Bridging The Digital Divide & Addressing the Achievement Gap with Students and Staff

Initially I was very excited to attend this session because my school is experiencing a dramatic shift in demographics and there is a glaring achievement gap within our student body....which was also an introductory discussion starter in our session. (What three places in the U.S. have the worst achievement gaps? D.C., Louisiana, & Minnesota, http://www.cep-dc.org/)

While this was a thought-provoking and enlightening discussion about the incredible inequities students face throughout the state, the direction of the discussion quickly veered towards immigrant students and other cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic barriers that need to be addressed in order to facilitate constructive learning experiences. A couple highlights included how social media has given a voice to young women that may be bound by their cultural expectations of their backgrounds. Or, how Google translate can now be used (in Chrome) with a microphone to instantly translate spoken word into several languages. These are two powerful tools that can be utilized in virtually any setting.

Overall, my biggest take away from this session was not the tools, or even the ideas that came forth, but the incredible creativity and passion others had to solve the seemingly insurmountable circumstances.

Moving forward, I am hoping to keep some of these things in mind as I am working with students of more diverse backgrounds. I feel like I can bring the technology into the classroom, but my concern is still whether or not I can use it to reach students to create authentic student-centered learning opportunities.