Equity in access to electronic material.

Dave asked: "I am wondering how equity plays into the issue. Is that question, perhaps, more geared toward access - both to materials and non-teacher sources, when digital, especially hyperlinked texts come into play" in response to my question about equity of access to education.

Here I am thinking of two things. First, as Dave suggests, there is the presence of materials. Because of the current nature of online libraries, we have nearly immediate access to all sorts of written media, not just current, but past as well. For example, we were reading The Moon is Down, by John Steinbeck, in a Sophomore class. The question came up, did people "way back then" (in the 1940s) recognize propaganda for what it was?" I remembered Google News Archives and a quick search brought up newspapers from the era with articles on propaganda. Next time we read this book (in January) I'll start there and have students looking at Steinbeck's context before we start reading. There was also a lengthy review in the Canadian Jewish Chronicle and multiple commentaries in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

This spawned other questions, but it also brought to light a surprising issue. Many, not all, of my students have a really muddled sense of time. It was is if seeing this in print, on the computer, made the issues contemporary to them, not a thing of the past. Pointing out the advertising in the papers helped somewhat with this, but not entirely.

So there is the issue of equity to access of documents. Kids without computers, or who chronically forget them, or refuse to learn to use them, are at a serious disadvantage. There is also, however, the equity of entrance into the conversation. This has two aspects (at least - Why can things never have just one aspect???) Clearest is that if the discussion of the document is online, then non-tech ready students can't participate. Certainly in this Jon is right to be hesitant in requiring online discussions. The second aspect, however, is one I noticed in having students annotate documents using Preview. The three students who needed paper copies because they had either not been given their computers yet (or they couldn't access my file repository and claimed they didn't have email either) did far less in annotating than did the ones using Preview. I had noticed this last year when doing an activity looking at analysis of poetry. One of the teachers in my department during a show and tell commented that the depth of annotations I was getting from my "regular" students was similar to what she got from her AP students. So this other aspect of equity has to do with which students have the richer experience in interacting with text - those who do it digitally, or those who use paper and pencils? Or are the students willing to delve into the digital the ones who have the richer experience to begin with.