June 2008 — News
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Digital Divide? What Digital Divide?
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Students in low-income families may have more access to technology than previously thought. What's more, according to preliminary research coming out of the University of Minnesota, these students are using technology consistently to boost their 21st century skills--even if many of them aren't aware that they're of the educational value of their activities online.
Internet Access and Usage
The new study, led by U Minnesota's Christine Greenhow, learning technologies researcher in the College of Education and Human Development, focused on 600 lower-income students, their access to the Internet, the frequency of their Internet usage, and their online social networking activities. What it found was that a full 94 percent of them used the Internet, with 82 percent of them using the Internet from home. Seventy-six percent reported having a desktop computer, and 30 percent reported having a laptop computer at home.
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Half of these students reported using the Internet daily, with 25 percent reporting using it multiple times per day. Twenty-seven percent used it three to five times per week, and 14 percent used it one to two days per week.
Social Networking and 21st Century Learning
What's more, these students are in large part using the Internet for social networking. Seventy-seven percent had a profile on a social networking site, with MySpace (65 percent) being the most popular. Facebook came in second.
While most cited social activities as the reasons for using social networking sites (i.e., keeping in touch with friends and meeting new friends), when asked what they've learned from their use of social networking sites, they pointed largely to 21st century skills: technology skills, creativity, being open to diverse views, and communication skills. (See fig. 2, below.)
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