July 25, 2011 | 1:00 PM | By

“For At-Risk Youth, is Learning Digital Media a Luxury?”


For schools in low-income communities, the idea of investing money, time, and energy into a digital media program or mobile-learning program might seem superfluous. Administrators and teachers already have so much to contend with — safety issues in high-crime communities, chronic student truancies, debilitating health issues due to poverty, families in constant state of flux, not to mention blocked access to wide swaths of the Internet. In those cases, the idea of investing precious dollars or the attention of already overtaxed administrators seems unlikely.

But what if some of these very issues could be solved by creative ways of using digital technology in schools?

— mindshift.kqed.org

  • Anon

    Learning digital media – like creating websites – might be a luxury.  But, using digital media to learn, is different and we should really be figuring out how to use it better.  Switching the worlds around creates two very different ideas.   A lot of technology programs centered on putting a computer in a classroom aren’t well thought out and add little to the class experience.  But, with more programs and applications available to teachers to give different lessons to different students – there’s room to free up a teachers resources by setting the kids as a group to work on guided tasks through the computer, while teachers work with individual or small groups of students.  Then teachers could do the “differentiated learning” they are pushed to do and you could use the teachers time in a different and potentially more effective way.Â