Can Connected Educator Tackle Technology Equity?

It’s undeniable. Technology is in the classroom in new and instructive ways. Flipped classrooms and interactive instruction videos created by teachers for use by students at home are becoming more popular. Teachers are emerging as bloggers, creating classroom websites and using other digital products. Technology offers the potential to level the playing field for students without direct access to resources available to other students in more affluent schools.

Students are already plugged into technology. They are engaged in social networking. They are accessing research and experts beyond their communities and developing critical thinking skills. They will need these skills for everything from finding a job to applying to college. Thus, all students—especially those from high-need schools and low-income communities—need access to these opportunities and guidance in navigating the technological terrain.   

At Teaching Tolerance, we were pleased to see the U.S. Department of Education’s Connected Educator initiative, and happy to let teachers know about the Connected Educator Month [2] launch throughout August. 

Connected Educator will offer daily seminars on digital storytelling, online courses on the basics of Twitter, forums on personalizing learning and webinars on educational wikis. Best of all, it’s free.

We agree that teachers need good and current information to prepare students for the future. But we must also address the digital divide [3] where iPads and laptops are issued to each student in some schools and teachers struggle to rebuild a discarded desktop for 50 students in another. A flipped classroom, no matter how well executed, is not useful if a student does not have a computer, updated software or the landlines or wireless connections to access it.

The Connected Educator manifesto encourages collaboration and putting learners first. Teachers will be able to tap into experts around the globe and share lessons and information with a few clicks of the mouse.

Good for them. Good for their students. But what about the teachers and students without access? We hope one of the first discussion topics will be how to ensure technological equity.  

You can start at Connected Educator now. Participate in chats and discussions. There are many events scheduled for every day. Aug. 20-24, you can be part of Learning 2.0 [4], a virtual conference about rethinking teaching and learning. Conference speakers include Heidi Hayes Jacobs, founder and president of Curriculum Designers, Inc., Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, a 20-year educator, administrator, technology coach and founder of 21st Century Collaborative, LLC, a digital learning consulting business and Marc Prensky, author, educator and creator of more than 50 software games for learning. The conference also features a panel discussion on “Reforming Ed Reform” with Alfie Kohn, Gary Stager, Stephen Downes and Howard Gardner.

Williamson is associate editor at Teaching Tolerance.