Reading Prompt #11

RICHARDSON Ch. 6. The Social Web: Learning Together

BLACKBOARD - Warschauer, M., Knobel, M., & Stone, L. (2004).

Technology and equity in schooling: Deconstructing the Digital Divide. Educational Policy, 18(4), 562-588.

Share an idea of two about how you could use the ideas from Richardson with ESL students.

What is the "digital divide?' And why do Warschauer et al argue that this term may longer be applicable. What are the issues they found regarding differences in technology use with ELLs and other low socioeconomic students. What are some ways you could address this in your own schools or programs?

Twitter is really popular because of the convince, and I think its befit to education is getting more and more obvious, especially in out classroom activities. Like the example Richardson gave in the book, one physics teacher did a field with his students in Wisconsin, and he asked his students to use their cell phones to send journal updates to their Twitter accounts. Then the students who couldn’t make the trip can enjoy a trip through Twitter in real time. So for ESL students, if they have a Twitter account and can access to the internet, wherever they are, they can have the real time learning experience.

However, I personally like the social bookmarking services better, especially the Diigo. Tagging the site is amazing! If I find something related to TESL, I can tag the tags I choose, and see what others have tagged. To see the tags made by others may give me a different perspective to an issue, and the annotation is also awesome. What’s more, the teachers can have their students subscribe the feed of a particular tag he or she created for a subject. Through that way, the students can automatically get the linking or comment which the teachers do on some websites. But teachers can do more specifically, like choosing some students who need the information most to update automatically.

The digital divide is the gap between people who have the access to computers and internet and people who don’t have such access. Warschauer et al argue that “these gaps are gradually being narrowed” because of the development of the society, that computers and internet are more and more common these days. However, there are still differences about how technology is used between high-SES students and low-SES students. For example, in language arts, low-SES students tend to do common things like PowerPoint presentations and essay writing, but for the high-SES students, they do something more such as internet-based research, planning, writing, editing, and analyzing essays. Then we have a new issue about the ELL students. Because of their poor English, they do use grammar checkers which the low-SES don’t to review their writing, but they simply accept the suggestion gave by the checkers, which make their paper works hard to understanding. I would like to say that if in my class there are lots of English language learners, I will suggest them not to use those grammar checkers at first. Those beginners will be given individual instruction about their English. This may be heavy the burden of the teachers, but that’s the essence of “teacher”, to teach. And that will not last a long time ,once the proficient level is improved, teachers can let them start to use grammar or vocabulary checkers gradually.