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Addressing the Digital Divide

The use of digital technology has become an important part of daily life for many residents of the United States. However, access to this essential technology is not available to everyone. The lack of access for some is the foundation of the digital divide. According to Killion, Gallagher-Lepak, and Reilly, the digital divide can be defined as the “chasm between individuals, racial/ethnic groups, households, businesses, geographic areas, gender or different economic levels and respective opportunities to access and use information and communication technologies for a wide range of activities” (as cited in Reilly, Gallagher-Lepak, & Killion, 2017, p. 2). In this country, this chasm is vast, and the differences in the opportunities for those who have easy access to technology and those who do not are large. Unfortunately, the causes of this inequality are complex so that devising workable solutions has proven to be a major challenge. However, given that the digital divide contribute...
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Regulating Online Privacy

How can we, the community of social media users, ensure that personal information that we share intentionally or unintentionally on social media remains private? That is a vexing question. One of the ideas that gets talked about often, is the concept of self-regulation—that each one of us as individuals should take responsibility for our online privacy. Essentially, we should carefully choose what and how to share in order to maintain our own preferences for privacy. This may not be a bad idea however the average person will certainly struggle to do that. As both Golbeck (2013) and Turkle pointed out, the fact is that most of us have no idea how much information we are sharing through our online activity nor do we know with whom we are actually sharing. That’s a big problem! Clearly, in order to self-regulate, we need to be taught how to do that. But that, too, would be far from easy!             I don’t think that our appro...
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Technology in Education? Yes... but not Always

Technology can be a very useful ADDITION for learning both at school and at home. I emphasized the word "addition" because it seems like sometimes teachers intentionally or unintentionally end up using technology as a substitute for actual teaching. But technology certainly can be an amazing tool for a good teacher to utilize as part of their good teaching.  As I was reading about the use of technology in education, it made me think about a teacher I had when I was in 8th grade 13 years ago. I don't recall much use of technology in her class back then but I'm friends with her on Facebook nowadays, and I've noticed that she posts a lot about her ever evolving teaching methods. One of the teaching tools she has mentioned a number of times is something called the HyperDoc. So, I did a quick Google search into what exactly a  HyperDoc  is. Apparently, a HyperDoc is a Google Doc transformed by a teacher into a sort-of interactive worksheet for their students. It s...
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