Journal 6

Access to Educational Resources

Internet has greatly changed the way we view information and information access, and changed access to ‘literature’, research, and quality ‘test’ as well as censorship or edited. E-textbooks, online lectures, and digital libraries are great useful experiences to students and instructors. Besides, free online educational resources help bridge the digital divide. Digital Divide is a term that describes the division of the world into two camps, those who have access to the Internet and other advanced information technologies and those who don’t. The term highlights the issue that those who do not have access technology are potentially destined to futures where they will be at an economic disadvantage.

According to the Taborn(2007), to connect with students of color, we must look to past achievements of minority innovators obscured by history, and use modern-day technology leaders to help students of color shape their relationships to science and technology and move beyond the Digital Divide. For example, no matter how much equipment is placed in underserved schools, the poorest students will still be at a material disadvantage compare to those with historical and entrenched material wealth. Higher levels of technology use are grooming whites for better-paying jobs in the workforce, while minorities are destined for menial jobs in the digital world. Thus, poor children can receive a good education in high-poverty schools where more of the nation’s blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans attend. In other words, in often-misguided efforts to bridge the digital divide, we often overlook the reality that providing schools with digital technology does not address or change, in meaningful ways, the systems that limit minority youth, ultimately, the well-being of our society.

Critically thinking, I agree with that Internet has greatly changed educational environments. Particularly, while we use educational technologies and resources in teaching and learning, I observe more justice and equality in diverse educational environments such as race, class, language, physical obstacle, and so on. All human beings should learn equally through efficient technological resources anywhere and anytime they want in all over the world. I think that the world has been changing dramatically by educational technologies.

Taborn, Tyrone D. (2008). “Separating Race from Technology: Finding Tomorrow’s IT Progress in the Past." Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media. Edited by Anna Everett. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 39–60.