As a student interested in how culture works and appears in
our classrooms, I am drawn to Adam Bank’s book Race, rhetoric, and
technology: Searching for higher ground. In it, Banks expands upon the concept of the “Digital
Divide” focusing it primarily upon African Americans. While Banks recognizes
that there are many other struggles African Americans currently face, the issue
of technology is one that needs to be more consistently and passionately taken
up. Further, he argues by studying African American rhetorical tradition one is
better able to understand the “Digital Divide”.
As such, he concludes by calling upon those concerned with African
American rhetoric and all those in the field of rhetoric and composition to
better understand and address those issues inherit to the maintaining our
student’s technological understanding and access.
As a student in the field of rhetoric
and composition and teacher, this book raises up three questions:
1.
How are other cultures and cultural
practices impacted by the use of technology?
2.
How does my understanding, experiences, and positionality
influence my assumptions and use of technology in the classroom?
3.
What is my responsibility as a teacher to
respond to issues related to technological access, usability and overall issues
connected to the “Digital Divide”?
As the class continues, I plan to continue to refer to these
questions. My hope is that through our discussions, reading, and final project
design will better inform and hopefully answer at least some of these
questions.
Also, feel free to share your own experiences and
understandings of how you interpret the “Digital Divide”. I recognize that this
book was published back in 2006 and since then technology has been more rapidly
incorporated into pedagogy and student life. Where do you think we stand today?
Is there still a “Digital Divide”? I’m curious to know your own thoughts on
this, so please share!
Citation:
Banks, A. J. (2006). Race, rhetoric,
and technology: Searching for higher ground. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
One thing I argued in my dissertation, based on a set of observations and interviews, was that technology has a presence in classroom environments that interacts with cultural dynamics related to race and gender, among others.
ReplyDeleteI eventually came to see that technology often spoke to students with the authority of a 'white' and 'male' (and nerdy) human, which posed problems of a much different magnitude for teachers of color and for women than it did for, well, white, male (and nerdy) teachers like me.
To put it simply, Microsoft word communicates things to students that have the same heft as pedagogy. They are messages about how writing should happen, and how one should learn to write. These messages aren't packaged as pedagogy - mind you - and so they are more subtle (or insidious?). They show up, for instance, as little red squiggles under misspelled words in a rough draft even though you, the teacher, would rather not have students focus on spelling or even usage at that stage of a project.
So who does the student listen to when Word is telling them one thing and the teacher is telling them another? It can vary depending on what that teacher looks like. This was one of those findings that I saw, documented a number of different times, and was both unsurprised and repeatedly upset by each time.
My point? This is a side of the digital divide that we don't often address: that technology is assumed to be designed by and carry the values of dominant cultural groups. What can be done to change that perception? One thing is to have more transparency around design and the diversity of people who play a role in it. Another is to draw students attention to the authority they presume exists when a technological artifact asks them to do something, encouraging a more critical view. The latter, I have found, can be facilitated by asking students who they feel has their best interests at heart.
Thanks Bill for sharing this. I agree with your point that technology carries values of dominant cultural groups and because of this people make sweeping assumptions about technology. So I always try to approach my understandings of it with a critical eye. Another interesting point was raised about the digital divide in BDWM - the idea of a digital disconnect and I think that your idea of offering FYW as a refill to all past students in a way attempts to address this issue of digital disconnect. With the way that we write and the technology that we use to facilitate our writing, the digital disconnect will grow and I think that your idea of offering lifelong FYW would be an opportunity to shrink this new digital divide.
DeleteHey Maria,
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite books that I wished I had had when I did Ed Tech for the government in 2000.
So the Digital Divide- my most recent example is from my hometown library- where we have a beautiful bank of 15 new computers with up to Office 2010 and 4 of them have CS 4 (photo editing) and they sit relatively empty no matter what time of day/evening you visit the library. Now drive 20 minutes north of me to the Flint based library- same system- Genesee District Library system - and you find 20 computers that are about 10 years old with Office 2003 and connections to the internet- when I asked if any of the systems had CS4, I was looked at like I was crazy and told that there was no reason to waste money on people who wouldn't know what to do with high powered software like that...
The same old fight I had when writing grants for new computers for the schools in Detroit instead of the "used" ones from local businesses.
So my library in the moneyed section expects to have the best even if we don't use it, and everyone else apparently can sod off - this divide is going no where.
Jennifer, Thanks for your comments. I think the reason why I find this issue of digital divide so interesting is that it is something that exists in the real "non-academic" world. Your examples prove this to be true and I appreciate you sharing those!
ReplyDelete