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Listening to my students: the digital divide.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This article reports on what a small group of students had to say about class, access, and the digital divide. Drawing on a research project composed of a survey of eight first-year composition courses and the writings of a small group of students enrolled in a "Writing and Technology" course, the results reveal students commenting on a lack of access to computers, a lack they often linked to socioeconomic class.

Introduction

I distinctly remember my first encounter with a computer: a gorgeous Compucolor II. I can also recall my first attempt at writing with a computer: a paper on Job's suffering typed dutifully into a Mac Classic. But when I began teaching writing in a computer lab a few years ago I began to wonder--what did my students know about computers? Did they struggle as I did when I first began using them, or were they fully comfortable with these machines?

To find out more about my students' experiences with computers I devised a research project composed of a survey of eight first-year college composition courses, as well as follow-up discussions with each of the classes that contributed to the survey. I also got a more individual perspective by working closely with eleven students who participated in a specially designed course entitled "Writing and Technology" that invited students to participate in the research process through reading, discussion, and writing. In working with the students I was surprised by how many commented on a lack of access to computers, a lack they often linked to socioeconomic class in their writings. This article reports on what a small group of students had to say about class, access, and the digital divide.

But before I turn to the students, I should look to the academic community, where scholars have begun to examine how wealth functions to divide students in relation to technology. However, according to Ray Yau (1999), "the current state of research on the availability and effectiveness of educational technology is very weak--particularly as it pertains to equity issues" (p. 5). In the preface to the "Diversity" issue of Computers and Composition, guest editors Margaret Barber, Laura Sullivan, and Janice Walker (1997) argued, "access to technology is the primary concern upon which most others ultimately rest" (p. 164), and in "Access: The 'A' Word in Technology Studies" Charles Moran (1999) explained:

there are haves and have nots among us and among our students, and we feel that the situation is getting worse, and we feel that the technology that fascinates us may be partially responsible, and we choose, for a range of good reasons, to ignore what we know and press on with our own research and writing agendas. (p. 206)

Moran looked to scholarship in...

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