Introduction
This article discusses the growing digital divide and how it affects digital literacy education. Without comprehensive changes, the growing digital divide threatens to leave new generations of students out of the promising changes offered by new technology. Free and open source software, or F/OSS, is discussed in this article as a viable means of addressing this problem. I intend to show that F/OSS can change how digital literacy education approaches pedagogy of the visual and pedagogy of writing.
The digital divide refers to the gap between technology-rich and technology-poor areas. This phenomenon has been studied in many areas, including the distribution of broadband services and, more relevant to this Web text, the distribution of technology in classrooms across the world. Selber (2004) writes that Computers are indeed a fact of life in educational settings, yet too few teachers today are prepared to organize learning environments that integrate technology meaningfully and appropriately
(p.3). The digital divide not only affects students' ability to learn technology, but also has an unfortunate effect on the norms regarding technology. I experienced this phenomenon on a personal level in high school, which I attended at a time when typing classes had only recently been revived as keyboarding classes and only the library computers were wired for Internet connection. As a result of the recent changes, many of the norms regarding technology use were outdated. For example, a teacher who put his e-mail address on the chalkboard was met with confused stares. Who would want to e-mail a teacher? Imagine my surprise when I arrived at college and found that e-mail correspondence was not only the norm, but the expectation, and that floppy disks were inadequate for my storage needs.
Teachers hoping to integrate computers successfully into the classroom are hampered not only by the technology disparity in their students, but also the disparity of facilities. Selber (2004) cites a study by Philip Davis at Cornell that concludes that students often learn the needed skills to navigate digital workspaces on their own, provided they have adequate support from their peers and the academic environment (p.30). Children in particular can learn quickly when provided an adequate playground in which to pick up skills and test the boundaries of their environment, and certainly students who have grown up with technology will have plenty of opportunities to play with technology and acquire new skills. What about those students for whom this support network is not there?
Many factors can cause students to fall behind the digital literacy curve. Students may lack the money to purchase needed hardware and software, and the components they can afford might be woefully obsolete. Although computer hardware does not cost as much today as it did in the 1990s, upgrading is still costly in terms of both money and time; those without the skill to install their own hardware upgrades have to pay even more money to have professionals do it for them. Efforts to upgrade can also be hampered by the scarcity of compatible parts for older machines, a problem that can plague both educational institutions and students at home. Students may also lack the time and inclination to pick up digital literacy skills on their own, depending on other life commitments. Finally, as described above, they may lack the support network needed to develop digital literacy. These factors can lead to frustration with technology, as digital literacy curves leave people behind and render them unable to thrive in constantly-changing digital landscapes. The list of required digital literacies is daunting because many of them are technology issues that intersect with other areas of society, or what Selber might refer to as issues of critical literacy. In response, pedagogy must increasingly be designed to teach students the literacy they need to perform in digital workspaces.
In theory, the pedagogy of digital workspaces gives students at all levels the best chance to master skills that will be required to compete in a world that will increasingly be defined by digital spaces, a world in which success will depend on mastering diverse and challenging digital literacies. In reality, the pedagogy of digital workspaces is hampered by lack of time, money, and inclination by elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions. Computers must be more than set pieces in a classroom; they must enter the academic environment with the necessary software and expertise backing them up to serve the essential function of educating students. Unfortunately, some institutions lack the funding and expertise to do anything more than tread water with their digital literacy programs, leaving their students with little more than a basic shell of digital literacy, a shell not every student can reliably expand upon. Many students have the luxury of being able to acquire digital literacy in more places than just the classroom. I was able to acquire some digital literacy at home, working with video games and other devices that were purchased for older siblings and learning how to use them myself. I also derived great benefit from an excellent local public library system that employed technology I could explore and learn from. Not every student is able to rely on a well-equipped library or adequate resources at home or in school. In the absence of a well-constructed digital literacy program in a classroom, students must rely on a patchwork of support systems to pick up digital literacies. For students who cannot readily access a library or technology at home, this is a loose patchwork that will easily fray.