Equity, Ethical, and Social Issues in Educational Technology
Final project
The assignment for this course is to complete an “Equity Report.” This is a way for you to go into
some equity area more deeply than we might as a whole class.
Choose an area of possible digital inequity or digital divide. This should be some sub- area of our
discussion that you’re particularly interested in. Possible areas include: gender; racial or ethnic
differences in using technology; abilities/disabilities; income levels; age; use of different languages on
the Web. You might think of many more. In all these areas of the population, there is at least a
suspicion that its members use technology differently from other parts of the population, and that
possibly it is more difficult for them to get access to or to use the technology in valuable ways.
Your assignment is to do some research about one such area of possible inequity and to share your
findings with the class. The report should include:
1. Some background data. What is the situation, as far as you can discover? What statistics
show differential use?
2. What kinds of problems–real or potential–does this situation create for the population you’re
reporting on? In other words, what do you think is the problem?
3. What kinds of solutions do you find people, groups, or agencies proposing? What can be
done to make the situation better?
Please write the equity report around race — how race issues can cause inequity in
instructional technologies’s use; what’s the cause and impact, how can educators and
policymakers address these issues, etc.
Please refer to chapter 6 of It’s Complicated by Danah Boyd and use this chapter as a base
for the report.
Please also include:
Chapter 1 of DisruptiveFixation, by Christo Sims, especially the Downtown School
example
09/18_Darling_Hammond_2014.pdf
09/18_Warschauer (2015).pdf
Other chapters of of DisruptiveFixation, by Christo Sims
9/25_LAUSD-Instructional-Technology-Initiative-ExecSum-August 2015.pdf (optional)
9/25_New problems surface in L.A. Unified’s iPad program – latimes.pef(optional)
A paper should be about 15 pages long.
Also, you know what I value in terms of work: timely, varied resources; a connection to course
themes (if not necessarily course texts); and something situated in context. That is, these are real,
lived problems: what do they look like from day-to-day for the people in the situation?
I use several criteria for grading. It’s difficult in this kind of project, with everyone possibly
doing considerably different things, to assign exact percentages to these criteria. But here they
are in order of importance:
Thought: This involves what you contribute to the paper, your own thoughts and ideas, your
imagination or creativity. Nothing is entirely new, but any project should involve some degree
of your own original ideas, plans, and activities.
Readings: Projects should not spring entirely from your own imagination, but should be
grounded in some reading – the readings from the course, plus possibly other things you’ve
read.
Organization: This involves the presentation of ideas, and how well the thought is organized. If
the project is any length at all, it should probably be divided into sections, and it should be
clear throughout what you’re trying to say, and why thoughts are placed where they are.
Articulation: This refers to the technical quality of the writing or multimodal composition –
grammar, syntax, spelling, etc. This is not a major part of the grading, and I don’t intend to do
intensive copyediting of papers or projects, but much of the effect of your work depends on its
formal properties. Mistakes can detract from how the reader perceives it. If you need help with
this aspect, I would be glad to contribute what I can.