I’ve been thinking a lot about the lack of technology that my students are exposed to. I wish that I had the resources to show them all the cool things they could do online, the tools I could use to push their education to the next level. The digital divide that separates the haves from the have-nots is something I’ve been studying since my first course in my MLIS program. In my very first course at Rutgers I studied the information seeking behavior in low-income areas and how the lack of technology affects the way they get their information.
I see a lot of my students using myspace (scariest thing this weekend when my 11 year old student posing as a 15 year old, friend requested me… even though I’ve changed it so you can’t search me by name. That kid has some good researching skills…. he should be a reference librarian!), so they have exposure to the Internet, but they don’t have a clue how to use it. With all the restrictions on social networking programs in schools (understandable, but unfortunate) it’s hard to really explain or broaden their limited knowledge of what they can do on the Internet.
What I am wondering is how I can get past all these restrictions – financial (both in my school and in my student’s lives), censoring what can be accessed at school, and the limits that are ultimately placed on my students because they do not have Internet access or resources to get online at home.
