Digital Literacy At The Intersection Of Equity Inclusion And Technology

Many Schools and programs in low-income neighborhoods lack access to the technological resources that those in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods have at their fingertips. This inequity creates a persistent divide in both formal and informal digital literacy that further marginalizes youths from minority and first-generation communities. Diversifying Digital Learning outlines the pervasive problems that exist with ensuring digital equity and identifies successful strategies to tackle the issue. Bringing together top scholars to discuss how digital equity in education might become a key goal in American education, this book is structured to provide a framework for understanding how historically underrepresented students most effectively engage with technology-and how institutions may help or hinder students' ability to develop and capitalize on digital literacies. Addressing the intersection of digital media, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic class in a frank manner, the lessons within this compelling work will help educators enable students in grades K-12, as well as in postsecondary institutions, to participate in a rapidly changing world framed by shifting new media technologies.

Digital Learning in High-Needs Schools examines the challenges and affordances that arise when high-needs school communities integrate educational technologies into their unique settings. Although remote, blended, and networked learning are ubiquitous today, a number of cultural, economic, and political realities—from the digital divide and digital literacy to poverty and language barriers—affect our most vulnerable and underresourced teachers and students. This book uses critical theory to compassionately scrutinize and unpack the systemic issues that impact high-needs schools’ implementation of digital learning tools. Incisive sociocultural analyses across fifteen original chapters explore the intersection of society, technology, people, politics, and education in high-needs school contexts. Informed by real-world cases pertaining to technology infrastructure, formative feedback, Universal Design for Learning, and more, these chapters illuminate how best practices emerge from culturally responsive and context-specific foundations.

A rich view of inclusive education at the intersection of language, literacy, and technology—drawing on case study research in a diverse full-inclusion US school before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite advancing efforts at integration, the segregation of students with disabilities from their nondisabled peers persists. In the United States, 34 percent of all students with disabilities spend at least 20 percent of their instructional time in segregated classrooms. For students with intellectual or multiple disabilities, segregated placement soars to 80 percent. In Voices on the Margins, Yenda Prado and Mark Warschauer provide an ethnography of an extraordinary full-inclusion public charter school in the western United States—Future Visions Academy. And they ask: What does it mean to be inclusive in today’s schools with their increasingly pervasive use of digital technologies? Voices on the Margins examines the ways digital technologies support inclusion and language and literacy practices for culturally and linguistically diverse children with and without disabilities. A wide range of qualitative data collected in the case study illuminates three central themes: (1) the kinds of social organization that allow a fully inclusive environment for children with disabilities to thrive, (2) the ways that digital technologies can be used to help students express their voice and agency, while developing language and literacy skills, and (3) the ways that digital technologies can be used to foster stronger networks and connections between students, teachers, staff, and parents.

Digital technologies play a significant role in the popular imagination about the future of education, as they are a prominent aspect of modern education provision and practice across the globe. Due to the increased adoption of digital education materials during the COVID-19 pandemic, the pedagogical significance of digital technology has been amplified. Advancing Equity and Inclusion Through Educational Technology builds upon the available literature in equity and inclusion through educational technology while providing further research opportunities in this dynamic and growing field. It provides the opportunity for reflection on this crucial issue by increasing the understanding of the importance of inclusion and equity in the context of educational improvements and providing relevant academic work, empirical research findings, and an overview of this relevant field of study. Covering topics such as sustainable inclusion learning, virtual school press programs, and generic skills, this major reference work is a comprehensive and timely resource for educators and administrators of both K-12 and higher education, government officials, pre-service teachers, teacher educators, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Digital Solidarity in Education is a book for educators, scholars, and students interested in better understanding both the role technology can play in schools and its potential for strengthening communities, optimizing the effects of globalization, and increasing educational access. The digital solidarity movement prioritizes the engagement and mobilization of students from diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and economic backgrounds, and with giftedness and/or disabilities, to utilize and apply technologies. This powerful book introduces innovative technological programs including virtual schools, e-tutoring, and interactive online communities for K-12 students that can: • increase students' knowledge and understanding of advanced concepts while reinforcing their basic skills; • reinforce students' communication in their first language while introducing second and third language possibilities; • nurture students' capabilities to think analytically, while using creative and innovative ideas to think simultaneously “outside of the box.” The experienced author team shows how collaborative partners from the private sector can assist public school systems and educators in creating access for all students to technological innovations, with a goal of increasing individual opportunities for future college and career success. Combining theoretical scholarship and research with the personal perspectives of practitioners in the field, this volume shares with readers both the nuts and bolts of using technology in education, and the importance of doing so.

Digital Diversity: Youth, Equity, and Information Technology is about youth, schools, and the use of technology. Youth are instrumental in finding novel ways to access and use technology. They are directly affected by changes such as the proliferation of computers in schools and elsewhere, and the increasingly heavy use of the Internet for both information sharing and for communication. The contributors to this volume investigate how the resources provided by information and communication technology (ICT) are made available to different groups of young people (as defined by gender, race, rural location, Aboriginal status, street youth status) and how they do (or do not) develop facility and competence with this technology. How does access vary for these different groups of youth? Which young people develop facility with ICT? What impact has this technology had on their learning and their lives? These are among the issues examined. Youth from a wide variety of settings are included in the study, including Inuit youth in the high arctic. Rather than mandate how youth should/could better use technology (as much of the existing literature does) the contributors focus on how youth and educators are actually using technology. By paying attention to the routine use and understandings of ICTs by youth and those teaching youth, the book highlights the current gaps in policy and practice. It challenges assumptions around the often taken-for-granted links between technology, pedagogy, and educational outcomes for youth in order to highlight a range of important equity issues.

Today's students use their digital expertise and the power of their voice to respond to issues of inequity in society. It is essential that teacher educators develop their own racial literacies and those of their preservice and classroom teachers to support student digital activism. From talking about race and racism to resisting the harmful narratives that circulate online but impact face-to-face interactions in the classroom, teacher educators must navigate sociotechnical spaces with a critical lens and develop strategies to help their preservice teachers do the same. This book is designed to increase educators' capacity and agency to respond to inequities that plague our educational system. The authors provide a framework to help readers rethink how curriculum and pedagogy impact classroom instruction. In Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education, Price-Dennis and Sealey-Ruiz provide theoretical and practical entry points into a conversation about race in the digital age that aim to increase equity in schools and better prepare teachers entering the U.S. school system. Book Features: Provides examples of how racial literacy can be fostered in teacher education programs. Offers reflection questions designed to assess the status of racial literacy in both teacher education programs and K-12 classrooms. Helps educators develop curricula that leverage multimodal ways of cultivating racial literacy. Offers a conceptual model of racial literacy for the digital age that advances civic engagement for equity in education. Focuses on pedagogical practices that support racial literacy development in teacher education. Includes a Foreword by Jabari Mahiri and an Afterword by Rebecca Rogers, leading scholars in the field of racial literacy.