The ‘digital divide’ can be understood as the gap that separates those who have access to digital technology and those that do not. It has been attributed to Lloyd Morrisett, the former president of the Markle Foundation, by Hoffman et al (2000). A more relevant meaning for this blog post is defined by Warschauer in 2010 who spoke of the inequity in digital skills capabilities that accompany a social stratification, represented by nuanced layers of socioeconomic status, culture and politics. This is more complex than the simple binary division suggested by the term digital divide. It is graduated as the word ‘stratification’ suggests and causes inequalities in the ability to access, adapt or create knowledge via the use of information and communication technologies. As teachers we must be mindful of the presence of those who Dolan (2015) called the cans and cannots, especially when developing meaningful and relevant pedagogy. It is imperative that opportunities are provided for our students that will bridge the skills gap in their digital literacy practices.
In mainstream middle-class urban Australia, educational policy ensures access to technology is provided in 1:1 programs with many schools employing a ‘bring your own device’ protocol. Unfortunately for students living in rural areas and for those living in poverty, constant access to technology, particularly for personal learning and empowerment, does not occur. In an educational sense, students that fall into this gap are failing to master new forms of meaning-making involving multimodal media, languages and genres. Without the support of a school system that incorporates digital literacy skills into daily lessons and embeds critical thinking practices into online activity, students in low socioeconomic rural regions are susceptible to sinking into the digital literacy divide.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics recently released the Australia-wide ‘survey of household use of information technology for 2016-17′. It finds that total households with access to the internet are sitting steady at 86% since 2014, and for homes with children under 15 years, the number rises to 97%. These statistics may seem encouraging; however, they are tempered by the knowledge that the three most popular online activities are entertainment, social networking and banking (all 80%). Of personal concern, in the location where I teach, the ABS census data reveals that households with internet access equal 66.7%, and a further 29.8% of households do not access the internet from their dwelling. This data is corroborated by the recent digital inclusion report from 2017, that clearly articulates the groups who suffer the greatest exclusion from digital practices are those with lower socioeconomic status, people without paid employment and indigenous Australians.
I reside and work with a such a demographic. Students are from families that have financial struggles, often experiencing intergenerational struggle with lack of employment. Twenty-six per cent of our youth identifies as indigenous. The students I teach have family incomes that sit at half the median Australian family income. Many of the students I teach access the internet at home through prepaid smartphone plans with little data or share a single home computer that is not solely dedicated to their educational use. Their use of digital media to enhance learning and personal agency rarely occurs. More frequently, the use of digital resources is merely a means for amusement and social interaction. My anecdotal evidence is corroborated by the data gathered in the digital inclusion report 2017, that found mobile users suffer a relatively high level of digital exclusion – compounded by lack of income, lack of employment and a lack of education.
In our globally connected ‘world’ my student cohort is just one of the thousands of impoverished communities falling into the digital literacy divide. There are multiple scholarly articles that examine how inequitable use of digital media negatively impacts digital literacy. Such digital exclusion is highlighted in Kathy Mills’ research in 2010, ‘A review of the “Digital Turn” in the new literacies studies’, and her findings support that the varying quality and nature of students’ digital practices are mediated by differing cultural resources in the family home, and unless socialised into methods of creative media production, students rarely apply digital tools to online content creation (p. 259).
The situation is worsening for many rural Australian students, as the multilayered digital divide is widening. Whilst they ubiquitously connect via their smartphones, their use of apps revolves around Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr and gaming. Their low levels of literacy and numeracy compound their lack of efficacy in digital literacy and this, in turn, undermines their educational success. As the digital divide is stratified, even when physical access is apparent the opportunity to gain digital skills and make use of applications is constrained by low socioeconomic status and compounded by poor literacy skills in an iterative downward spiral.
It is critical that such disenfranchised students be empowered to make full use of online resources to bridge this divide. To mitigate the marginalisation of these young people, their capacity and agency for online participation requires a relevant educational nexus between literacy and technology. Educational programs must encourage authentic engagement in online ecologies and activate purposeful content creation across various forms of multimodal digital media.
As a teacher-librarian, I am mindful that my disadvantaged students have urgent educational need
‘as more and more resources shift online and connectivity becomes the norm for most Australians’.
Of personal relevance here, the digital literacies gap is stark and rarely featured in articles that celebrate 21st-century approaches to education. Scholarly research demonstrates the innovative and productive potential of digital practices. Digital literacy engenders skills that are collaborative, interactive, dialogic, intertextual, hybridised, spontaneous, and linguistically diverse. Imperative in a future focussed pedagogy, students benefit from the critical consumption of digital resources and are empowered to author a rich array of quality online content. Thus, critically framing 21st-century literacy skills by providing multimodal, digital ways of knowing motivates me as a teacher-librarian to program for educational equity. I have begun to deliver an innovative digital citizenship program that may bridge the digital divide by building the digital capacity of my students.
The slideshow below indicates the existence of the divide for too many of my students. It highlights six sets of results from a pre-test on digital skills undertaken at the outset of my Stage 4 program for digital citizenship. It is clear that a disturbing percentage of Stage 4 students are lacking the key competencies necessary to engage effectively in an online setting:
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Created by Author, 2018. CC by NC ND 3.0 AU
I collaboratively deliver my Stage 4 Digital Citizenship program as part of the Year 7 (11 to 13 years) English curriculum. Lessons take place in the school library. Students thereby benefit from the presence of two expert teachers, one of whom is an information specialist (the TL), as well as the library assistant who acts as a teacher’s aide. The digital citizenship program is hosted on the suite of Google Apps for Education and uses the class set of school library computers, enabling students to acquire skills in a formal educational setting. The program is accessed via Google classroom, a ubiquitous learning platform at our school. The program covers tuition in a range of digital affordances, beginning with ICT fundamentals, applications and ethical online practices and incorporates self-paced learning. Google classroom posts allow for differentiation, and a broad scope of interactive modules can be delivered simultaneously through hyperlinked sites such as essential skills for the world wide web by oercommons.org (Open Educational Resources Commons), computer basics by GFC Global Inc. and content such as the digital compass game created by Common Sense Education.
An inquiry-based learning (IBL) project is used to inspire high-level engagement. It is activated by posing an ‘essential question’ and framed by Kuhlthau’s information search process to monitor and support effective student inquiry. The IBL project also provides a scaffold that the teacher-librarian can use to facilitate students’ acquisition of information literacy skills. The Google classroom contains posts curated by topics that hyperlink to resources online. Information literacy topics include how to reference, understanding copyright, how to locate creative commons images on sites such as Pixabay, how to reverse-search an image using websites like Tin Eye, evaluating website credibility and how to use fact checker organisations like Snopes.com.
By including these situated learning modules on referencing, copyright law and other information literacy skills, the students can access these on a point-of-need basis. Learning becomes personalised and is relevant and meaningful. Each student differentially accesses content to solve a problem as it arises. The IBL project involves critical pedagogical practices. Students must critically reflect on their IBL activities and assess their learning, consider their digital footprint and evaluate their act of digital agency in finding their own ‘voice’. This IBL activates learning that, as Dr Mandy Lupton (2016) demonstrates in a series of academic blog posts, will be both generic and situated, but more importantly may lead to forms of expressive learning or transformative learning for particular students should their choice of topic involve the creation of original artistic content or advocating for social change.
The digital citizenship program introduces multiple Web 2.0 affordances to the students which they use to create a multimodal IBL project. This builds their digital skills in communities of practice as students organically discuss and share their practices as they create with a range of web 2.0 tools. Applications for creating content include infographics, multimodal graphics, podcasts, videos, ezines, or blogs. The IBL offers an innovative pedagogy to enhance deep learning of transferrable digital competencies. This proficiency may then be applied creatively to respond to discipline-specific assessment tasks. Personal success and effective online engagement encourage a feed-forward effect with students able to advance their digital literacy skills to navigate and succeed in dynamic, globally connected, economies. In turn, these digital literacy capabilities are a segue for lifelong participation in connected learning communities. In this way, the team in our library and I help to prepare our youth for their future in an ever-evolving digital ecology. It is my hope that the scope and sequence of the digital citizenship program I have authored may inspire others to use in our quest to bridge the digital literacy divide.
References:
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016). 2016 Census QuickStats. Retrieved from http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2016/quickstat/SSC12887
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2018). Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2016-17. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8146.0
Avila, J., & Pandya, J. Z. (2013). Critical digital literacies as social praxis. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Connected Learning Alliance. (2018). What is connected learning? Connected Learning Alliance [Website]. Retrieved from https://clalliance.org/why-connected-learning/
Dolan, J. E. (2016). Splicing the Divide: A Review of Research on the Evolving Digital Divide Among K–12 Students. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 48(1), 16-37. doi: 10.1080/15391523.2015.1103147. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15391523.2015.1103147
Ewing, S. (2016). Australia’s digital divide is narrowing, but getting deeper. The Conversation [Website]. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/australias-digital-divide-is-narrowing-but-getting-deeper-55232
Hoffman, D. L., Novak, T. P., & Schlosser, A. (2000). The Evolution of the Digital Divide: How Gaps in Internet Access May Impact Electronic Commerce. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 5(3), 1-55. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2000.tb00341.x Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/5/3/JCMC534/4584185
Hoffman, D., & Novak, T. (2000). The Growing Digital Divide: Implications for an Open Research Agenda. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Novak2/publication/240313230_The_Growing_Digital_Divide_Implications_for_an_Open_Research_Agenda/links/545fabb10cf2c1a63bfdb95b.pdf
International Literacy Association. (2017). Overcoming the digital divide: Four critical steps [Literacy leadership brief]. Newark, DE: Author. Retrieved from https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-overcoming-digital-divide-brief.pdf
Kuhlthau, C. (2018). Information Search Process. Rutgers School of Communication and Information [Website]. Retrieved from http://wp.comminfo.rutgers.edu/ckuhlthau/information-search-process/
Lupton, M. (2012, August 22). What is inquiry learning? [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://inquirylearningblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/what-is-inquiry-learning/
Lupton, M. (2012, November 28). Collecting questions [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://inquirylearningblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/collecting-questions/
Lupton, M. (2016, June 2). Critical evaluation of information-generic window [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://inquirylearningblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/critical-evaluation-of-information-generic-window/
Mills, K. A. (2010). A Review of the “Digital Turn” in the New Literacy Studies. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 246-271. doi: 10.3102/0034654310364401 Retrieved from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3102/0034654310364401
Ritzhaupt, A. D., Liu, F., Dawson, K., & Barron, A. E. (2013). Differences in Student Information and Communication Technology Literacy Based on Socio-Economic Status, Ethnicity, and Gender. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 45(4), 291-307. doi: 10.1080/15391523.2013.10782607 Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15391523.2013.10782607
Roswell, J., Morrell, E., & Alvermann, D. E. (2017). Confronting the digital divide: Debunking brave new world discourses. The Reading Teacher, 71 (2), 157-165. doi:10.1002/trtr.1603. Retrieved from https://ila.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/trtr.1603
Thomas, J., Barraket, J., Wilson, C., Ewing, S., MacDonald, T., Tucker, J., & Rennie, E. (2017). Measuring Australia’s Digital Divide: The Australian Digital Inclusion Index 2017. Retrieved from https://digitalinclusionindex.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Australian-Digital-Inclusion-Index-2017.pdf
Warschauer, M. (2010). A literacy approach to the digital divide. Retrieved from http://education.uci.edu/uploads/7/2/7/6/72769947/lit-approach.pdf