Purpose
My approved KA in Structural Inequality and Diversity is not making sense to me. I think, because my thinking in other areas has changed, that for me to focus on diversity in recruitment and retention in higher education is not particularly interesting. So, I am going to propose that I focus on structural inequality, the digital divide and how Web 2.0, e-learning 2.0 and the growing collaborative movement extend the definition of the digital divide.
The narrow definition… of access to the technology… still is relevant… but once access is gained is equity achieved? I’m not sure I can do original research on that topic, but I can review the literature (for the overview), focus on the issues of digital/information literacy as they related to adult learners and not sure what to do as an applied. My first thought was to develop an information literacy teaching site for adult learners that defines the tools, engages in the quest of digital literacy in the era of web 2.0… not the same as a site for doctoral students… which might be the outcome of my work in TLT, but rather a site for achieving literacy in the terminology and the controversy.
I notice many of the people I’m interacting with are white men… a few white women (I know this only by the picture they choose to share…)… I presume that is because they’ve been doing this for awhile. I notice many like to focus on who has the coolest tools… while some of the women are just amazed at the connections they are able to make with others for their own growth and learning. I sense no animosity or one upmanship (most of the time) but do sense a different style.
I wonder what that means.
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The digital divide is but the proverbial tip of the iceberg in that it rests on deepening learning inequalities wherein standardized testing, “no child left with a mind” requirements, and so on have so brutalized the imaginations of children and adolescents that they often use collaborative technologies to bludgeon/deaden their thought/feeling patterns just to get by. Learning styles, different epistemologies, and just plan different ways of being in the world are attacked by orthodoxy in ways that create the base of the iceberg of which the digital divide is the tip….
Yes, I understand what you are saying. I wonder, somehow, if technology can’t be part of the solution… I’m not a K-12 person… I’m by no means trained in that area. But in adult learning, too, we reap the consequences of the poor backgrounds of students. I think the digital divide is an understatement, a symptom, and sometimes an excuse. I’m still wondering how to formulate this into something…