Education and the Digital Divide :: essays papers

Education and the Digital Divide Closing the digital divide involves many components, start with the education program and apprizeers. While schools are integrating new technologies into their programs, teachers are supposed to keep up with the latest technologies and use them in their programme to teach students. According to a U.S. Department of Education Report (1999), only 24 percent of new teachers felt sufficiently prepared to integrate engineering into the curriculum they were using (Brogan, 2000). The problem is, many teachers did not grow up with estimators and are not receiving the training they need to operate them (Brogan, 2000). Starting work as archaeozoic as 7 a.m. and leaving school as late as 5 p.m. to go home and do even more work, leaves teachers lacking the metre to learn new technological skills. Many schools offer training programs for teachers. For example, the Palm Beach County, Florida school district teaches Web basics for teachers at middle scho ols and attracter schools (Brogan, 2000). This is a great idea because it is giving teachers the opportunity to learn about technology and it is showing that the school district is interested in helping its employees draw better at what they do.Andy Carvin states internet access in schools isnt worth a hill of beans if teachers arent prepared to take full advantage of technology (2000). Schools spend a lot of money on computer hardware and software as well as other technologies without realizing that many of their employees are ad-lib to include them in their teaching and use them to their advantages. Educators often use technology as a classroom management tool rather than an educational one, allowing computer time as a reward for good behavior (Clark & Gorski, 2001). The problem with this is that students learn to use the computer for games and such because it is their reward instead of using it on their own time for educational purposes. This is teaching them the wrong i dea. Margaret Honey, director of the Center for Children and Technology in NYC said it best, The bottom line is, you dont salutary put technology into schools or into homes and expect miracles to happen. The technology is only as good as the program that surrounds it (Meyer, 2002, p.2).Education is probably the most important sleep with that affects the ability to benefit from technology.