Blogs on Primary (K-2)

Sometimes when I'm feeling particularly bogged down by the state of our education system, my antidote is to dream big, to indulge myself in fantasy and wildly imagine the school I'd like to send my son to, the one I'd like to work at. So I've been dreaming.

Cocooned in the safety of a library carrel, students can travel the world via Google Earth and see live video feed of the Doll's Festival in Japan. The haiku master Basho had to travel on foot for the same event, sleeping on hard floors in flea-infested straw. Today, students can peruse images of the English countrysides, full of the oxlips, nodding violets, and sweet musk-roses that inspired Shakespeare, without dampening their sneakers in dew or suffering the consequences of allergies. They can listen to the voices of strangers telling their life stories on podcasts and add their own stories to the voicethread of the world.

Readers of this blog know that students are learning all the time, whether or not they're in school. Indeed, the vast majority of learning happens outside of school -- in homes, playgrounds, workplaces and so on. Play has a fundamental role in this learning, as great minds in education from Plato to Dewey, Piaget and Vygotsky have recognized over the years.

As an urban teacher whose students are often lacking access to a computer and the Internet at home, I have strong opinions and experiences with the digital divide. I decided to do some research to see where my students fit into the current trends.

What is the digital divide?

If you ask most people to define the digital divide, most of them would answer that it has to do with those who have access to technology and those who don't. Ten years ago, they would have been right. However, over the last ten years access to technology has become more and more ubiquitous.