Biggest Digital Literacy Challenge

After reading the article School Libraries Cultivate Digital Literacy for LIS 724, I took some time to think about the 5 different digital literacy challenges that were discussed.  If I had to choose one of these challenges as the biggest challenge, I would say that access to technology would be it.  Why?  This is your foundation, this is the ground floor, your starting place.  If you don't have the technology for your students, how to you plan on teaching them about technology?  And it's not even just having the technology, you need to have up to date and in working condition technology.

In my past courses, there have been discussions about what types of technology to bring into the classroom.  Each time there are these types of discussions there are always a few students who bring up the topic of budgets.  Of course, schools want to have the best for their students but this is not always possible.

My school, like stated in the article, has a computer lab in the media center for classroom use.  Similarly to the article, my school struggles with scheduling time for students using the lab.  It is stressful for teachers, students, and media center workers when we need to send students back to classrooms due to lack of open computers.

Some schools have tried to off set some of the costs by implementing a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program.

techandscience.com

With this program, students can bring in just about any device from smart phones to laptops to use in class.  Although this would save the school money it would be difficult to create smooth lessons when you need to make sure that you as the teacher are able to help each student navigate the device.  You may want to have the students take a screen shot, to do this you need to make sure you are able to help out students using iPhones, Chromebooks, Samsung Galaxy, MacBooks, iPads,  and other tablets both old and new.

There are even more and more schools starting one-to-one device programs.  Keeping all students on the same page with the same device is wonderfully helpful.  It is hard to keep these devices in working order.  I have been to schools with laptops that have missing keys or iPads with cracked screens because the school is waiting on funds to fix them.  My own school had over 100 iPods stored in the back office waiting to be used.  They were rarely touched becase they could no longer be updated.

I understand and 100% agree that there are many other challenges when working with technology like the article described but I think the hardest part is getting that technology into the students hands.