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.

EDTECH Challenges

I believe that the biggest challenge for me right now is being in the center of the shift from lecture-based classroom models to an online, technology-based model.

For this assignment, I read the 2013 Higher Ed version of the NMC Horizon Report. I currently teach college classes, so I felt the content in that file was more relevant than the K-12 Report.

Two of the trends in that report stood out to me:
#5: The role of educators continues to change due to the vast resources that are accessible to students via the Internet.

#6: Education paradigms are shifting to include online learning, hybrid learning, and collaborative models.

I think that these two trends move hand-in-hand: we can't have one without the other. The Internet resources that are available to students now are a form of online learning, and online learning cannot happen without these resources.

A few years ago, in an introduction that I have most students write during the first week of the quarter, one of my students said something to the effect that he did not understand what the point of school is, since everything anyone wants to know is readily available on the Internet. This statement had an effect on me because it represents the heart of how education is changing. Today's students don't need to learn facts--facts about anything they might be interested in are as close as the palm of their hand. Instead, today's students need to learn how those facts can be molded together to create new ideas--something that they won't be able to find using Google or Wikipedia.

In short, the process of education is going through an evolutionary change right now. This is not a deliberate change. No student or teacher (or even administrator) is pushing to make these changes happen. Instead, it seems to be an shift brought about by how the general populace is now exposed to a wider bank of information than they ever have been at any other point in history.

When I look at the students sitting in my classrooms today, I am truly puzzled about why many of them choose to come to class. They show no interest in participating in the activities I am leading them through, preferring instead to work more-or-less independently, and occasionally popping up their heads to make a quick comment or observation. Many of those students would be better off taking the online version of the class, so they could fit the class into their schedule, instead of trying to fit their schedule into my class. There are typically a few students who are genuinely interested in learning the material in each class, and those students do prove that the classroom environment is still a valid model for some students, but those students seem to be fewer from one quarter to the next.

About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to specialize more in developing online content that could be used in the classes we teach, so I started looking into what I could do to learn this skill. While I probably could have found online training materials to work through on my own, I also know myself well enough to know that unless there is a strong external motivation (like meeting someone else's deadlines), I would keep putting off learning the skills.

I already have one Master's degree (in French Linguistics), but I felt that a second Master's in Educational Technology would help both me and my students. It's only been a few weeks since I started this new journey, and I have already learned new skills that I can put to use immediately in my current classes. I am truly looking forward to the rest of what is to come.

Here is the video I created. I hope you enjoy it.