Technology Alone Does Not Have the Power to Increase the Academic Success of Low-Income and Minority Students.

Minority students in Mississippi use new iPads in class. (Source)

Differences in the education and academic success of minority and low-income students compared to students of higher socioeconomic students has become a concerning topic of educational issues in recent years. Research and statistics show that minority and low-income students are simply not performing on the same level as other students of the same age that are not minority races or come from higher-income homes. Many people believe that a solution to help put an end to these inconsistent successes within different groups is to increase the amount of technology within schools.

With technology enhancing and spreading so quickly, there is no doubt that there can be benefits to education through technology. However, research done in this study proved that increasing the amount of technology in classroom alone will not by itself narrow the divide between low-income and minority students and students of a higher socioeconomic status. This is due to the many other factors that are involved with technology use and students performance.

This graph from this data source shows the percentage of students who are considered below-average academically by their race. It is obvious that more Black and Hispanic students are below-average academically than compared to white students. 

I spoke with Jessica Haddaway, a former elementary school teacher who taught majority low-income and minority students in Baltimore City Public Schools. Her school consisted of 98 to 99 percent of students who are eligible for free and reduced meals. She discussed with me her experiences with technology while teaching students in an urban elementary school.

Lack of access to a computer at home is one of the main issues technology does not have the power to improve low-income and minority education. 

Studies have shown that having access to a computer at home has a big impact on a student's use of technology at schools. Using a computer or other piece of technology at home leads to more confidence in a student's ability to use these technologies. If students lack access to a computer that they can frequently use at home, they may be unfamiliar with how to effectively use the technologies they are using on computers at school and lag behind other students who do have home access. This may even widen the divide between low-SES and minority students and high-SES students, even if there is sufficient technology offered within the school.

Adding technology to schools won't guarantee that students are working with these technologies at home to enhance their learning or ability to practice and use them successfully. It is known that students who have access to technology at home are much more likely to take advanced computer classes at the high-school level that are beneficial not only to their education but for skills related to college and careers later in life. This shows how access to technology has become an issue of social equality in today's society.

The graph created from this source clearly shows that income-level plays a big role in access to computers. Upper-class and middle-class people have the greatest access to computers at home. There is very-little to no access at all to computers at home by lower-class and severely poor people. By this data is is clear that technology has become a social stratification. 

The graph created from this source clearly shows that race also plays a factor in computer access. Whites and Asians have the greatest access to computers as well as use them the most. Blacks and Hispanics have far less computer access and use them less than the other races as well.  

Financial issues are another main reason that low-income families are unable to provide access to a computer to their children at home. 

Hispanic high school student, Emiliano, and his mother
get discounted internet access at home. (Source)

It's often difficult for families of low socioeconomic status to be able to afford a computer or other related technological device. In addition to the costs of technology itself, there are also additional costs for internet and other related services, as well as the costs of damages or repairs that simply may not be in the family's budget. While not having computers in a family's home may be one issue, people often see using computers in a public library as solution to this issue. However, this may be easier said than done. Getting to a library may require driving, with the added cost of gas, or the cost of public transportation. Parents of low-income families may often be working long hours to provide for their families are are simply unable to find the time to bring a young child to a library for computer access, or older students may not have the time to get there themselves if they are working their own jobs in order to help provide for their families.


Haddaway discusses some of the other issues with a lack of home access to computers. One of which deals with literacy. Often times minority and low-income students are illiterate or English Language Learners still struggling with reading and writing. Even if granted full access to computers and technology, Haddaway discusses how these disadvantaged students may still struggle with technology use. 

The lack of access to technology at home can effect a student's attitude towards technology, often causing negative feelings toward it's use in schools.

Children who come from homes without a computer or other technological device for them to get frequent access often develop negative attitudes towards technology. This is because without frequently getting exposure to these devices, students may not be skilled at using them and become frustrated when using them in schools. Without a technology-friendly environment established at home, a student with lack of access at home may feel overwhelmed by the constant changes to technology which may be seen in schools.

If a student is frustrated with or cannot keep up with rapidly-changing technology, he or she may have an overall negative attitude towards it and make no effort to use the technology to try to enhance their learning. The student may feel indifferent towards or not see any power within technology to help them succeed. Without student interest and intent, there is no purpose of adding more technologies to schools if it will not help increase academic success.

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The process or way in which technology is implemented in schools is the most effective way to use technology to enhance student's academic success. 

Students in Memphis schools use new tablets
with their teacher's assistance during class time. Source

In addition to home access to computers, there are other factors that can influence technology's ability to help low-income and minority students. The process or way in which technology is implemented into a classroom is a main factor in how successful it is in enhancing academic success. In terms of narrowing the divide between minority and low-income students and those of higher socioeconomic status, it is not the technology itself that will help disadvantaged students.

The way in which in which teachers and other faculty members use technology in their classrooms is what makes the real impact. This includes ways such as the teacher's instruction, direction, and curriculum that is used along with the technology. In addition the chosen programs, apps, or other specific ways the technology is integrated into the classroom by the teacher are what's going to be influential based on how the class or individual student is directed to use them. If a minority student has difficulty reading, using a program that has a lot of long complete sentences and is not user-paced would not likely be helpful to this student's learning.

Students of higher-SES often receive better instruction with technology than minority and low-income students. These students also commonly use computers for more intellectually-challenging activities rather than just rote, skill-practicing and less research-based learning. These less intellectually-challenging forms of technology use are often used with minority and low-income students, which is often seem as problematic.

Haddaway discusses how it is not a matter of adding more technological devices to a classroom, but the way that it is used that will help students perform better academically.

A teacher's experience is also a main factor in technology's ability to enhance learning, calling for a need to increase professional development with technology. 

Teachers knowledge of technology can greatly impact
 their students understanding. (Source)

A teacher's familiarity, knowledge, and ability to use an certain type of technology will also impact his or her student's use. If the teacher doesn't work well with a specific computer program, it is likely that he or she will be unable to present it to students and have them use it effectively to enhance their learning. Poor instruction often leads to unsuccessful technology-oriented programs and classroom lessons. Increased access to computers and technology is only successful when teachers have a complete grasp on the role and use of computers, specific to their student's individual needs. For this reason, Haddaway argues for the need of more professional development with technology and showing teachers how to better use technology within their classrooms is an effective way to get the best use of these devices and programs...

Increasing the amount of technology in schools alone is not enough to greatly increase the academic success of minority and low-income students. There are other factors in lowering the divide between students of opposing socioeconomic statuses such as having access to a home computer, the way school's implement technology, and a teacher's knowledge on the technology they're using in the classroom.  These factors when combined with increased technology may have the ability to enhance the academic success of minority and low-income students. 

Carina and Jennifer Discuss Their Feelings About Traditional vs. Non-Traditional Courses

By Steph23

Alyssa's dream job is to travel around the world and write reviews for small coffee shops.

Alyssa talks about her dream job. 

University of Maryland faculty member Vedran Lekic is awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering to fund future geological research projects.

By Steph23 and Rachel63

In recognition of his efforts to integrate computer science and geological studies, Vedran Lekic joined the ranks of 17 other early career U.S. scientists and engineers who were awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering last week.

Vedran Lekic, University of Maryland faculty member, is rewarded a Packard Fellowship for his geological research, granting him unrestricted funds of over $875,000. 

Lekic is now one of five alumni faculty members who have received the award while at this university, and he will be given access to unrestricted funds of $875,000 over a five-year period to support his extensive research on Earth’s inner structure.

“If you look at the field of those who get it and try to figure out from their research summaries and letters which are the strongest candidate, it’s a difficult task,” said Franklin Orr, chairman of the Packard Fellowship panel. “We always run out of fellowships before we run out of wonderful people to give them too.”

“The great thing about this fellowship is its flexibility to go chase a really good idea to wherever it leads,” said Orr, a Stanford University professor. “It is an incredibly valuable fund and gives the researchers an opportunity to take off with a good idea instead of waiting a year or more for federal money.”

Lekic has received several other early career awards besides the Packard Fellowship.

Lekic plans to study more seismology with his new funds. 

Now that a large fund has been granted to his work, he hopes to spend more time plotting the seismic information in graphs and models so that he may better understand the Earth, Lekic said.

His research is within in the field of seismology, which is the study of earthquakes and seismic waves that move through and around the earth.

As a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkley, Lekic formulated higher-resolution images of the Earth’s mantle structure, stemming from his creation of a global seismic velocity model. Not only is the model able to give geologists a better understanding of plate tectonics, but it also helps explain the movement of continental plates and their evolution, Lekic said.

Nearly 2 million data lines fill the screen of Vedran Lekic’s computer every day, each representing seismic waves that are detected from of the more than 1,700 seismic stations around the U.S.

Lekic’s research is based on ground vibration recordings, which he and his students use to detect the scattering of seismic waves across the North American tectonic plate. In conjunction with the National Science Foundation’s EarthScope Facility network, the data is collected from the 49 states and Puerto Rico and makes up about 3.8 million square miles, Lekic said.

From this data, Lekic is creating a map that will not only cover all 48 contiguous states, Alaska and Puerto Rico, but also dive deep into the Earth’s crust and core.

Lekic has already used the seismic information to investigate why and how the crust moves over the Earth’s mantle. As of now, the deepest any machine has been able to dig was about 12 kilometers into the Earth’s crust, a minuscule fracture of the roughly 6,730 kilometers it takes to get to the Earth’s core. Using the seismic information helps geologists see the shapes and sizes of the Earth’s layers.

“What we do is comparable to how an ultrasound let’s us see through our bodies,” Lekic said. “But this lets us see through the Earth.”

Other than seismology research, Lekic is also working in the field of neutrino geoscience. 

Other than his seismology research contributions, Lekic is also a forerunner in the new geological field of neutrino geoscience.

Neutrinos are a type of electrically neutral subatomic particle that are created during radioactive decay or some kinds of nuclear reactions. The particle, which was only discovered geologically in 2005 and physically detected for the first time last year, moves through every kind of object, McDonough said.

“We are both interested in the energy that moves the tectonic plates and creates the magnetic shield around the planet,” geology professor William McDonough said.

Lekic and McDonough are attempting to harness that energy to create another way to build a model of the Earth.

Friend-networking sites have the ability to impact adolescents' self-esteem based on their interactions on these sites.

Can friend-networking sites really impact a child's self-esteem?

In this study done by the University of Amsterdam, researchers studied the use of friend-networking sites and their ability to affect adolescents' self-esteem and overall well-being. With the rise of technology in younger generations, friend-networking sites such as Friendster, Myspace, or a more recent Facebook, have had the ability to connect young people to other people all over the internet. Researchers used an online survey to determine if the frequency an adolescent used the site, the number of relationships formed on the site, the frequency feedback was received,  or the tone of the feedback received could influence the child's self-esteem and overall well being.

Researchers predict adolescents'  social self-esteem will be either be positively or negatively impacted depending on the tone of feedback they receive on their networking sites. 

Within the study, self-esteem is defined as an adolescent's view of their own self-worth or satisfaction with themselves. There are three main ways in which this can be evaluated; through physical appearance, through romantic attractiveness, and through their own ability to form and maintain friendships. High self-esteem can then lead to good well-being as well. Researchers predicted that the use of friend-networking sites will affect a child's self-esteem and can be have in either a positive or negative impact. They anticipate that positively toned reactions on friend-networking sites will cause increased social self-esteem and negatively toned reactions will caused low social self-esteem for the user. They surveyed users on a Dutch site called CU2 who voluntary answered questions about how frequently and intensely they used the site, the type and amount of feedback they receive, and personal questions about how they view themselves as well. 

Adolescents' social self-esteem was altered by the type of feedback they received on their networking sites, positive feedback led to high self-esteem and negative feedback led to low self-esteem .

Of the users that took the survey, the tone of feedback each participant received greatly varied (See chart in slideshow). Researchers who conducted this study found that self-esteem was directly correlated with their self-esteem. Those who had always or mostly received positive feedback on their site were found to have high self-esteem while the 7% of adolescents who claimed to always or mostly receive negative feedback were found to have much lower self-esteem. This direct relationship proves that what is said about a child on a networking site truly can impact how that child feels about themselves.

Networking sites can have negative effects on children and can even lead to a rise in cyberbullying, another self-esteem killer. 

Adolescents often engage in what is known as "imaginative audience" behavior, in which they tend to overestimate the extent to which others are watching or judging them on a daily basis. This can lead to young children being extremely focused on the way they look, act, and are perceived by others. The use of friend-networking sites can make this judgement be felt 24/7 in adolescents because their information is on the internet at all times. Because of this, young people are often more insecure and lack confidence in themselves. These insecurities can be abused with another unfortunate trend on the internet, cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying that is done through the use of electronics or technology, which would also have a negative effect on a child's self-esteem.

The results of the study proved that networking sites aren't all bad, could they be used increase in adolescents' self-esteem?

 It is true that there is much controversy with the trend of cyberbully and the impact so many young people interacting on networking sites over the internet having low self-esteem. However, the article states that student's who received positive feedback had higher self-esteem. Therefore, there may be potential for these networking sites, if used properly to only deliver compliments and good thoughts, could potentially help young people gain self-esteem, self-confidence, and boost their overall well-being. 

Social Networking and Self-Esteem* from sgiurlan

The US and the UK have varied use of news, including the type of news they access, how interested the are in political news, how often they read news vs watch news and their access of news on smartphones and tablets.

By Stephanie23 and Brian58


News and access to news can be viewed as a part of a country's culture than will vary between each certain country. In this article, many surveys were done to discover how different types of people engage in news. Although many conclusions about various types of people were drawn, one comparison that stands out is how US citizens and UK citizens access news. Conclusions that were drawn were that in the US people tend to watch news more often rather than read, people in the UK and US have similar interests in types of news, people in the US have a greater interest in politics, and that both countries have a rapid growth in accessibility to news via tablets and smartphones.

Reading news compared to watching news is the more popular in the UK than it is in the US. 

With the invention of the television, watching news on video has become a more popular way of obtaining information. This is compared to reading news on paper in sources such as newspapers, magazines, etc. There are differences in which way people prefer to access news depending on their country of residence. In the UK, 49% of a population sampled stated that they mostly read news in text. Meanwhile, only 32% of the US population samples stated that they mostly read news in text. This concludes that reading news in texts such as newspapers is still the a mainly popular way of accessing news in the UK, but is less popular in the US where watching news in the form of videos is becoming more favorable.

People in the US and the UK have similar types of news that they are interested in being informed about. 

There are many diverse types of news that can be shared in newspapers, TV news shows, magazines, on the web, and other news sources that are available to people. People who read news are most likely to read what they are interested in rather than random news or the first thing they see. The type of news that most people are interested in varies between countries around the world. However, between the UK and the US there are many similarities in the type of news people are interested in. For example, in both the UK and the US, people find the most interest in news about their country and the least interest in news about arts and culture. Furthermore, 28% of the interest in news in both the US and the UK were in news about Health and Education. This concludes that people in the US and the UK have similar types of news that they are interested in being informed about.

People in the US are more interested in politics than people from the UK. 

Political news is one type of news that many people may not find as interesting as other types of news. This may be due to the fact that younger generations who are reading news via technology are less interested in politics or simply do not understand them the way older generations do. Political interest in is another factor that varies between countries. Specifically between the US and the UK, more people would consider themselves "extremely interested" or  "very interested" in politics in the US rather than in the UK. Percentage wise, 55% of the US sampled population considered themselves either extremely or mostly interested in political news while only 33% of the UK sampled population considered themselves extremely or mostly interested in political news. This concludes that people in the US are more interested in politics than people from the UK are. This may be a reason why political news is a more popular type of news in the US than it is in the UK and could potentially effect the popularity of other news types accessed in the UK. If people in the UK do not have interest in politics, it is likely that they won't be accessing news about politics.

Smartphone and tablet use for news purposes is growing both in the US and the UK.

Across a global sample, we can see a clear trend of increasing digital news consumption. This is even more evident in a younger half of the population, which are more dependent on smartphones for news. Globally, one-third- of 18 to 34 year-olds say the smartphone is their main way of accessing digital news. When looking at the US, 17% of people use their smartphone as the main device for news, which is relatively low when compared to other countries like the UK at 24%. In contrast, the tablet's larger screen size and greater simplicity makes this device more appealing to older age groups. This trend can be seeing in the UK, where the age group of 45 to 54 year-olds have the highest use of news apps on tablets at 10%. However, while the digital news platform is growing rapidly, it is still far from replacing traditional platforms. Across all countries, an average of 50% of those who access news on a tablet say they also read a printed newspaper at least once a week. Furthermore, 86% also watch TV news, with a similar trend seen in smartphone users. New digital devices are changing consumption patterns particularly amongst the young, but traditional platforms still remain relevant today.

Interactivity is being involved with your learning.

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