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| Does money unlock opportunities for those who can afford it? |
As I held a conversation with two of my students yesterday, I began to ask them their takes on using technology in education. While both students agree that it is nice to be able to use technology, they did state that there are just some things they'd rather learn the old fashion way. But this is not what stood out most to me. One of my students made a comment that truly made me think. He said to me that one thing that bothers him is that other student's whose parents can afford to buy them the same (or better) technology that they use in school have an advantage over student's whose parents cannot afford to buy them the technology used in school. He said that they have more time at home to practice and play with the technology and learn all the ins and outs about it. The only time student's whose parents can't afford to buy it get to use it is in class. There may be times when they complete tasks slower because they are still trying to get adjusted to using the technology. He said that this "plays with people's minds" because not being able to keep up is embarassing and frustrating.
So, what do we suggest for students who don't have the benefit of affording the technology that we use in our classrooms? Not every school has the benefit of supplying students with their school assigned technologies to be taken home. The costs would soar through the roof! How can we close the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged when it comes to the affordability of technology? When my student said this to me, it reminded me of a time in high school. When I was in high school, graphing calculators became a big deal. There were the newest thing. I can recall that my Math Teacher wanted her students to all have a TI-83 calculator. I was fortunate enough that my parents could afford to buy me one, but that was not the case for all of my classmates. At the time, the calculators were well over $100. So, some students had to look on the calculators of other students and did not have the advantage of using the calculators very much. Was this fair to the students? Are we being fair to students now? What do you think?
