This week’s readings focused on two issues that are important to digital equity: (1) using technology to better educate young children and (2) bring more women into computer science programs. The reading in the Solomon text brought up many obstacles that are faced when administrators and educators are researching the effectiveness of ICT versus non-ICT environments. Much of the problem is accountability. It is really difficult to monitor the progress of each student in the classroom without having a good reporting system in place. The data recording depends primarily on the teacher’s reporting and somewhat on standardized test results. I know that from a high school perspective, I teach six classes a day and have over 125 students. The time it takes just to grade papers is a lot, but to add in other duties such as individualizing reports for each student seems a monumental task. Plus, having teachers who have been trained in using a particular technology is difficult to achieve, too. Really dedicated teachers struggle because of how much they do all the time for their schools and their students; ill-prepared teachers don’t have the expertise to balance this kind of recordkeeping. I propose placing paraeducators into classrooms where this kind of recordkeeping is needed and where teachers are trying to teach students to use a new technology. Having an extra set of hands in the classroom can make a world of difference.

Regarding the gap in computer science programs, I believe that the root of the problem is a perception problem.  When I was taking computer programming classes, there were a few women in the program, and the attitude of most of the professors and many of the men in the class was one of arrogance.  Women don’t like being a part of a program where their efforts are not appreciated or rewarded.  So are the men driving the women from the field?

The silicon ceiling article points out that females need to become interested in computer science fields in junior high or high school in order to increase the number of women who become computer scientists in the future.  I believe that it needs to happen in the elementary grades.  Females should be taught that computer science is not just about programming video games, that it is about creating productivity tools to make it a better workplace.  With this attitude, more women are likely to join the computer science bandwagon.

The spread of the Internet and communication means is closing the digital divide just as it is united our world into a global society.  As years go by, the have-nots are becoming more and more the haves while the haves are just moving on to different and more sophisticated toys.  One upon a time, not many people had telephones, now over 93% of the country does.  Ten years ago, cell phones were a luxury item, today most people have some sort of cell phone.

To be equitable is to be fair. In education, it is to give students the same opportunity to learn. In Chapter 9 of Solomon’s text, they are talking about how inequitable the gender equality is for fields such as math, science, and engineering. The chapter describes a great number of programs and incentives to close this gap, and all of the measures involve appealing to the social side of females. I think that to see the gap as a detriment is the wrong way to view things. Females are more social by nature, so I believe they pick careers which fulfill this need. If you look at the number of male to female nurses, for example, approximately 5.4% of RN’s are male, according to the web site http://www.allnursingschools.com. This is a far greater gap than the gender gap in technological fields. I believe that equity is giving individuals equal opportunity to learn a given profession, but you have to take into consideration that fact that males and females are just different. We should not expect them to be equal in all things.

But is equity possible? I think it is near impossible to be fair in education because of the vast differences that exist in schools. Students should not be judged on whether they all learned the same things, which is what NCLB seems to do. The premise behind NCLB is good, there does need to be a minimum competency exhibited by our students, our future citizens, however, there are many obstacles to overcome, and just throwing money at the problem will not fix it. There has to be a change in attitude before reform can begin. The idea of punishing districts that don’t perform up to the national standards does not make much sense to me. It is like punishing a student who has a learning disability instead of helping them. It is desirable for school systems to be more equitable, but again, great barriers exist to making this happen.

This is a very difficult question to answer because of the current barriers that exist in our educational system. I see equity as equal opportunity, not equal ability, as we know that individuals range greatly in the abilities they possess. In order to create an educational system that is geared towards educational equity, the following conditions would need to be addressed:

• Teacher quality: I was reading an article a friend had forwarded to me on how to make great teachers. The article pointed out that teacher quality varies greatly, and there are a lot of factors that contribute to teacher quality, such as a strong support network and years of experience. Not only is it important to train good teachers, but also to retain good teachers.
  • “Other essential skills require on-the-job practice. It takes at least two years to master the basics of classroom management and six to seven years to become a fully proficient teacher. Unfortunately, a large percentage of public-school teachers give up before they get there. Between a quarter and a third of new teachers quit within their first three years on the job, and as many as 50% leave poor, urban schools within five years. Hiring new teachers is “like filling a bucket with a huge hole in the bottom,” says Thomas Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a Washington-based nonprofit.”
• A strong curriculum: An education earned in Kentucky should be the same as an education earned in California, but we all know that this is not the case. It is not even the case from one school district to the next. There are many factors that contribute to this difference (cultural, social, economic, financial), and if we could address those differences, it could lead to a more equitable education. It would have to be monitored with end-of-year assessments and minimum competency requirements, with adjustments being made for individuals with disabilities.
• Motivation of individuals: A big difference I see between high performing schools and low performing schools is the motivation of the students. There is a certain amount of pride exhibited by individuals at schools that excel. I remember when a gentleman named Andy Dotson visited our school and offered to help improve our school culture. He talked about what he had done at Phelps High School in Pike County, Kentucky. The school was fifth from the bottom on CATS assessment, and in five years, they were fifth from the top. He did a complete restructure of the school, placing his best teachers with his lowest grade level, and building the students’ abilities up through the different grade levels. There were celebrations incorporated once a month to keep up student motivation, and the students became so invested in the school, each grade level would try to out perform the students who took the test the previous year. It takes an exceptional person to pull this off, I wish there could be an Andy Dotson in every school.
• Access to educational resources: There are certain things that make learning a better experience. When teachers receive professional development training, their quality of teaching should improve, therefore increasing the quality of education for the students. Having certain science lab equipment or virtual labs enhances the learning experience, having the opportunity for guest speakers can enrich a classroom, taking trips to significant locations can enrich the learning experience. Resources that help teachers engage students in learning are so valuable.

In the blog entry “The Mob Rules: The Laws of Five, ” the author gives examples of how people, communicating through a global network, are changing the way that tasks have been done traditionally. The five rules for the Mob are:

1. The mob is everywhere.
2. The mob is faster, stronger, and smarter than you are.
3. Advertising is a form of censorship.
4. The mob does not need a business model.
5. Make networks happen.

What does it mean to have a mob? There are several definitions for the word mob, most of which have a negative connotation. I believe that the author is representing the word mob as “the common people; the masses; populace or multitude.” He does not portray the mob as violent, lawless, or criminal. The mob is a collection of people, with access to devices which enable them to communicate with each other, who then exchange knowledge. Knowledge/information is the product, and communication is how you “sell” it. So is Marc Pesce the mob leader? Yes and no. A leader is one who leads, who sets the stage for others to follow, yet a leader is also part of a group. The last rule is to make networks happen. The goal is to keep connecting people (right now there are over 3 billion with access to the connection network). It is like moving toward a Utopian society, where people have equal social standing, forgoing the normal hierarchical view that has existed for thousands of years. But is it realistic? Maybe….

So how does this idea relate to education? to learning? to equity? Well, I don’t think that the current educational system has followed the enormous growth in communication that the business world has experienced. Educators are very resistant to change, and this is evident by the number of teachers who have not embraced technology. But daring to dream, if this mob’s enthusiasm were to take over the business of education, this is what I would hope to see…students having a choice as to the teachers who teach their lesson…through podcasting, places like TeacherTube, visiting web sites, blogs, virtual classrooms; students enthusiastic about what they have learned, and eager to share it with their friends via email or IM (Yeah, I just found this great calculus discussion site, you have to check it out); educators constantly collaborating, coming up with relevant projects that truly do have a positive impact on student learning; universities being able to graduate students that employers feel are adequately prepared for the workplace; and employers being happy with the quality of college graduates. Students would be on a more equitable footing because there is less discrimination in the virtual world, people are not judged by their appearance, but rather on their communication skills and ideas presented, gender is not such a limiting factor. Learning could be endless, people decide how much learning they wish to achieve, yet there would be minimum competency tests that are used uniformly on a national and international scale. Students who struggled would be given extra attention by others in the virtual community. We still need teachers, to write and record the lessons, to engage the students in the classroom, but the information would come from the network.  Learning would not be limited to the four walls of the classroom.

Whenever I run into a site that offers good resources, I like to post it for others to see.  I found this link through a posting on OLDaily, and found a couple to try (the PhotoAlbum creator and HTML Quiz Generator).  The entries are listed alphabetically, but there is a column with a short description of each tool, and the site identifies shareware versions vs. freeware versions.

Marc Pesce’s Unevenly Distributed: Production Models for the 21st Century post provides very good examples of how much of an information society we have become. Much like people would recommend books to friends, we now share links to information and videos by forwarding them to friends who we feel will enjoy what we have seen. This ability keeps the knowledge going. Friends will, in turn, send you back things that they think you will enjoy. Knowledge is constantly distributed among the millions of people connected to the Internet. When teachers use resources from the Internet in their classes, information is being distributed to learners.

I have only been a teacher for four years, and I really appreciate the information that is out there that I can use in my classroom and not have to “reinvent the wheel” by designing my own activities for lessons. I know that when I was going to school, the computers we used ran from 5 1/4″ disks, no hard drives, and a simple programming language called BASIC. Teachers taught using the information they had learned through classes, textbooks, and personal experience. We used magazines and newspapers for current events, so the information was only as current as the date it was printed. These days, I can log into as many web sites as I have time to access and read news that is fresh.

Once given the ability to access information so readily, people hunger for more.  We are excited to see what is on YouTube, what the latest wiki is offering to us in information, what others are saying about a particular item we are interested in purchasing, what is going on in our local communities, download an e-book, and so much more.  My favorite part about having this much information distributed is that I don’t have to pay a lot (if anything) to get the information.  No cost of newspaper, magazine, book, no more buying a CD for one song, when I can go online and purchase it in mp3 format.  I can carry around up to 80 gigabytes of songs and videos on my Microsoft Zune instead of having a bunch of CD’s which take up space.  I can read my e-book on my Palm instead of carrying a hard or soft cover book around.  Being in an information society with such a wide distribution of information has made our lives simpler because of access and storage.  It is convenient, cost effective, and provides us with more information than ever dreamed possible.  As information distribution becomes more widespread, learners will keep on absorbing information at a high rate.

The Cluetrain Manifesto was written in 1999 by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searles, and David Weinburger as a wakeup call to big business that marketing in the 21st century was taking a radical turn and becoming a market of the people, not of big business. The Internet was bringing people together, letting them converse about buying options, and giving consumers the opportunity to know more about a product before buying it.

So how is this related to education? The answer to that is online education. It has revolutionized the way students are learning, just as the Information Age has revolutionized how consumers buy. Instead of being limited to the four walls of the classroom, with one teacher giving the information, having to be there for an appointed amount of time, students can now take courses which require no travel, the Internet becomes a dynamic encyclopedia of information, classmates aren’t just the people in the classroom, it is others who communicate through email, chats, blogs, and discussion threads. Educators now have access to tools such as lesson plans, manipulatives, activities, to make the classroom a much more exciting place to be. Teachers can now plan assignments like webquests where students explore and find out information from a variety of sources, instead of being limited to using two or three resources and writing a book report. Students now have more means of presenting assignments through technology (PowerPoints, wikis, web pages).

Another shared element between the Cluetrain Manifesto and online education is communication.   In Chapter One of the Manifesto, the author talk about the power of conversation.

” we’re all expressing ourselves in a new way online — a way that was never possible before, never before permitted. And make no mistake, speech once freed is a powerful drug. Get used to it; it ain’t going back in the box. What does this mean for electronic commerce? Take a wild guess. We’re not those neatly predictable consumers business remembers from yesterday.”

Education has gone from static to dynamic.  We are not limited by the print media and limited number of persons in a classroom to provide intellectual stimulation.  There are now potentially millions of people out there who can share in our ideas and provide us with information.  We can choose to learn as little or as much as we want.  Having access to the Internet gives us more to talk about, and we can easily share information we have found by providing hyperlinks to others, so that they can see what we have seen.  Education is becoming a connection from person to person, much like the Manifesto has presented that the market is becoming more person to person, and less like an institution.

When I think about literacy, it means understanding. I think that there are many types of literacy out there, especially in our information society where people have access to so much more information.  For example, I consider myself to be computer literate, literate in reading and writing, but hopelessly Spanish illiterate. If I were in France on vacation, I could not interpret the signs, could not read a map, and could not ask for directions; but I could become French literate if I chose to study and practice.  Becoming literate in any area takes work, and for some, it comes easier than it does for others.  I have a knack for understanding computer hardware and software; yet writing a creative literary piece sends me running for cover.   So to be literate, in whatever area, means having an understanding which also involves being able to communicate with others about it.

As I was reviewing the posts from this week’s OLDaily blog, I can across something that I did not know existed: open access free textbooks. In this entry, he gives the link to a physics textbook written by a gentleman who is very passionate by the topic (over 1,500 pages to date). So now I am out to see if there are any math books I can use, and will post whatever I find. It could solve the dilemma that some of us are facing next year with textbook adoption woes and budget cuts, plus, I have only seen one textbook in math that I would adopt and use (CORD mathematics), but of course, it is expensive.

Addendum:  Here is the most prolific list so far.

http://www.freeloadpress.com/booklist.aspx

And here’s one for math:

http://www.totallyfreemath.com/math.html

I haven’t had a chance to review any of them yet, but I was excited to get the information out there to those who are interested.  Comments and feedback are welcome!

In reviewing Danah Boyd’s elaborated definition of social network sites, she says:

We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.

From her analysis of SNS, I am of the opinion that most people don’t use SNS as a cross cultural meeting place. People tend to use SNS to communicate with people they already know. It seems that various groups seem to adopt particular SNS for their communication.  For example:

Many SNSs target people from specific geographical regions or linguistic groups, although this does not always determine the site’s constituency. Orkut, for example, was launched in the United States with an English-only interface, but Portuguese-speaking Brazilians quickly became the dominant user group (Kopytoff, 2004). Some sites are designed with specific ethnic, religious, sexual orientation, political, or other identity-driven categories in mind. There are even SNSs for dogs (Dogster) and cats (Catster), although their owners must manage their profiles.

So the cultural message that Danah Boyd is seeming to present is that there are cultural groups that exist through the pipeline of SNS, but they tend to stay in their own already formed groups instead of using SNS as a primarily social network group building endeavor.  So SNS groups serve mostly as a means of social communication, sort of like email on a grander scale or IM.