4/21/2019 17/SP ET-680-501, ET-680-502: "lend me your ear and I'll sing you a song...

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Moodle - Loyola University Maryland

17/SP Role of Technology Leader (ET-680-501,

ET-680-502)
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FORUM: Equity and the Digital Divide ► "lend me your ear and I'll sing you a song..."

« FORUM: Equity and the Digital Divide

Jessica Stith

"lend me your ear and I'll sing you a song..." 5 replies

Thursday, April 27, 2017, 10:01 PM

Last Monday, May 1, 2017,

9:16 PM

I'll take a ride on the bandwagon. ;)

1. The digital divide is about the ways that people both access and use digital technologies, most
specifically, the internet. The authors of "The Online Participation Divide" explore the ways that Digital
Divide extends to who creates and interacts with content online, how they interact with that content,
and which voices are heard and/or privileged.

2. According to the authors, the most significant social/cultural impact of the digital divide is that the
the voices which are online are privilege and they are the voices that are counted when policy makers
are considering various actions or outcomes. This means that people who are already
underrepresented in the political/social world continue to be disadvantaged. Specifically those people
who are poor, live in rural communities, are less-educated, are minorities and/or are older are nigh-on
invisible in the online world. This matters because they continue to be disenfranchised even in those
areas where equity (in the sense that everyone can have a blog or facebook page) is often considered
to be the norm.

3. The studies suggest that part of being a visible, contributing member of the online community is in
part due to one's general experience with and practice at participating in ways that use technology. If a
teacher in my building is not willing to use technology or allow students that exposure and those
opportunities, they are contributing to a systematic erasing of those voices from the social/cultural
experience.
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4/21/2019 4. As a technology leader I can advocate
17/SP andET-680-502:
ET-680-501, possibly "lend
teachmeayour
basic digital
ear and citizenship
I'll sing course which
you a song..."

will help introduce students to technology and it's use. Also, I can help other teachers to use and
introduce their students to the collaborative and social opportunities that the internet offers. In my own
classes I can work to introduce students to the benefits of meaningful social media opportunities.

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5 replies

1 Post by Sarah Walker Friday, April 28, 2017, 3:13 PM

Re: "lend me your ear and I'll sing you a song..."

Showing students meaningful social media opportunities is a great connection for

technology leaders to make with their students. Students would be more likely to
remember things and use it again later on. I believe a common social media that
could be an example of this would be twitter. Teachers can use this in the
classroom to communicate with their students.

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2 Post by Mary Ford Saturday, April 29, 2017, 7:51 AM

Re: "lend me your ear and I'll sing you a song..."

I thought your use of the word disenfranchised really summed up the article. The
gap that is created can be far more damaging to the communication with a
community than one might imagine. Teachers are supposed to be preparing
students to be successful as a whole and if a basic skill such as online
participation is not taught and explored, that educator is not only underserving
their students but also segregating them in a very detrimental way.

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3 ↑
Reply to Mary Ford from Jessica Stith

Re: "lend me your ear and I'll sing you a song..."

Monday, May 1, 2017, 9:16 PM

Yeah, I think it's a powerful problem for

students who are disenfranchised, but I also think it's a problem for
those people who never get to hear those voices. I'm thinking about
the protests in Baltimore in 2015. Facebook reminded me tonight that
two years ago I had posted all of these pictures and notes from my
students because they wanted to talk about their experience to a
larger audience, one that only saw Baltimore and the problems here
via the news.
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4/21/2019 17/SP ET-680-501, ET-680-502: "lend me your ear and I'll sing you a song..."

I found myself as the middle-man between the largely white, middle-

class America and the entirely Black, lower-class students that I
serve because there were almost no places online or socially where
those groups overlapped. That's a problem and if we're not teaching
our students about digital citizenship and how (and why) to navigate
social media, then we're doing them a disservice, but we're also
doing a disservice to the word as a whole and contributing to the
harmful and exclusionary divides in our society.

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4 Post by Lawrence Totty Saturday, April 29, 2017, 5:57 PM

Succinct

Jessica, I loved how succinct this post was, because in my long winded Beauty
and the Beast inspired diatribe, I struggled to find the words that you used here.
Online presence is a concept that we are not truly comfortable with in terms of,
mental health vs. physical health, there is so much that isn't yet for certain but it is
being unwrapped the more we build these online identities & credentials.
Technology and the internet is so pervasive that the concept of "unplugged" or
"off grid" starts to feel more and more like fantasy. A teacher not cultivating digital
citizenship and helping students build that online presence is doing a true
disservice.

Great song lyric by the way.

Reply

5 ↑
Reply to Lawrence Totty from Jessica Stith

Re: Succinct
Monday, May 1, 2017, 9:10 PM

Thanks! You can never go wrong with The

Beatles.

I think your point about online identities is an important one. I read an

article about why selfie-culture has been good for young women
because they are finding ways to see themselves as beautiful
regardless of what society says, however I know about the problems
with cyber-bullying and the ways that students shame each other
online as well.

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