Knowing how to navigate through the wonderful world wide web, is only part of being digitally literate. A student who is tech savvy may not necessarily understand what is a credible website or a credible source to cite. But having access to technology at home and learning computer basics is one less lesson that teachers have to worry about. However, this may not be the case in every situation. There are many students without access to technology, much like students who don't have resources and support outside of school when it comes to literacy. It's been said that students who were introduced to books and are read to from a very young age are more likely to be academically successful. Now with digital literacy being introduced as a "new" literacy, how would this affect student success and progress?
Many issues concerning quality education fail to address the lack of resources many communities struggle with. Unless all schools provide all students with the same access to technology and digital resources, I strongly believe this "new" literacy will only add to the achievement gap.
I see what you’re saying. At one school I worked at, I’d have to reserve the computer lab for a full week to ensure my students had enough time to type a straightforward one page handwritten paper. It wasn’t that they weren’t savvy to Facebook or Instagram on their phones, but they had little experience with an actual keyboard. Sometimes, students would opt to type their papers on their cell phones and then e-mail it to themselves, but they would become frustrated with the tediousness of the process for obvious reasons. Because they didn’t have much practice, they also would forget many times how to use spell check or use the tab key, and I’d generally grade the last handwritten copy they did rather than the typed copy because the typed copy didn’t really assess their writing techniques, which was the objective, but instead assessed their typing ability. I fear that with the shift towards more computer based testing, minority students may appear even more behind on the “basic skills” of reading and math CPS worries about due to a lack of working computer knowledge rather than the reading and mathematical skills itself.
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