Headline Feeds
The digital divide as political football is not confined to the Americas. The controversy is heating up in Europe as well, where the lack of computers in classrooms is harming the future competitiveness of students -- or too much screen time is causing health problems, depending on one's point of view.
Apple Computer (Nasdaq: AAPL) is among the companies that have launched initiatives in response to the growing clamor. It is providing low-cost computers in Ireland, for example, to encourage kids to embrace IT careers.
Last month, Apple sponsored the Apple Teacher Institute 2006 at Malvern College, Worcestershire, UK, a seminar to show educators the ins and outs of digital storytelling, podcasting, digital video camera usage, and methods for editing digital stories on DVDs and Apple Computers.
Film in School Not Enough
The Irish government is working extensively with Apple on a project that is bringing these new technologies to all of Ireland's 3,500 primary schools by the end of this year.
Is it enough? Probably not.
Despite increased investment, the government has failed to boost use of technology in Irish school classrooms, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) -- a Dublin-based body representing the roughly US$51 billion a year information technology and communications sector -- recently charged.
What is more, the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland (ASTI) in April called on the Department of Education to address the lack of technology usage in Irish classrooms.
"Irish students are falling seriously behind their counterparts when it comes to using technology in schools," Kathryn Raleigh, director of ICT Ireland, the information and communications technology branch of IBEC, told MacNewsWorld. "This will severely limit their career options and [means] they are unable to fully benefit from exciting emerging technologies."
Between 1998 and 2004, approximately $157 million was invested in IT for Ireland's schools. These funds were earmarked for reducing the computer-pupil ratio, improving teacher training in technology, and providing digital content for use in schools.
"However, since 2003, there has been a deafening silence from the Department of Education, which should have set out clear and strategic policies to enable schools make the most of these resources," said Raleigh. Other experts concur -- at least in part. Ireland was found to have one of the lowest percentages of frequent computer users at school among OECD countries in a report published earlier this year by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. What's more, the study said, student attitudes toward computers in Ireland are among the least positive throughout the industrialized world.
Computer Use Is Key
Students who regularly use computers tend to perform better in key school subjects than those with a limited computer experience, the OECD report indicated.
It also discerned a connection between computer use and student performance -- particularly with regard to mathematics, a subject in which Irish students are decidedly below average, according to the latest OECD research. "Later this year, most of our schools will have access to the Internet through the industry-supported broadband for schools initiative," said Raleigh. "There is, however, no clear plan to help students and teachers make the most out of this new technology. The government and industry must collaborate more extensively to prepare students to succeed in a world where technology is a central facet of everyday life, she urged, noting that "in the future, we will need increasingly sophisticated technology to carry out research, communicate instantly, and perform transactions at speed. If school does not prepare students to succeed in such a world, we will have failed them."
The Other Side
Elsewhere in Europe, there are concerns that computer usage in school may not be all that good for children.
Kids are developing "hyperactivity" because they are overexposed to flashing computer screens in classrooms, a top neuroscientist in the UK claimed.
The "appalling overuse" of the drug Ritalin is a consequence of the increasing use of computers and digital media in schools, Baroness Susan Greenfield, the director of the Royal Institution and Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, recently said during a debate in the House of Lords in London. She called for a study into the effects of schools' "screen culture" and the drug used to treat hyperactivity.
Approximately 30,000 British children are prescribed Ritalin to counter Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), but critics have warned that teachers and parents are rushing for modern medication to combat an age-old problem: bad behavior.
There is a "growing scandal developing under our very noses" as drugs and new technologies are foisted on children without enough thought or safeguards, according to Greenfield. Every day, children are exposed to "multimedia bombarding them at the touch of a button," she said.
This could be causing a reduction in attention span, compared with children in past generations who spent more time reading books, Greenfield speculated. She would like to see the return of a "digital divide" that favors books over computers.
Different in the States
In the U.S., the focus today does not seem to be ADHD or increasing the use of computers in primary schools; rather, increasing the speed with which computer technology can convey educational information at universities is the latest trend.
Apple is allowing any college or university to set up a customized portion of the iTunes Music Store to distribute course content and other audio and video material to students -- for free. The service lets institutions target use of specific materials to particular groups of students.
Called iTunes U, it allows colleges to set up collections of materials that can be accessed using Apple's free iTunes software.
The files themselves are stored on servers run by Apple, but college administrators have control over who can see them. Colleges can integrate the system with their existing network software so that students can log onto the iTunes store using their campus IDs and passwords.
Over the past year, Apple has worked with six institutions to test the new service: Brown, Duke, and Stanford Universities; the University of Michigan School of Dentistry at Ann Arbor; the University of Missouri School of Journalism at Columbia; and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
At Michigan's dentistry school, the iTunes service is used to deliver recordings of most of the school's courses.
The idea to offer recordings of lectures came from the students, said Lynn Johnson, associate professor of dentistry and director of dental informatics, who volunteered to help with the project. At first, the dental school set up its own Web site to distribute the recordings, but it recently switched to the iTunes service instead, she said.
"They really needed and wanted the audio because they could be mobile with it," she remarked.
These moves could help Apple preserve its dominance in the portable music player market. Though the iTunes software works on both Macs and PCs, the only portable players it connects to are iPods.
However, they could also herald another digital divide: between those students who have access to these new educational technologies and those who do not.
