For researchers, a synthesis of research on education technology and equity would open new frontiers for theory building and design research.
Communities of practice.
15 Matching Annotations
- Apr 2018
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clalliance.org clalliance.org
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here are substantial barriers to this kind of data collection: federal privacy-protection laws that protect young Internet users, potentially deleterious effects on enrollment and usage from asking people personal questions, and other challenges.
Students and teachers in BCPS cannot use specific websites that track identifiable information. Going into the systems to get this is going to be very tough.
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Chronicling a wide variety of efforts to reduce inequality through learning technologies, with all their successes and failures, would provide the data and cases needed to attempt to draw generalizable conclusions about principles that could be applied to work for equity in diverse settings
Here is a link to the ongoing evaluation of BCPS technology initiative (STAT).
https://www.bcps.org/academics/stat/statEvaluationSummary.html
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the next wave of efforts at democratizing education through technology need to pay greater attention to the social and cultural barriers that are faced by the students furthest from opportunity.
This is the Literacy Divide discussed by Warchauer in "Reconceptualizing the Digital Divide."
A lot of these efforts need to be teacher-driven.
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In particular, when an educational product comes at a substantial cost to low-income families, but would be a trivial cost to affluent families, free goods may be particularly effective at closing gaps.
How to overcome Institutional bias. Not just the software is free, but also training or hardware.
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arents of BPS children take a 15-hour com-puter literacy course taught by a teacher in the child’s school, and at the end of the course they can buy their computer.
How could we tier this for our parents? Could we teach them how to do something that they want to know how to do? How do we get them to ask?
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One fruitful strategy for reducing this gap is building the capacity of parents and mentors alongside that of children. Intergenerational learning experiences can strengthen family ties while giving parents and children new skills to ex-plore new domains
Give them something in common. For example: Pokemon Go. My daughter learned how to read, how to do advanced math (division and multiplication), problem solving, and critical thinking skills due to our shared interest in the game. We used it as an opportunity to explore educational concepts even though the game would not be categorized as "educational."
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roblems can arise because of lack of visibility across settings, such as when school-based personnel do not know what is happening at home and with families.
True without technology.
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teachers hold shared assumptions about the students they serve that are perpetuated through well-defined and resilient school cultures and practices.
Conservatism again. How to get teachers to trust?
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parent-led opposition to inBloom snowballed.
The opposite. Usually seen in affluent schools (districts). This is an issue that is not addressed much and these are schools that are viewed as "having no problems." Need to build relationships with parents just as much as with students.
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wikis were more likely to be created, more likely to be used for longer periods, and to have more opportunities for student involvement
At this point, I'm wondering if it is an issue of how to build trust in schools?
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The demographics of Scratch users today largely mirror the demographics of the country overall due to the high lev-els of uptake of Scratch in diverse schools, offsetting the bias inherent in home-based access
Has this case study been replicated? Could it be redone with different technology? Seems worth a shot considering the other discussions in this annotation.
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ducational institutions exert a uniquely conservative influence
"This is the way we do things"; "I need to be able to cover all my material"; "My students can't handle that"; "The students that try get it and the rest don't"
These are the words of educators who perpetuate this influence.
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The potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to democratize higher education was a rallying cry of 2013, which echoed the belief a century earlier that “with radio the underprivi-leged school becomes the privileged.
Are MOOCs DOA? No. This echoes other points about access not being the same as opportunity and those who already have the most being able to get more. The question becomes how to use those stakeholders who are already committed to help others.
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Powerful learning experiences result when students have the opportunity to connect their interests from outside of school to learning opportunities in more academic contexts.
This is true of all pedagogy and content. If teachers struggle with doing this absent technology, then providing these types of experiences with technology is going to a great challenge. Giving teachers models of how to accomplish this would be a great first step.
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