Poet Ponders the Digital

Online education still represents a "digital divide" between socioeconomic groups. Notably, young male minority students seem to struggle in online settings. We are now 30 years into the personal computing revolution, now marked by smartphones with more computing power than early mainframes. Yet, familiarity with technology does not necessarily lead to academic success with technology. I found this new research paper online while working on a book chapter (sadly, after I submitted the draft). The study raises some old, familiar questions about online education and presents a challenge to people like myself with a vested interest in digital pedagogy. Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas Di Xu and Shanna Smith Jaggars February 2013 Community College Research Center Teachers College, Columbia University Abstract Using a dataset containing nearly 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 community and technical coll...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 7, 2010 Deadline July Issue Personal Reflections on Education and Technology Technology has a way of becoming invisible in our lives, something we take for granted. The initial “Wow!” factor fades and we start to assume everyone has access. Yet, not every student has easy access to the Internet. Not every student has access to computers or typewriters to prepare papers for classes. My previous assumptions about technology in our schools have been proved incorrect, and that troubles me. A student with no word processing skills, who is unfamiliar with spreadsheets, and struggles with basic Internet research faces serious challenges in this labor market. For the last four years, I have been fortunate enough to visit states from coast to coast, meeting educational experts and civic leaders who are attempting to address many of the same problems we face in the Central Valley. My travels have taken me to places nationwide that are closing schools...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley November 2009 Issue September 27, 2009 Beyond the Valley: Are We There Yet? The Virtual Valley was supposed to bring us all together. Our physical location was supposed to matter less than with whom we connected online. Yet, there seem to be limits to our online social networks. Researchers have studied online communities for almost three decades, often assuming virtual communities were going to liberate us from traditional barriers. This year we saw evidence that barriers persist online. Eszter Hargittai, a sociologist at Northwestern University, calls this the “Whose Space?” phenomenon. Users, however, being less politically correct than academics, have rechristened MySpace as “MyGhetto,”  “GangstaSpace” and “MyHood.” According to Hargittai’s data, Hispanics are twice as likely to use MySpace as Facebook. There is also a high correlation between educational level and which social sites someone uses. Of those using a social site, 86 perce...