| This summer, 22 high school juniors and seniors from greater Los Angeles joined teachers and university researchers in a research seminar funded by IDEA and the Los Angeles Basin Initiative. They studied education and power, specifically investigating concepts related to the Students' Bill of Rights. One group, composed of five high school seniors, studied the perceptions of computer literacy of students, teachers, and policy-makers. As part of their research, the students investigated access to computers and the technological visions of educators at two Los Angeles area high schools. Here are their findings.
Download PowerPoint presentation of Perceptions of Computer Literacy authored by the student research team! (1 MB) |
| Researchers have noticed that there is a general inequality throughout education systems, our research group has focused on the inequality of access to technology within and across schools. Throughout history there have been differences in the quality of education because of the different resources that communities provide. The introduction to technology is seen with the potential to revolutionized education, and can head in two different ways. Technology has the potential to bridge the gap between the inequalities throughout schools, or it can head in the other direction, widening the gap. We believe that technology has the power and the potential to empower people, giving people a better opportunity to succeed in life.
Unequal access is a big problem that not only seen across schools and communities, but that also is seen inside schools. The first big issue is the inequality across schools and the unequal distribution of resources. All schools do not need the same amount of resources because every school is in different situation. Giving every school the same amount of resources will not benefit every school because some schools need more resources than others do. Some schools will need resources for safety, for example, security systems to protect the computers and to protect the students while they are using the computers. Giving each school the amount it needs will not make schools unequal, but it will actually bring schools closer, in the sense that each school, no matter what their social background is, will be able to give the same education. This would make the competitive field more manageable for everyone and it would give people an equal opportunity to get anything within schools is not available to everyone in the school because there are restrictions and/or certain rules that need to be follow in order to have access. It seems that this sometimes prevents students from using the available access because they think it is too much of a hassle to go through all of that just to get access. If the access was available to everyone, it seems that people will use it more because they can focus on the essential things and not have to worry about the small things.
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Knowing if the access provided is being used to its full potential is another problem. One big issue after getting access to the schools and communities is being aware of what to do next. Many people seem to think that getting computers to the school and communities determines total access, but it actually does not. Getting the computers is just the first step of many that follow to obtain "total access". One of the biggest steps in achieving "total access" is perception of knowing how to use computers and how to work with it to get the biggest benefit from it. There are many other things that need to be done to get "total access", but those will be discussed throughout this paper.
From analyzing these problems we developed a question that we have not seen addressed before. One of the reasons maybe is that there is not just one possible answer to this question. The main question is: How do students, teacher, and policy-makers view the computer literacy that each student need? From our main question we developed three main categories of sub-questions: First, are there and where are there differences across and within schools in how computer literacy is viewed? How is the process of getting every one to be computer literate being followed through? How is computer literacy being obtained? Secondly, what resources exist that do and do not serve these goals? Lastly, do people have different information about computer access and resources?
LABI student participants
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