I’ve written a bit about digital equity in education (see e.g. http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v15n3/), but mostly in academic journals.  So, I thought I’d take some time on MLK day to throw some data out there upon which we can collectively reflect. 

In homes, there are significant disparities in computer access and use by race.  Fairlie (2005) found that African-Americans and Latina/os are much less likely to have access to home computers than are white, non-Latinos (50.6 and 48.7 percent compared to 74.6 percent), and those differences are more pronounced for children than for adults.  Using advanced statistical analyses, he concludes that, “[e]ven among individuals with family incomes of at least $60,000, blacks [sic.] and Latinos [sic.] are substantially less likely to own a computer or have Internet access at home than are whites.”
In the following table, we see, graphically, some of those differences.

Within schools, disparities are less pronounced, but digital inequities persist.  Here are some selected statistics from an NCES report:

• In 2005, the ratio of students to instructional computers with Internet access in public schools was 3.8 to 1, a decrease from the 12.1 to 1 ratio in 1998, when it was first measured. However, schools with the lowest level of minority enrollment had fewer students per computer than did schools with higher minority enrollments.  Specifically, according to my own analyses, schools in rural areas and schools with higher percentages of African-American students are more likely to have lower levels of computer access (boo!!!).
• In 2005, 94 percent of public school instructional rooms had Internet access, compared with 3 percent in 1994. There are no differences across school characteristics (hooray!!!).
• In 2005, schools with the lowest level of minority enrollment were less likely than schools with the highest level of minority enrollment to use the Internet to provide assessment results and data for teachers to use to individualize instruction (81 vs. 92 percent) (hooray!!!).

Thus, Internet access in schools and classrooms is consistently good and equitable.  And, while access to computers is inversely related to the percentage of students of color in schools, schools with higher percentage of students of color are more likely to be engaged in data-driven decision-making using Web-based tools.

So, it’s a mixed bag across schools, but it does seem like the institution of public schooling is doing its part to level the digital playing field.  The problem is that the significant inequities that exist within homes present a huge barrier to using technology to extend the learning day and to bridge a home-school connection.  How, it at all, can schools help to overcome those inequities?

Tags: digital divide, education, equity, technology

One of my advisees recently defended her dissertation which involved conducting a systematic review of the literature in order to develop a model or operational understanding of the term “technology integration.”  Most of that work centered around the meaning of “integration.”  That is, since she was studying what it meant to DO something, the focus was necessarily on the verb “to integrate.”  At the outset, my advisee committed to a purposefully broad and reasonably thorough definition of “technology” and then went on to study what it means to integrate that noun.

I think that was the right decision for her purposes, but today I found myself thinking about how we define “technology” in the field of educational technology.  So, I looked up the definitions of “technology” on dictionary.com.  I don’t know how generally helpful this exercise was, but I learned quite a bit (and I’m all about learning!).  Here’s what I learned:

• First, the word originates from the Greek word “technologia” which seems to mean the systematic treatment of an art or a craft.
• Second, despite how I’m guessing most people think of the word, only one of the dozen or so definitions make mention of anything electronic and/or digital (”Electronic or digital products and systems considered as a group”). 
• Third, synthesizing most of the definitions, “technology” seems to be an applied body of knowledge of how technical means interrelate with us and the world around us.

Thus, I can now confidently (and empirically?) dismiss the notion of technology as a tool (or even a set of tools).  The electronic or digital products and systems are important, but they are really just the technical means under study; what’s more important is studying/understanding/learning how those means interrelate to us and the world around us.  Further, I really like the idea of technology as a body of knowledge.  That being the case, a technologist would be one who studies that body of knowledge.  Finally, then, an educational technologist would be one who studies the body of knowledge of how technical means interrelate specifically with the institution of education (NOT just schooling; an important distinction).  So, when my 2.5 year old son asks me what I do, I can tell him that I’m an educational technologist.  I like that

Tags: education, etiology, integration, technologist, technology

I’m headed to Charlottesville tonight for a meeting tomorrow about an ongoing effort to develop and integrate web-based cases into educational leadership preparation programs.  The Educational Theory into Practice Software (ETIPS) is being developed by Sara Dexter and Pam Tucker at UVA, and they’re currently working with a test-bed group of ed. leadership professors across the Commonwealth of Virginia.  The multimedia cases “allow students multiple and varied opportunities to practice making decisions guided by theoretical principles and thereby improve their critical thinking and instructional decision-making skills.”  I’m intrigued by the project and the possibilities the cases hold, and ANYTHING that models effective technology integration to aspiring school leaders is great.  I look forward to reporting the successes of this endeavor and to the day when more of my colleagues in the ed. leadership professoriate incorporate these sorts of technologies in their teaching.

Tags: education. leadership, eLearning, ETIPS, technology

Not too long ago, I was asked the following question by a doctoral student: “What would a doctoral program in ed. tech. leadership look like?”  I’m certainly well aware of the NETS-A-based curriculum components developed by Scott McLeod and Joan Hughes at CASTLE, but my mind went to a dissertation that one of my advisees just defended about leaders of technologically innovative schools.  The major findings of that dissertation confirmed some of my own thinking in that the leaders under study were not focused on technology, nor were they so concerned with innovation.  Rather, they were leaders and learners first and foremost.  Furthermore, leadership for them was about building relationships and facilitating learning.  If learning was best facilitated by utilizing some form of technology, it was their job to marry that technology to the teaching/learning process.

The findings also brought me back to a book chapter written in 1993 (almost 15 years ago!) by Chris Dede, a Harvard professor and one of the preeminent thinkers in the ed. tech. field.  Dede wrote that true leadership requires four attributes:

• Envisioning Opportunities

  • “One of the most important attributes that distinguishes leaders from managers is ‘vision’: the ability to communicate desirable, achievable futures quite different from where the present is drifting.”

• Displacing Cherished Misconceptions

  • “An important attribute of leaders is their ability to displace deeply held, cherished misconceptions with alternative visions that more accurately depict reality. Mistaken beliefs most people hold about teaching and learning form a barrier that blocks improving American education.”

• Inspiring Others to Act on Faith

  • “Inspiring a group to work toward a shared vision necessitates building trust: faith that this team of people can overcome all the obstacles that block creating a future quite different from the present.”

• Discouraging Followers

  • “A destructive myth about leadership is that a visionary person gives directions to followers who execute this plan. Real leaders discourage followers, instead encouraging use of their visions as a foundation for other, better insights.”

This means two things for me.  First, as a professor of educational leadership, I now see clearly that this is the sort of educational leaders I MUST develop and work with.  Second, I aspire to write as eloquently and presciently as Chris Dede.

Tags: Dede, education, leadership, technology

After countless half-hearted efforts to launch a blog, I’m finally making the leap.  To this point, I’ve been constrained mostly by one personal roadblock.  In the language of a former colleague, I am extremely “precise;” cognitively, everything has to be considered and everything has to be just right.  So, I mulled over hundreds (literally!) of titles for this blog before settling on “Educational Insanity” (which I particularly like b/c I’m in education and my wife is a psychologist).  I worried about making typographical errors.  I wondered if I would add anything of value to the blogosphere.

At some point, though, I finally realized that not only is the blogosphere largely NOT concerned with those matters (does the title really matter?…don’t we all make mistakes?…), but blogging can actually be a means to help me overcome my need for precision.  That is, through lurking around in the education blogosphere for the last year or so, I have come to believe that blogs are (or should be) one part of our personal learning networks (to use Will Richardson’s language) and collaborative learning necessarily involves being less than perfect, making mistakes, discussing them, etc.   If wikipedia is one prime example, Web 2.0 (for lack of better terminology) allows us to be imprecise with the hope/expectation that we will collectively move towards precision.

So, I look forward to moving in that direction together.  Please consider adding me to your personal learning network and inviting me into yours.

JB