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Voice from the Field

Addressing the Digital Divide Within

Fred Carr, Chief Operating Officer, Metropolitan Nashville (TN) Public Schools — Friday, January 20, 2012

Recently, our district distributed iPads to our principals to support the new Tennessee teacher evaluation program. The iPads will allow our principals and other administrators who conduct teacher evaluations to input data and remarks and record the lesson with pictures and video clips as they conduct classroom observations. During the process of distributing the iPads to administrators, we were surprised to find that some of our principals and administrators said they do not have personal email accounts and some did not even know how to log in to their work accounts—their administrative assistants manage the task of reviewing and answering daily emails.

Contrast that with the students our principals are charged to prepare for a global competitive society. Students are growing up in homes with multiple computers and mobile devices with Internet access. A typical gift today is an electronic device, an accessory, or an iTunes or Market gift card. Kids are constantly connected—but the adults in their world each day may take days or weeks to catch up on email.

We are looking at a generation gap in terms of age and culture that affects our classrooms. To me, a computer represents what I do for—or at—work; it is my productivity tool. For a pre-teen or a teenager, a computer is a window into their entire social being as well as entertainment, news, and information. A student’s computer with an iPod dock serves the same functions as my TV, stereo, radio, and tape player (yes, I still have one) and leaps past what my phone delivers, thanks to video “phone” services Skype and Facetime. Students today do not even know what a radio, stereo, analog alarm clock, or film camera look like; they have smartphones.

You can imagine what happens when a 21st century student who is growing up with technology meets a 20th century teacher who uses 19th century technology. You can imagine it, or you can walk into many schools and see it. We may have trained teachers and principals to use technology but that is not enough. Our schools have to make a cultural change—a paradigm shift to embrace the new ways of teaching that technology allows. It takes more than training; it takes designing instruction!

As my colleague, Roxanne Ross, principal at Whitsitt Elementary School, said, “A computer is a tool that you use all day; it is not just technology for the sake of technology.”

To really use technology in teaching and learning, teachers have to change the way they teach. They have to learn to use the technology as something more than a fun tool or a gadget or an easy way to pull up a video.

Too many teachers use technology as a digital ditto—a high-tech way to repeat the same experience for every student just as reliably as a mimeograph. Projectors can just be fancy overheads, but when teachers use them to bring interactive content to kids, they have changed the classroom experience. Whiteboards may be expensive, glorified chalkboards, or they can be used to create living content that allow students to interact with the content and each other. As educators, our biggest challenge is to get teachers to use technology for its rich content delivery methods, not just use it to modernize the continued use of handouts, repetitive practice, and skill and drill exercises. Without that, we are using the same practices with different technologies.

The class of 2012 entered first grade in 2000 and is arguably the first 21st century class. Today’s seniors must be prepared for complex college portals that require strong navigation skills to apply for admission, pay tuition, register for classes, and more. Colleges are receiving digital portfolios for admission documentation, and most classes are connecting professors with students through extended online “office hours.” Many employers, like our school district, have moved their job applications entirely online; job searches today include an online component and often the interview is via video-conferencing. We read about how employers are utilizing an individual’s Facebook postings and personal data to evaluate the applicant’s fit for the company.

Still, some teachers have told us they do not need any more technology in their schools, and a principal in one of our high-needs schools even hesitated to accept a mobile computer lab for her school because she did not think her teachers would make good use of it.

The Digital Youth Network (DYN), now based in Chicago’s DePaul University, is working to close the gap between students’ informal learning environments (digital connectivity) and their formal learning environments, such as schools. This was after the MacArthur Foundation’s 2008 study, “Living and Learning With New Media,” concluded that although young people’s online interests can be a springboard for learning, there is a disconnect in the use of digital media between students’ formal and informal learning environments. Students are using new media but often not in ways adults understand or value. With the right approach in the classroom, we can value our students’ digital expertise and apply it to learning.

To make the most of our students’ skills in K-12 education, we should consider:

• The U.S. Military Academy at West Point has a core group of instructors and a rotating cadre of instructors who have been trained in the field on the latest technology. Instructors on rotation keep the curriculum and the students fresh.
• Doing research used to be the hardest part of an academic project. Now, the most important skill is sorting through the volume of information available and setting a priority on the worth of the information, depending upon the source. Google, Bing, and other search engines have changed what we should be teaching our kids and how we work with our faculty to maximize the usefulness of online resources.
• And for the teacher whose technology skills are on the most basic level, we can follow the lead of Renita Perkins, principal of Chadwell Elementary School in Nashville, who said, “I entice my teachers to use technology by having them do things that require the use of technology, such as having them submit their weekly lesson plans to me via email and on a Word template I created.”

As professional educators, we have to recognize that while we may be perfectly adept in today’s world of technology, we are preparing our students for tomorrow’s world. Embracing the current and changing technical and social media environments will help us have a more engaged class and a better-prepared student. There are many things we can learn from our students if we are willing to open up and truly become lifelong learners.
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Fred Carr has been involved with public education in Tennessee for 35 years. He was an elementary teacher in Grades 4, 5, and 6 (back when 6 was elementary). He served as an assistant principal, principal, instructional director, and assistant superintendent (business and finance and student services) during his career. Fred has served in the Chattanooga Public Schools, Hamilton County (TN) schools (merged with Chattanooga), and now serves as the Chief Operations Officer for Metro Nashville Public Schools. Metro Nashville has 140 schools and 80,000 students representing over 120 languages spoken in the district. Nashville is an urban system undertaking significant education reform within a state that is undertaking major reform utilizing the Race to the Top funding mechanism.  Fred can be reached at Fred.Carr@mnps.org.