The Digital Divide of Usage Instead of Acces

About two weeks ago, I was working with my English language arts class on a literary analysis essay they were peer editing. One student's partner had to leave class early, so I encouraged the two of them to work together at home electronically via email or some other program; one of the students replied, "Yeah, no problem, we can just do it over Skype."

Right about that same time,this article appeared in the Denver Post in which it reported on the use of the internet by minority populations. Even though the article focused on race, I suspect there is a certain amount of socioeconomics that factors in as well, particularly since it refers to the use of smartphones and the like to access the internet which are much less expensive than a computer, particularly if given the choice between a phone with internet access included or a computer with internet access as a financial add-on. While a smartphone can get you online, you can still do more online with an actual computer, and that seemingly small difference is actually pretty huge.


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Jing!

The new, cool "toy" I recently discovered thanks to someone I follow on Twitter is Jing. Jing is a nifty, free software program that you put on your laptop and/or desktop that allows you to screen capture still shots or even video. You can record whatever it is you want to record on your screen, then upload it instantly to Screencast.com. You also get a link so you can post to Twitter, Facebook, or wherever else you see fit. I just added this to my laptop yesterday, but I can already see the advantages to this program. With it, I can record all sorts of how to videos then post the link to Edmodo for my students to refer to and watch as they need to. You can even mark up your screenshots, which has definite uses and advantages as well. I was going to wait and create a Jing video demonstrating how to use Jing, but I got too excited and had to share right away.