The people I see at most teacher conferences tend to be either senior people or people who have the money to pay their own way. People who pay their own way tend to have spouses with middle to upper middle class incomes. Districts that only send senior people are often leaving home the most resent hires who have benefitied from more recent efforts to be more inclusive of minorities. And then there is the matter of many minority teachers are teaching at poorer districts who have less money to send teachers for training. What is the solution? Who is going to pay?

Perhaps the answer for both minority participation and the other problems with conferences is more local unconferences? Maybe if we can reduce the costs and increase the networking and peer to peer sharing with can help everyone out.

As for getting more educators into blogging that is a harder problem because I think many administrators are activily discouraging the practice. Blocking blog sites from schools makes the problem worse because it means teachers cannot blog or read blogs from school. For teachers who can not afford or cost justify broadback from home this can be a serious problem.

I blogged earlier about the lack of diversity at NECC (http://edinsanity.com/2008/06/30/reflections-from-necc-day-equity/) and I also got into a little tiff with ISTE about their Digital Equity Summit (http://edinsanity.com/2008/06/05/necc-and-the-digital-equity-summit-the-epilogue/).

Any thoughts on how we can get the ed. tech. “industry” to think more like you, your colleagues and Leroy Finkel? How can we bring issues of diversity to the attention of the ed. tech. power brokers?

The only thing whiter than the blogosphere is the audience at an edtech conference.

EdTech pioneer and one of CUE’s founders, Leroy Finkel became interested in an effort led by a few of us to bring some diversity to California CUE (computer-using educators) more than fifteen years ago. When Leroy died in 1993, a group of his friends honored his concern about diversity and created a fellowship in his honor. The purpose was to celebrate, nurture and include the contributions of computer-using educators of color.

In a state that is or soon will be minority majority (CA), the past four recipients of the Finkel Fellowship have been caucasian. The CUE web site has scrubbed any mention of diversity from the award.

It’s all quite tragic.
http://www.cue.org/leroyfinkel

@Darren – I think you’re probably right. I don’t sense a great interest in discussing issues of diversity, equity, etc. among the other nodes on the network. Also, I’m going to recommend to Scott that for the next edublogger survey, he add a couple of items about the populations with whom the respondents work. I would bet that the vast majority of those who responded to Scott’s survey work in happy little suburbs and/or relatively affluent areas.

As for my comment regarding our “little egos”, the word “little” was written in sarcasm. Even if we did have more diversity in our little sphere, I think many among us would not welcome the dissenting voices – guaranteed to surface because of differences in cultural, ethnic, or other backgrounds – as much as we hope or might suppose.

The truth is that we like those that think like we do and gravitate toward those that are telling the story the way we want to hear it.

Thanks for the link to your post; that was written before my full entrance into the blogosphere. But, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “our little egos aren’t quite ready for it.” Susplain?

You want diversity? I’m afraid our little egos aren’t quite ready for it.

http://drapestakes.blogspot.com/2007/07/edublogger-community-not-extremely.html

I would add one thing. Where, in all the breathless reporting over “the nations’s first Black President” is that other bit of reporting: the lack of African-American Doctors, Engineers, mathematicians, financial analysts, accountants, proteomic biologists, network technicians, geographers, video game designers?

Religion IS a suspect class, and I’m reminded of that nearly every second this time of year. For our “holiday” party this year, the Dean announced that she’s providing…ham. Ham! Way to “include” me and the two other Jewish faculty members. So, yes, I would be pleased to know that there is diversity of religiosity in the blogosphere. But, I’m not AS concerned about it as I am with race. If we could distinguish levels of “suspectness,” I would say that race trumps religion.

I don’t want bloggers to let me know how they identify themselves racially. I do, however, want to know that when Technorati (or anyone else, for that matter) gives me a “state of the blogosphere” survey, I can get a sense of the diversity of experiences that are represented in the ‘sphere. I want to know that the so-called “marketplace of ideas” includes ideas from those who experience the world in qualitatively different ways than I do because I am a white man.