Digital Divide/Digital Inequality

For the last two weeks I have been studying the digital divide and digital inequalities. I created a presentation via Haiku Deck which you can access here. From this assignment I learned about principals of design and about the digital divide. Although these topics were not entirely new to me, they will influence how I will teach by making me more aware of how I present information and how I try to reach out to students who may have inequalities.

I enjoyed my readings on multimedia design. There were several things that I learned from doing the readings and assignments. First, keep it simple. If you have too much information or too many pictures on a slide it will overwhelm a student. Then that student will be unable to process the information correctly or quickly because they cannot focus on everything on the slide. I also realized the importance of having something on the slide that represents the content (but does not say everything about the topic) so that a viewer can see the information and process it using visual means. Equally important was narrating the information that goes along with the slide so that a student can process the information using auditory means as well. One final thing that I thought was helpful was to create the title of slides as headlines. These headlines will help guide your audience, creates a storyline and organization, and keeps the presenter on track.

After doing the readings on multimedia design I have already gone through the PowerPoints I needed to use in my recent lessons and changed them. I took out a bunch of text. If I didn’t think it was essential it was cut out. I entered a lot of the narrative into the notes. I deleted unneeded pictures. I made sure I had pictures that connected to the topic and that I knew how to present about them. I also only advanced one piece of information at a time so that the audience wouldn’t get ahead of me. I think this lesson was very meaningful to me as I have already changed some of presentation styles.

In addition to multimedia design, I also learned about the digital divide. Instinctively I knew that there was a difference between the developed world and the developing world. However, I really learned how big that difference was by reading about the digital divide. I was impressed by how much Europe has got it figured out and how they have so many of their people accessing the internet. I was surprised that America wasn’t doing as great as I thought they should be doing. I found the analysis presented by the researchers of digital inequality very interesting. I liked how they went deeper and tried to explain why there is a divide and how inequalities in other aspects of a person’s live can deepen digital inequalities which leaves a person with even less power. I was deeply interested in researching my school to see how it was doing with the digital divide. We are a relatively homogeneous school, yet, I believe inequalities do exists and that they are only going to get worse in the upcoming years as our demographics change. It is important that we take steps now to change the divide.

I have already begun thinking about the digital divide and what we should do about it. I have applied to be on our school’s technology committee. I think this is a great place to start as I can share my thoughts and opinions with my colleagues. I have always been good about sharing my technology finds with other teachers and coaching them on an as needed basis. I will continue to do this. Mostly, I think I will just be more aware that some of my students are being brought up in a society stricken with inequalities and that I need to really mentor, coach, and scaffold for these students to help lessen those inequalities.

If I had more time to work on this assignment, I would first read the book Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. Both my professor and classmates have been raving about this book. Second, I would like to spend more time talking to other teachers and students in my school about their awareness and experiences with the digital divide. Alas, time is always in short supply!