Digital Divide vs. Digital Equity

Globalization and digitization have reformed the communication setting, affecting how and with whom we communicate, and deeply shifting the terrain of language and literacy education. As students in urban contexts become socialized into communities of increasing cultural and communicational connectivity, complexity, and convergence (Jenkins, 2004), and funding for specialist second language (L2) support declines, classrooms have become linguistically heterogeneous spaces where every teacher is a teacher of L2 learners.

It is undeniable that, a generation ago, the world of literacy was based on paper especially good books. At this time, literacy engages people in texts and discourses that traverse space and time on screens in which we can access and mix semiotic resources that include a multiplicity of languages (multimodality). Though multimodality does not necessarily utilize digital technologies, digital technologies enable “modes to be configured, be circulated, and get recycled indifferent ways” (Jewitt, 2009a, p. 1), thus intensifying multimodal possibilities.

According to the Benton (2001), there has always been a gap between those people and communities who can make effective use of information technology and those who cannot. Now, more than ever, unequal adoption of technology excludes many from reaping the fruits of the economy.

We use the term "digital divide" to refer to this gap between those who can effectively use new information and communication tools, such as the Internet, and those who cannot. While a consensus does not exist on the extent of the divide (and whether the divide is growing or narrowing), researchers are nearly unanimous in acknowledging that some sort of divide exists. In short, the term “digital divide” is often used to describe inequalities in access to and use of ICT.

However, Digital equity is the social-justice goal of ensuring that everyone in our society has equal access to technology tools, computers and the Internet. Even more, it is when all individuals have the knowledge and skills to access and use technology tools, computers and the Internet.

Once the ICT competence of learners is explored, many factors need to be considered, including their socio-economic background, gender, education and training, location and language. All of these can be a part of explaining the existing digital divide and the use of ICT. Despite ICT access at school, individual differences and home access can affect learners’ use and skill. Thomas and Parayil (2008) claim, however, that ICT policy documents often lead to a focus on the mere lack of material access to computers. This implies that providing access by either increasing the number of computers and/or giving learners equal time in the computer room does not automatically lead to increased use (Chigona, Mbhele & Kabanda 2008).

Even if all classrooms magically get Internet access and all teachers integrate technology into their lessons, not all students have access to computers and the Internet at home. Therefore, it is very important to bridge the gap between digital divide and digital equity.

Today's educator can no longer expect to know more than his or her students. Rather than trying to stay ahead of their students with the content they teach, they should be staying ahead of their students in guiding them through the process of navigating and accessing content. If teachers are still trying to deliver content to their students the way teachers have historically, then they will easily burn out and feel overwhelmed. This is not to say that teachers should no longer teach, but it's not humanly possible for us to always know more than our students when information is just a click away.

Every new step toward equality is met with another step back that's based on access to devices and newly introduced technologies. We can no longer expect that ensuring Internet access for all will solve this issue. First, we must solve the deeper issues of inequity in our society.

In conclusion, teachers, students, and school administrators must be educated on the benefits and advantages that digital technology can bring into education.  At the same time, they have to acknowledge the challenges and disadvantages in order to make the teaching and learning process a great success.

ICT Tools in Language

 

Latest technologies are often having the transformative power to change education for the better or in allowing better educational opportunities in order to support the development of higher-level thinking skills needed by the 21st century.  Theories and ideas to digital technology or ICT tools in language/literacy education are really very significant to all especially educators like us. There are plenty of reasons could exist for a new theory to be developed. Perhaps, some older theories may not answer questions about learners or they leave out the explanations for cognition within the brain. Therefore, theories such as Sociocultural approach, New Literacies Studies, and Multimodality are crucial as the technology develops each and every day. The requirements of the 21st century are dramatically different than those of previous times.  In fact, core subject knowledge is no longer enough, students need higher-level learning skills.

The world in which we live is increasingly sophisticated, multifaceted and nuanced.  People need high-level learning skills to respond, learn and adjust to ever-changing circumstances.  As the world grows increasingly complex success and prosperity will be linked to people’s ability to think, act, adapt and communicate creatively. Hence, these existing theories will help the educators to learn about the technology in language and literacy studies and apply them in their teaching.           

In this blog, I would like to share about multimodality which I find it really interesting. Multimodality is an inter-disciplinary approach that understands communication and representation beyond the language. It has been developed over the past decade to systematically deal with much-debated questions about changes in society, for instance in relation to new media and technologies. Multimodal approaches have provided concepts, methods and a framework for the collection and analysis of visual, aural, embodied, and spatial aspects of interaction and environments, and the relationships between these. In short, it focuses on analyzing and describing the full repertoire of meaning-making resources that people use (visual, spoken, gestural, written, three-dimensional, and others, depending on the domain of representation) in different contexts, and on developing means that show how these are organized to make meaning. I believe that, the teachers can make use of this approach in order to make the learning more interesting and fun. It also will facilitate the students to expand their knowledge and use various types of skills in acquiring language. This theory merely focuses on developing technology in education.

In conclusion, I would say that these theories are really helpful for both teachers and students. They may use these theories as guidance in exploring technology.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

-Nicholas Carr-

I partially agree with Carr’s idea of the Internet especially Google search engine. He strongly believes that the Internet made him change the pattern of his reading and they way he thinks. He also explained what the Internet had done to our brains. Nowadays, people feel it is inconvenient to read long and lengthy articles, by contrast to those days, where people used to read novels and long articles without any distraction. They managed to focus on that long piece of writing and came up with wonderful ideas. But in the present day, many people cannot stay focused on what they are reading; they will get fidgety, lose the thread, and begin looking for something else to do. For example, some will open many web pages a given time to avoid reading a long text. Other than that, some will be reading a long text while getting entertainment from the social networks like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Youtube and so forth. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle for many of us.

On the other hand, the usage of the Internet for scholars and researchers are inseparable and undeniable. These people have benefited a lot from the Internet as they can access information at the tip of their fingers. The world has become borderless with this most up-to-date technology. The compensations of having instant access to such an exceedingly rich store of information are many, and they have been broadly described and much-admired. According to Thompson, he referred to the Internet as “The perfect recall of Silicon memory” which can be an enormous boon to thinking. However, Carr commented on the adverse effects of the Internet. He mentioned that, the boon comes with a price. The Internet seems to be slowly draining away our capacity for concentration and contemplation.

In this era of globalisation, we want everything to be swift such as fast food, instant messages, instant noodles and so on. Therefore, we tend to skim the text and not scan for details. It is obvious that users are not reading online in the conventional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to shun reading in the traditional sense. It is more or less like glancing over the latest headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our concentration. Hence, the reading process undergoes changes in our brain.

Moreover, Google search engine provide all sorts of information that we need in a single click. Yet, Carr blames the Google search engine by saying that, easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. He also claimed that, Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.” As a result, people stop thinking and become unaware of the capacity of their brains.

Apart from that, I personally feel that, the online articles are very complex and it will strain our eyes when we are looking at the screen for a longer period of time. Another problem is, we tend to use abbreviations in our written text. 

The internet has become a metaphorical drug or alcohol. The generation nowadays has become very addicted to it and is unable to stop accessing it every few minutes either via their phones or tabs. Such behaviour is regarded as a kind of psychological illness nowadays. Overuse of the internet may result in the neglect of other aspects of life, such as work, education, ones social life and in some extreme cases even their own personal hygiene. Unless one has the real need to use computers for a period of time, these actions should not be encouraged. It is particularly time-consuming, and more often than not, a waste of time.

Despite these facts, the Internet has been a major source of information and leisure, and we should use it wisely and discreetly. I personally think the benefits outweigh the harm. With a few clicks on the keyboard, we can virtually visit everywhere in the world.

Technology is the ultimate answer if we want to add excitement and students’ engagement in our lesson. Utilizing and combining graphics, video, and audio can address varied styles of learning in a more effective way and be a remarkable support to English language learners. 

There are 8 conditions to promote language acquisition as listed by Egbert, Chao, & Hanson-Smith, 1999. In this entry, I would like to draw the readers attention to a few other conditions which seem to be crucial in integrating ICT in a successful teaching. At the same time, I would also like to provide the readers with some conditions that must be avoided while pointing out ways to promote good conditions when using digital technology tool(s) to teach the English language. 

In my opinion, intrinsic motivation in both learners’ and teachers’ must be present for language learning to take place when using ICT. For instance, some teachers refuse to use ICT in their lesson due to their work load or they could be in the midst of completing their syllabus and would prefer to focus on that rather than learn new methods of teaching. They feel that the conventional method of teaching and learning has done the trick for many years and they do not wish to change that. On the other hand, the students themselves may not be interested in the given task, either because it is too easy or too difficult for them to carry out. These situations may affect the language learning. Therefore, intrinsic motivation is very important in order to promote effective learning. 

 The next condition would be the accessibility of the Computer Laboratory in school. Students must be allowed access to the computer labs during language subjects. Unfortunately, in some schools it is difficult for the teachers to take the students to the lab. Normally, the teacher- in -charge for the lab will not permit other teachers to use the lab except during the computer lessons. This is because they are afraid that when too many students use the computer labs, it will either malfunction or be infected with virus. If this happens, the school will have to incur the loss and the computer teacher will have to answer to the school administration. To avoid all these issues, the computer teacher sets very strict rules and this makes it difficult for the language teachers to access the computer labs during their lessons.  

Apart from that, it is also essential that the students have basic knowledge of the language (simple syntactic structures) and computer skills for ICT to be incorporated in the learning and teaching process. This is because the applications that are used will all be in English and if the student does not understand basic English he/she will not know what to do and as a result of that will not be able to benefit from that lesson. They must have knowledge on how to operate the computers/applications efficiently. If the student does not have basic knowledge when it comes to operating computers/applications, they will not know how to use it and hence, the teacher will not have achieved his/her objective for that class for the day.  

Let us now look at the conditions that must be avoided when incorporating technology in teaching. First on the list is, we must make sure that the technology that is about to be used does not malfunction. In order to do that, it is absolutely essential that the teacher in charge, checks the condition of the device before introducing it to the students.Other than that, we should avoid using applications that are too complicated for a learner. As teachers, we must remember that not all our students are of the same competency level. Hence, we have to introduce applications that are not too complex. Granted, some students who are more competent will find these programs easy. But we have to remember that it is our duty to make sure all the students know what is going on in class. If we only focus on the good students than the students who are of average or low competency level will develop low self-esteem or anxiety.

Another very popular problem that the teachers face is plagiarism. In this modern world, information is at the fingertips of the students. Due to that, the students tend to plagiarize. They must learn to be honest in producing their work by using technology. This falls back to the moral upbringing of the students themselves. So, it is the responsibility of the parents and teachers to instill good moral values in these students.            

In addition to that, the teacher should avoid having very high or low expectations on learners’ ability. For example, the teacher expects his/her student to come up with outstanding work by using technology. When, the teacher evaluates the student’s end product and it is not up to the mark, the teacher will feel disappointed.

 Lastly, I would like to suggest a few ways to promote the good conditions when using digital technology tool(s) to teach the English language. The given task must meet the learner’s interest. Second, the applications/ programs must be user friendly. Last but not least, the teacher must monitor and offer help to those who require assistance. 

 In short, as educators, we are in the unique position to embrace new technologies and use them to enhance curriculum while better engaging each of our students.