Enhancing Digital Equity

Enhancing Digital Equity
Author: Massimo Ragnedda
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2020-08-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030490793

This book highlights how, in principle, digital technologies present an opportunity to reduce social disparities, tackle social exclusion, enhance social and civil rights, and promote equity. However, to achieve these goals, it is necessary to promote digital equity and connect the digital underclass. The book focuses on how the advent of technologies may become a barrier to social mobility and how, by concentrating resources and wealth in few hands, the digital revolution is giving rise to the digital oligarchy, further penalizing the digital underclass. Socially-disadvantaged people, living at the margins of digital society, are penalized both in terms of accessing-using-benefits (three levels of digital divide) but also in understanding-programming-treatment of new digital technologies (three levels of algorithms divide). The advent and implementation of tools that rely on algorithms to make decisions has further penalized specific social categories by normalizing inequalities in the name of efficiency and rationalization.

Getting Smart

Getting Smart
Author: Tom Vander Ark
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2011-09-20
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1118115872

A comprehensive look at the promise and potential of online learning In our digital age, students have dramatically new learning needs and must be prepared for the idea economy of the future. In Getting Smart, well-known global education expert Tom Vander Ark examines the facets of educational innovation in the United States and abroad. Vander Ark makes a convincing case for a blend of online and onsite learning, shares inspiring stories of schools and programs that effectively offer "personal digital learning" opportunities, and discusses what we need to do to remake our schools into "smart schools." Examines the innovation-driven world, discusses how to combine online and onsite learning, and reviews "smart tools" for learning Investigates the lives of learning professionals, outlines the new employment bargain, examines online universities and "smart schools" Makes the case for smart capital, advocates for policies that create better learning, studies smart cultures

Cases on Digital Learning and Teaching Transformations in Higher Education

Cases on Digital Learning and Teaching Transformations in Higher Education
Author: Blankenship, Rebecca J.
Publisher: IGI Global
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2019-06-28
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1522593330

Colleges and universities throughout the United States are reimagining teaching and learning processes to best match the personalized needs of the 21st century learner in the present digital age. Applying various digital education strategies within undergraduate and graduate settings and identifying the metrics that can be used to effectively determine learning outcomes are all critical to ensuring a productive educational experience. Cases on Digital Learning and Teaching Transformations in Higher Education is an important resource to the field of education, especially within the TPACK construct, as it provides a glimpse into an initiative specifically designed to transform how university faculty design their courses for maximum and directed technology-relevant impact. Featuring an array of topics such as course transformation, digital retooling, technology trial and error, student engagement, and pedagogy, this book is ideal for university faculty, university administration, curriculum designers, instructional technology designers, academicians, and researchers.

Closing the Gap

Closing the Gap
Author: Sarah Thomas
Publisher: International Society for Technology in Education
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2022-08-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1564847152

Three experts on equity and technology offer concrete, evidence-based strategies for classroom teachers to move toward digital equity in K12 settings. Closing the Gap is an ISTE book series designed to reflect the contributions of multiple stakeholders seeking to ensure that digital equity is achieved on campuses, in classrooms, and throughout education. In this series, authors Nicol R. Howard, Sarah Thomas, and Regina Schaffer offer historical and philosophical insights while exploring challenges and solutions unique to teacher preparation programs, pre-service and in-service teachers, and instructional coaches. The second title in the Closing the Gap series, this book includes: • Examination of digital equity and the “problem of practice” for teachers and coaches • Strategies for connecting the ISTE Educator and Student Standards to practice • Discussion of key challenges facing teachers in today’s classrooms, such as access, connectivity, limited resources, digital divide, and the homework gap • Research-based vignettes from teachers who have encountered and conquered some of the challenges addressed in the book, and from edtech coaches who have implemented equity-centered innovative professional development This book helps teachers address the challenges of teaching in the digital age, providing positive examples and recommendations for achieving digital equity in their classroom communities.

Digital Solidarity in Education

Digital Solidarity in Education
Author: Mary T. Kolesinski
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2013-09-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1135119171

Digital Solidarity in Education is a book for educators, scholars, and students interested in better understanding both the role technology can play in schools and its potential for strengthening communities, optimizing the effects of globalization, and increasing educational access. The digital solidarity movement prioritizes the engagement and mobilization of students from diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and economic backgrounds, and with giftedness and/or disabilities, to utilize and apply technologies. This powerful book introduces innovative technological programs including virtual schools, e-tutoring, and interactive online communities for K-12 students that can: • increase students' knowledge and understanding of advanced concepts while reinforcing their basic skills; • reinforce students' communication in their first language while introducing second and third language possibilities; • nurture students' capabilities to think analytically, while using creative and innovative ideas to think simultaneously “outside of the box.” The experienced author team shows how collaborative partners from the private sector can assist public school systems and educators in creating access for all students to technological innovations, with a goal of increasing individual opportunities for future college and career success. Combining theoretical scholarship and research with the personal perspectives of practitioners in the field, this volume shares with readers both the nuts and bolts of using technology in education, and the importance of doing so.

Handbook of Digital Inequality

Handbook of Digital Inequality
Author: Hargittai, Eszter
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2021-11-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1788116577

This cutting-edge Handbook offers fresh perspectives on the key topics related to the unequal use of digital technologies. Considering the ways in which technologies are employed, variations in conditions under which people use digital media and differences in their digital skills, it unpacks the implications of digital inequality on life outcomes.

Toward Digital Equity

Toward Digital Equity
Author: Gwen Solomon
Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2003
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

Examines factors that collectively create and sustain the present inequalities in student access to digital technologies, and discusses some of the challenges and opportunities for addressing the issue. The 15 chapters explore philosophical and sociocultural aspects of digital equity, consider the needs of particular populations of learners, and suggest organizational structures and policies for instituting systematic change. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Connecting to Learn

Connecting to Learn
Author: Vikki S. Katz
Publisher:
Total Pages: 30
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

This brief combines original research and policy analysis to examine a key issue that is often overlooked in debates about the proliferation of new technologies, education, and equity: the potential for digital media investments to support a promising learning pathway for children in our nation's increasingly diverse, low-income families. A growing body of evidence confirms that accelerated technological innovation and adoption rates have roiled family routines across the economic spectrum--and also, that the opportunities associated with these technologies have not been evenly distributed across the population. New technologies have contributed to new equity and "opportunity to learn" gaps between higher- and lower-income families, and their meaningful participation in a knowledge-based economy is further constrained by limited local efforts to support parents, educators and other community stakeholders in taking advantage of them. In "Connecting to Learn," Vikki Katz and Michael Levine propose an ecological approach to digital equity policy based on recent research with low-income, Hispanic families in the U.S. This brief reminds decision-makers of the importance of having an ecological understanding of the inextricable ties between learning and developmental influences at the family, community and macro-systems levels. Engaging this framework, the authors recommend solutions for building effective digital connections for all families--by leveraging low-income families' strengths to support their meaningful digital participation.

Equity and Quality in Digital Learning

Equity and Quality in Digital Learning
Author: Carolyn J. Heinrich
Publisher:
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781682535103

Equity and Quality in Digital Learning identifies and presents specific strategies and practices for using digital tools to reduce inequities in educational opportunities and improve student outcomes. Based on a ten-year research-practice partnership with the Dallas and Milwaukee public school districts, the book highlights the factors that can support or impede the implementation of digital learning in K-12 schools. As public schools make major investments in digital learning, it is critical to ensure that digital tools are effectively leveraged to enhance learning and reduce achievement gaps, especially for those students historically underserved in schools. The authors offer concrete ways to use evidence from the book to increase the effectiveness of digital learning. "With rich accounts of two districts' efforts to integrate digital tools, the authors offer a well-reasoned caution that digital tools can easily replicate, even amplify, inequality in our education system. Yet, they offer a clear outline for how districts can adopt and implement digital tools to improve learning for all students. This book is an essential read for any school system leader." --Betheny Gross, associate director, Center on Reinventing Public Education, University of Washington Bothell "At this moment, we are grappling with not only how to ensure equity of access to devices and internet but also how to provide equity in quality and delivery of digital content. This book serves as a resource to help educational organizations understand how we got here and offers solutions on where to go." --Lakisha Brinson, Director of Learning Technology, Metro Nashville Public Schools Carolyn J. Heinrich is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Public Policy and Education, chair of the Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, and an affiliated professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University. Jennifer Darling-Aduana is an assistant professor of learning technologies in the Department of Learning Sciences, College of Education and Human Development, at Georgia State University. Annalee G. Good is a researcher at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), codirector of the Wisconsin Evaluation Collaborative, and director of the WCER Clinical Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The Digital Divide

The Digital Divide
Author: Jan van Dijk
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2020-01-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1509534466

Contrary to optimistic visions of a free internet for all, the problem of the ‘digital divide’ – the disparity between those with access to internet technology and those without – has persisted for close to twenty-five years. In this textbook, Jan van Dijk considers the state of digital inequality and what we can do to tackle it. Through an accessible framework based on empirical research, he explores the motivations and challenges of seeking access and the development of requisite digital skills. He addresses key questions such as: Does digital inequality reduce or reinforce existing, traditional inequalities? Does it create new, previously unknown social inequalities? While digital inequality affects all aspects of society and the problem is here to stay, Van Dijk outlines policies we can put in place to mitigate it. The Digital Divide is required reading for students and scholars of media, communication, sociology, and related disciplines, as well as for policymakers.