Teachers need to provide equal access to the digital world to all learners
Equal access; the concept sounds simple enough. Allow everyone to have the same amount of accessibility to something.
One of my goals in the after school program that I run is to have everyone of my students have an equal opportunity to use and become more familiar with the digital world. This is an important goal because roughly 60% of my students have computers at home. Unfortunately, this task is proving more trouble than I originally thought.
For instance- Not everyone of my students will attend on Tuesdays, which is the designated day of the week that the computer teacher will be offering her class. Another roadblock is that there are only 20 computers that are accessible to the students during each one hour class. I will be holding two, one hour classes, so that means 40 children will be able to take the internet class! But, I have 59 students that attend on Tuesdays. Also, even though the two classes are broken down by grade; first and second graders together and then third, fourth and fifth, I still have varied knowledge of computers within each group. Also, a huge factor is learning abilities and disabilities.
We are still in the development stage of this process. Our first class is Tuesday, March 8, 2011, and it will run for eight weeks. I'm excited to see how everything unfolds.
Marie that is a great program! I guess you really pointed out that is really hard to proved equal access, there is always a set back like the number of computers and the day of the week. I am shocked that only 60% of your students have internet access at home! Seems like computers are just so common, but there still are people that can not get that access at home. Good luck with your program I am sure it will prove to be a great asset!
ReplyDelete