June 1996 — Features
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Achieving Technological Equity and Equal Access to the Learning Tools of the 21st Century
Most of all, however, we need new funding sources if "tech-equity" is to happen. Without a major overhaul of the educational delivery system, including reallocation of existing dollars elsewhere, the only other alternative is massive state and federal assistance. If railways and interstates were such a federal/state funding priority this past century, it is hard for us educators to imagine that the electronic "highways for learning" are any less important.
A Story and a Summary
It's a part of the time-honored American dream that we provide educational opportunity for all our students. That's not enough anymore. We've got to secure the education of each student. Equity requires that we assure both adequate opportunities and resources for each and every student we serve. We educators ought to have a "Socratic oath" that commits us to the goal of every single student becoming a successful learner.
Not all students will learn at the same level or in the same ways. While a basic level of understanding is important for everyone, each must be encouraged to seek the mastery levels that their unique talents and goals allow. Equity of access, we would stress, is not the same as equity of results. We must all be pledged to equity of access and resources; our students must be pledged to secure their own, best results.
Our abiding hope is to turn our students into "teachers" within their own learning communities, near and far. Unless the learner can explain his new-found knowledge, he or she d'es not truly "own" it.
One of our young students got the chance to show President Bush his computer project during the President's visit to our Saturn School of Tomorrow. Although he was clearly getting better at his learning, he was not yet an accomplished student. But his Lego/Logo robotics project had been well done and was a key part of his Personal Learning Plan. When the President asked him what he liked about computers, he paused for a while. "I'm still improving on my reading and writing, but I've always been much better with my hands," he said, "and computers let me work with my hands."
That was a great message for the President to hear: technology helping out with a student's unique learning style, providing equity of access to learning, one that shows that different students need different resources. Even the President needs to know that. More importantly, so do the elected and the electorate. We hope that others will help us address the learning needs of each student and share with us the goal of assuring that there truly is equal access to the learning tools of the 21st century. n
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