The Tech Divide
Simply put, the tech divide I am referring to deals with schools that have robust technology and those that don't.
- K-12 education in the second decade of the 21st century needs five well-developed components to be successful.
- These components are not stand-alone items.
- They are linked and complement each other.
- The entire package is essential to overcome the tech divide in many parts of America.
If you've read this far, you're probably wondering why I am stating the obvious. After all, your private school has the best of everything. That's why you are sending your kids there. What I want you to do is to share that insistence on having the best possible educational outcomes for your children.
- Share it with a teacher you know.
- Introduce the local district IT director to your IT director.
- Create partnerships.
- Use your connections to overcome the technology divide.
Canva generated this picture of a private school 7th-grade classroom.
Enhanced Connectivity
Enhanced Connectivity in all our schools, private and public, is not just a luxury but a necessity.
- We expect the private school to which we are sending our children to have reliable, high-speed internet access.
- We know that facilitates seamless learning experiences.
- This connectivity is a crucial step that involves more than simply setting up a couple of routers around the school buildings and campus.
- Connectivity is also about ensuring that every student has equal access to the wealth of knowledge available online at home.
Future Ready Schools® (FRS) helps innovative educators ensure that each student graduates from high school with the agency, passion, and skills to be a productive, compassionate, and responsible citizen. Source: All4Ed.org
Professional Development
For teachers to play their part, we must support them with professional workshops and other resources specifically designed to help them implement new technologies and teaching methods effectively.
- Teachers, especially those who have been teaching for many years, tend to be skeptical, even resistant to change and to new methods.
- After all, they have refined their lesson plans. They know what works and what doesn't. Why change it?
- However, teachers will embrace technology that saves them time.
- They will use technology in the classroom that allows them to present their subject in exciting, inspiring ways.
- When professional development is relevant and ongoing, you will usually find teachers on board.
17 million U.S. households have access to Internet service but cannot afford to connect. This broadband affordability gap is two-thirds of America’s digital divide, and disproportionately impacts Black and Latinx communities. Our programs aim to address the key barriers that households experience when accessing federal broadband programs and low-cost Internet plans. Source: EducationSuperHighway.org
Student-Centric Tools
Understanding how students learn in a world dominated by small screens is critical to overcoming the tech divide. We must use methods and tools that capture their attention and encourage their engagement and intellectual curiosity.
Community Engagement
We must foster strong partnerships with parents and local organizations to pay for digital learning and promote the effective use of technology in education.
Everyone On’s holistic approach to digital inclusion connects under-resourced communities to affordable internet and computers, trains individuals and organizations on digital skills and resources, and advances fair and just policies. Source: EveryOneOn.org
Let's look at each component in detail. While I have used technology effectively in my classroom and understand the issue, I have researched some authoritative sources to help you know what is necessary to overcome the tech divide.
Enhanced Connectivity
WiFi for School Districts: Upgrade Your Network Today
This article from Ruckus Networks makes the following important point:
A solid and efficient WiFi network is essential for accessing online resources, collaborating with peers, or participating in virtual classrooms.
Your school hired an IT networking professional to design and implement a WiFi system for your school.
- Your system is configured to handle both the teaching and the administrative sides of your school's operations securely and efficiently.
- If your network was installed in 2010, your school took the time to plan your school's WiFi needs in 2025, not 2010. And you probably had two or three professionals to present their proposals.
- WiFi is the foundation of everything you do in your school. So, you did it right.
But what about your local schools? Are their networks stuck with the technology of ten years ago? That's more common than you might think.
Once again, I am asking you to seek out partnerships and be an influencer. Don't assume that your public schools have the support they really need.
Connected Nation’s 2022 Report on School Connectivity notes that one-third of school districts–23.5 million students–still need improved access to the internet and digital learning. Without access to reliable internet and Wi-Fi-dependent devices, students and teachers face disadvantages, and schools can have a hard time meeting their educational goals. Source: EdWeek
One of the obstacles you encountered as you reviewed your school's technology requirements was some resistance to change on the part of your staff. Extrapolate that to an organization like your local school district, which has ten or fifteen schools.
You had an outside expert guide you and your colleagues through the review and planning process.
- They helped overcome resistance and objections with facts and case studies.
- Furthermore, your trustees reviewed the technology enhancements carefully before approving the expenditure.
- The process was relatively quick and efficient.
- Again, think about how approvals for spending money on a large scale are done in your public schools. Once a year, the budget is presented and approved by the local taxpayers. It's a long, drawn-out process fraught with all kinds of public relations perils.
Students need robust WiFi networks because so much of the content they view is graphics-rich.
- Back in the early days of the Internet, content was text-based.
- Images and video files were too large to transmit and download back then.
- Also, web browsers were not as sophisticated as they are now.
- Sites like TikTok and YouTube, viewed in an academic setting, require a big pipe. You made sure your school had one. Make sure your local schools have one as well.
Professional Development
Why Professional Development for Teachers Is Critical
Lesson plans, parent-teacher conferences, marking papers, and dozens more tasks are part of every teacher's To-do list. So, having been there and done that, I understand the resistance to change. That's a significant issue with my colleagues who have been teaching for a while. They have everything worked out. All the parts of their busy days fit together neatly. Now, the administrators want to change how we do things.
That's why professional development must enhance what teachers do: teach. Time-savers, improved outcomes, and more are things technology can do. Professional development is essential and helps your teachers to stay current.
Effective Teacher Professional Development
Plan your professional development carefully. Engage an experienced trainer to headline your school for professional development sessions. This will improve the chances of your teachers embracing new approaches and change in general. After all, as the Bible says, "A prophet has no honor in his own country."
The State of Professional Learning for K-12 Educators
The other important consideration to remember when planning professional development for your teachers is to make it continuous. Learning never stops. Above all, show your teachers that the new ways of doing things will enhance their teaching. It won't be a waste of their time.
This video offers some suggestions on how to plan professional development sessions.
Student-centered Tools
Enhancing student engagement and achievement through AI-powered adaptive learning systems
When it finally dawned on me how useful AI would be for teachers, it truly was a "Eureka!" moment, similar to how I felt when I discovered the World Wide Web in the 90s. Back then, I was astonished at the vast trove of resources that I could access online from my computer, via FTP email, of course! The amount of information ChatGPT or Perplexity and all their variants can access now is beyond my understanding. To get a glimpse of what AI can do for teachers, look at AI for Education. Then, look at Khan Academy's Khanmigo. These are remarkable tools.
What is Adaptive Learning, & Why Does it Matter?
One size does not fit all. Our students deserve to be treated as individuals. Most private schools pride themselves on providing a high degree of personalized attention to their students. Indeed, that's one of the reasons we send our children to private schools.
If you need further proof that adaptive learning works, read this article. Hopefully, your school's professional development sessions will include a module on adaptive learning so that you can learn how to incorporate it into your classroom.
This video offers an overview of student-centered learning.
Community Engagement
Empowering Education: Innovative Strategies for Community Engagement in Schools
Gone are the days when any institution could afford to be iconoclastic.
The private school you have chosen for your children has an excellent technology infrastructure.
- Most of the parents you know have robust technology resources in their homes to support their children's learning experiences.
- However, there are hundreds of kids in your community that don't have those kinds of technology resources.
- You, as a taxpayer, have a right, and indeed an obligation, to make sure that every child in your community has the advantages that your children have.
Student and staff involvement in community projects such as soup kitchens and picking up litter on the roadside heighten awareness of your school.
- They put a positive, concerned face on an establishment, which many have typecast as only for the rich.
- In all its many powerful forms, social media gives you another strategy for getting your message out.
- How about Donating used laptops, tablets, monitors, smartboards, servers, and routers to your local school district in stead of discarding them?
- Community outreach is an essential part of overcoming the technology divide.
The Case for Community Engagement
When you send your child to a private school, you become a member of a remarkable, enduring partnership between you, your child, and the school. It's not an optional partnership. Your child's academic and personal success rests on that partnership. It is one of the things that makes private schools so special.
Community Partnerships - Future Ready Schools
I belonged to Rotary at one point in my career. My father belonged to Kiwanis.
- These service clubs had an educational component that did much good in their communities.
- Most private schools teach the importance of community service and partnership with local organizations.
- The payoff for the time you invest in such activities will not be immediate, but it will be lasting.
- Make sure whatever your school does with community outreach is well-thought-out and planned.
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