Workshop Title:
Thedigital divide in the classroom
Brief Description:
The use of computers in almost every classroom in this modern age of rapid technological development is inevitable. However, what is even more inevitable is the apparent divide in computer literacy between students in each classroom, especially in a diverse, open-admissions college such as MontgomeryCollege. Some of our students where born into home with a computer in each room, while others, at the other end of the spectrum, never used a computer before attending MontgomeryCollege. Between these two classes are students who are first-generation computer users, and learned basic computer skills in school, but never got any support at home.The fascinating and relevant notion is how this division in our classes changes. The demographic differences in our population have correlated with who may be comfortable with computers and the language of computers. However, the digital divide is so confounded between class, race, income, age, and where you grew up, that it seems less like the wide Mississippi than the tangled Delta. Many great equalizers like cell phones and the internet, mean that a priori assumptions could easily be wrong. We may have students who understands the course material, but cannot do the computer assignment. We certainly need to acknowledge that our students may be way ahead of us in the current use of computers.
With all these students thrown together in one classroom, how do we maintain a well balanced learning environment in our classroom? How do we ensure that the less computer literate student is brought to the required technological level for the course, without making them feel overwhelmed? How do we keep the more technologically advanced student challenged in the course without having the rest of the class fall behind. We propose to present a practical approach to dealing with the extremes of computer literacy in a classroom. We intend to use a classroom format that requires all of the “students” to use a computer program that they have not seen before. In this scenario, we will exemplify some of the problems and ways of dealing with them using student groups, feedback, and assignment structure.
Course Objectives:
By the end of the 45 minutes session, participants will learn how to
- Understand the diversity in computer literacy especially among students like ours
- Learn how to design class work and computer related assignments that meets the needs of all our students regardless of their technological class
- Learn other ways by which they could be of assistance to students who fall behind the expected level of computer literacy expected for the course.
Bio of Presenters
Dr Uche Abanulo started teaching Engineering at MontgomeryCollege, Rockville in Spring, 2008. She teaches Introduction to Engineering, which requires the use of several computer applications for modeling, analysis and communication.
Professor Craig Mogren has taught at MontgomeryCollege at Takoma Park and Rockville for over 20 years in engineering, physics, and chemistry. His courses require the use of computers for analysis and communication.