Technology has the potential to close the education divide. Key word: Potential
- Reference: 1631616307
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/09/14/edtech_divide_debate_against1_tuesday/
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It's up to our writers to convince you to vote for their side.
This week's motion is: [1]Technology widens the education divide . And now today, arguing AGAINST the motion is ANDY PHIPPEN, a professor of digital rights at Bournemouth University and a visiting professor at the University of Suffolk. He has worked with the IT sector for over 15 years in a consultative capacity on issues of ethical and social responsibility. In recent years he has specialised in the use of ICT by children and young people, carrying out a large amount of grass roots research on issues such as their attitudes toward privacy and data protection, file sharing and internet safety.
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I recently took part in a webinar with the British Computer Society. One of the positives I have found from lockdown is the opportunity to discuss tech policy issues from the comfort of my office in my home in Cornwall. At one point, the convener of the debate said, “While there are many benefits from online technology, the Internet does have a dark side.”
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I took exception to this. The Internet has neither a dark or a light side – it is merely a collection of network and computer infrastructure that enables us to communicate on a global scale. Harm arising from online technology comes from the actions of those on it, rather than the technology itself. I would argue something similar regarding technology’s impact upon education. It does not, of itself, widen the education divide and it can, arguably, narrow it greatly through the availability of educational resources to those who might not ordinarily be able to access them.
Returning to lockdown once more, I reflected upon this while delivering a seminar on IT ethics with a group of masters students online. While the popular press frequently suggested that online delivery was a poor-quality substitute for face-to-face interaction in a classroom, myself and students sitting in rooms in the UK, Germany, France, Nigeria, India and Pakistan all discussed the nature of ethical IT and its potential for social change.
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Those who were less confident in their spoken English made use of chat facilities to contribute to a debate in a way they would not have felt confident doing in a formal classroom. Others recorded the discussion so they could make notes and play it back again to further their understanding. An amazing achievement of technology, and impossible even a few years ago.
However, that is not to say that all is positive. I work a great deal with schools so I have seen varied successes with online delivery during lockdown. While some experiences were effective, others were hampered by lack of effective home technology by students. Some families would be sharing one or two devices across the household which meant it would be impossible for a child to take a device for the whole school day. Other families did not have effective connectivity, or were on data plans where an online class would be too costly with which to engage. In other situations, young people did not have sufficient knowledge, skills or confidence in using the technology, or they found it problematic and disengaged.
I feel there are two fundamental issues here – one of the availability of technology, and one of assumed knowledge. And I see these both as failings on the part of policy makers. There seemed to be an assumption that if education was to move online everyone would have both the knowledge and technology to use it. Policy makers were late to acknowledge that in some families this was not the case, and the delivering pallets of laptop computers and 4G dongles to local authorities weeks after lockdown had begun did little to address this. Giving a family a laptop and some connectivity and assuming they can “get on with it” isn’t enough.
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The assumed knowledge that everyone below a certain age is digitally competent and highly conversant with online technology is also unhelpful. Lazy “digital native” narratives (a widely debunked concept) are used as excuses to not provide effective digital literacy in schools, currently spread across various aspects of the curriculum with little support for the teachers expected to deliver it. Or better still, getting the newly qualified teachers to deliver it because “they’re young and digital natives”. I have heard this from both policy makers and senior leaders in schools.
Technology has the potential to close the education divide but I am reminded once again of Ranum’s law: you don’t solve social problems with software. Social policy needs to acknowledge the potential of technology and provide effective education and affordable infrastructure in order that the population can effectively exploit it. It doesn’t happen by assumption and osmosis. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/Debates/2021/09/13/education_divide/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/saas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YUDHQSLQ5ELAQ1IgWB4wdwAAAAE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
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[7] https://www.theregister.co.uk/Debates/2021/09/13/education_divide/
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
First thing for me - what is the educational divide? Is it access to information, access to opportunity or access to good teachers?
I would argue that the biggest educational divide is the quality of teaching rather than access to information and I'm massively unconvinced that technology can help bridge that.
To my mind, the key to all success in education is teachers. They are the key element in good education. If the teacher is bad, no amount of technology will fix it. If the teacher is good, technology will (might) be largely irrelevant.
> what is the educational divide?
My personal view is that it is largely family background. If your father is, say, an engineer and has tons of books, this is a huge advantage against coming from a family where the only printed matter is the daily mail.
Nowadays with the internet offering all information for everybody one may think that the above is much less important. I'd argue this is not the case: kids still need guidance in order to find/pick useful stuff and not just sink in a torrent of crap.
> To my mind, the key to all success in education is teachers.
Yes, a thousand times. As far as I know this is the *only* parameter that significantly determines learning success. There is a current thought in Germany (and surely elsewhere as well) that if teaching becomes "digital" (whatever this means) everything magically gets better. Whenever I hear this, I really want to slap someone in the face.
Quieter kids can speak up in chat,
As someone who was a 'quieter kid' at school, I disagree with this generalisation and think it brings into question other aspects of the argument.
Even today, taking part in an online chat I often don't bother to join in, particularly when comments are coming at a pace as anything I might say goes upscreen rapidly and may well get lost in the noise. That is no different in effect to being a small voice in a classroom, drowned out by those who are louder and/or more confident.
Another example that demonstrates a need for thinking it through more thoroughly, is the statement about having an international chat with his students and those wth poorer English using chat.
The fact that the students are there makes it evident that they have an interest and are engaged in the discourse.
I am sure that technology has a lot to offer education, it would be absurd to think it hasn't but it is not and will not be a full substitute for in person classes with a teacher at the head of the class.
My cousins, three of them, way back were educated by radio, living on a bazillion acre cattle station in the Northern Territory of Oz, the nearest school was a plane flight away or an expedition through the desert.
They struggled to get to uni' but did it because they were motivated and had parents who helped, without that motivation and family support I don't see distance learning working well on a long term basis for many students.
Re: Quieter kids can speak up in chat,
I don't think either the for or against arguments focused on the main use case, children with internet access but poor self discipline (most of them, IMHO!). So neither argument swayed my opinion.
- Offline work packs or self-paced learning won't work with most kids unless they're supervised. They're a poor stopgap until the student can get connected.
- The anecdote about some (highly motivated) Masters students finding online classrooms better than face-to-face was interesting, but probably doesn't map to younger students and larger classes.
I think the education system has done the best it could in the pandemic. Most Teachers have adapted amazingly well to be key workers & childminders and deliver multiple lesson formats. Let's applaud and reward them for that, while recognising the lasting damage COVID-19 has had on all sectors.
Re: Quieter kids can speak up in chat,
I had a couple of students preferring online lectures because they were not disturbed by random talk of the other students.
Re: Quieter kids can speak up in chat,
I imagine speaking up in chat works just as well for kids in education as it does in the Teams/Zoom meetings that we all have to suffer daily.
Re: Quieter kids can speak up in chat,
At Uni we had lectures of 60+ and there was no way you could ask any questions without disrupting the whole thing. I found borrowing a mates notes far more educational than just copying what the lecturer said and a lot faster too. My major problem was access to material and only very occasional lecturers. My eldest is going up tomorrow and I suggested a visit to the library to get the course text books (having seen one of my lecturers take all the copies of his book from the library 2 weeks before term started) but it appears everything will be available online. It doesnt take much to organise accessible HTML course work that can be read using a phone or tablet and open document licences and some analysis of what may or may not work for the vast majority of the population to be able to access the best educational information available.
Other harms as well
" Harm arising from online technology comes from the actions of those on it, rather than the technology itself "
Quite a large number of folks in the UK don't have access to an adequate broadband connection so they're denied services and even have difficulty fulfilling their legal obligations (statutory returns etc. now increasingly "online only").
There's also the "disintermediation" harm - even for those with potential access, failure to keep up with ever changing (and often needlessly changing) technologies locks people out of services previously available to them, forcing further expenditure, which is of course commonly the prime vendor motivation for the change.
Not everyone is in a position to replace at their own expense equipment that still works perfectly well but has been rendered obsolete by creation of often artificial incompatibilities. However when this is mentioned in public one usually gets slated for being a "Luddite". It's worth remembering that the Luddites only broke machines that directly threatened their livelihoods - to the extent that they generally left adjacent machines on the same factory floor that didn't threaten their livelihoods unharmed.