Monday, September 30, 2013

Issues of access

As Ed Tech has been getting back into full swing for the fall, I have also been getting settled into my placement at Detroit School of the Arts. And as we have been discussing ways of using technology in the classroom, one major issue keeps coming up for me again and again: access.

I loved Rory's presentation about a fun way to get to know your students and for them to express themselves. It sounds like a great tool that creates classroom community and produces valuable information for the teacher. But I couldn't help but think about how it would be all by impossible at my placement. We have a laptop cart, sure, but when we tried to turn them on with our mentor, something like 6 out of 25-30 turned on successfully, and we couldn't log in to half of those. Even if we could get all 30 on, how would that work with our class of 40? (Never mind that we had 50-60 for the first three weeks of school.)

So I can't help but be a little frustrated. I wish I could think about fun ways to use technology with my whole classroom, but the resources simply aren't there. And the sad fact is that this is true at many, many schools. Additionally, based on student surveys we administered as an assignment for our Methods course, several of our students don't have a computer and/or internet access at home, and some don't have a smartphone. These challenges are reality. And the fact that it's a minority of students doesn't matter - for any strategy to be equitable, it must be accessible to all my students, and if even one student can't participate, I can't use the strategy. There are many computer labs at our school, but since the students don't have any free periods during the day, and are often busy with extracurriculars after school (or need to get a ride or bus home immediately - our students live scattered around Detroit, so they can't walk home), I feel I can't assign any work that requires computer use outside of the classroom. It's a conundrum.

Of course, in the future, an important and accessible answer to this problem is to seek funding for resources for my classroom. A set of Chromebooks, a document projector, iPads, etc. That is certainly a route I will pursue in the future, especially after seeing what having technological resources for my whole class can do. But this solution doesn't work for my current situation, and I admit to feeling some frustration. That said, I appreciate having the experience of teaching in a high needs environment (relatively speaking - DSA is quite well off as far as Detroit schools god) while my peers experience very different settings because I am learning in a very concrete way what differences in resources and opportunity mean for the learning of students.