students to write one short paper (1-2 pages) each week on a current topic of interest to them in the field of computers and technology, in addition to a variety of other activities.

While I have used RSS extensively in the past, I have gradually moved away from it in preference to Twitter. For myself, I find that Twitter is useful because it gives me very short messages that come straight to my phone. I don't have to remember to open a specific site to view the information, and I can use embedded links in the tweets to open the complete story if I want to read it.

This assignment in RSS feeds made me realize that RSS is still alive and well (despite my neglect ;-) ), and that it is relatively user-friendly as a Web plug-in.

I have a new quarter starting up this Monday, and I intend to use the assignment outlined in the attached video for those classes this quarter. I think that allowing students to choose articles that they find interesting personally will help accommodate the range of understanding and interests that are in the class, and using an RSS feed can help the students find articles they are interested in more quickly.

As a final note, my university does use APA as the standard format for research papers. Having students provide the reference with each of their papers will help prepare the students to use APA in other, more formal research papers.