Students in today’s day in age have multiple dimensions of technological accessibilities.

As each
person’s experience is different, unique skills as well as specialized areas of interest in the students
create a wide verity of different levels of knowledge in different areas of technology. This variability in
student knowledge has left educators with the challenge of making sure that students have the skills
they need to become successful in their future endeavors. The digital participation cap has been a topic
of concern amount teachers and students as it portrays a need to give access to supportive technologies
at home as well the proper use of digital citizenship knowledge in schools. (Thomas, 2019, pg. 7). In
Figure 1, the Digital Youth Network Model demonstrates that was at which a digital citizen categorizes
the use of technologies and how teachers can demonstrate the different venues of technology. (Zywica,
2014).

Solutions to this problem have been addressed by teachers and administrators in order to
successfully bring their students to a similar level knowledge. This was concluded to be focused on the
addressing of digital inequalities of everyone in partnership. (Thomas, 2019, pg. 8). Communication and
collaboration from all teachers and administrators give a better web of conference to those with better
connections and insites to those who need assistance in passing on technological skills. Learning
experiances shared throught means of technology can also help to close the digital participation gap as
it brings aspects of technology to the students through activities. This also brings a wide variety of
instructional lessons and learning avenues has been proven to be beneficial for students as it offers a
different approach to similar materials. ( Eszter, 2008, pg. 15). This attribute can also be used to close
the cap and offer a wide range of uses for technology to the students.
 The goal for teachers, coaches, administrators, and anyone who works in the student body
needs to be open to new ideas for experiences and uses of technology to help students improve on their
future endeavors. This can be harnessed in multiple ways that involve a collaboration of ideas and a
attributed learning system by teachers and staff. One schools solution was to create after school
activities that involved digital media clubs of different categories. (Vickery, 2014).

Figure 2: This
snip looks at
schools giving
their teachers
better knowledge
of technology to
help close the
Digital
Participation
Gap.

This is a great example on how teachers came together to help close the gap of digital participation by
giving students an opportunity to gain knowledge on technology of their interest. Other ideas have been
used by providing educators with more training and the introduction of a badge, reward system was
implemented to keep track of technological integration, as noted in figure 2. (Sheninger, 2016 pg. 148)
With more ideas like this one, and the knowledge and acceptance of communication and collaboration,
the digital participation gap can be properly addressed and give students help in this new digital age.

Works Cited

Thomas, S. and Howard, N.R and Schaffer, R. Closing the Gap Digital Equity Strategies for the K-12
Classroom. ISTE. 2019

Hargittai, E and Walejko, G (2008) THE PARTICIPATION DIVIDE: Content creation and sharing in the
digital age, Information, Communication & Society, 11:2, 239-256, DOI: 10.1080/13691180801946150

Vickery, J. R. (2014). The Role of After-School Digital Media Clubs in Closing Participation Gaps and
Expanding Social Networks. Equity & Excellence in Education, 47(1), 78–95.

Zwica, J. Digital media and the participation gap. Slideshare. 2014.

Sheninger, E.C. Uncommon Learning. 2016. Corwin and learning forward.