Re: [xmca] Thoughts on Digital Technologies and Poverty

[Robert Lake <boblake@georgiasouthern.edu>]

Dr. Cole,
Thank-you for sharing some of  the reflective thoughts that struck you
during the passing of one year over to the next.
The narrative says more about where your heart is and therefore what the
goal of your approaches to pedagogy
entail.

And the contrasts are so striking......"Lets see...bed or I phone"?
These are amazing times and they  will certainly  leave their
cultural/historical imprint on all of us in some way or another.

I am hoping that we can get kids playing outside, even with homemade sticks
for bats and rags for balls. So much of what is happening outside is free.

>From Orion Magazine...
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/240/

................... In a typical week, only 6 percent of children ages nine
to thirteen play outside on their own. Studies by the National Sporting
Goods Association and by American Sports Data, a research firm, show a
dramatic decline in the past decade in such outdoor activities as swimming
and fishing. Even bike riding is down 31 percent since 1995. In San Diego,
according to a survey by the nonprofit Aquatic Adventures, 90 percent of
inner-city kids do not know how to swim; 34 percent have never been to the
beach. In suburban Fort Collins, Colorado, teachers shake their heads in
dismay when they describe the many students who have never been to the
mountains visible year-round on the western horizon.

In San Diego, according to a survey by the nonprofit Aquatic Adventures, 90
percent of inner-city kids do not know how to swim; 34 percent have never
been to the beach. In suburban Fort Collins, Colorado, teachers shake their
heads in dismay when they describe the many students who have never been to
the mountains visible year-round on the western horizon.

Urban, suburban, and even rural parents cite a number of everyday reasons
why their children spend less time in nature than they themselves did,
including disappearing access to natural areas, competition from television
and computers, dangerous traffic, more homework, and other pressures. Most
of all, parents cite fear of stranger-danger. Conditioned by round-the-clock
news coverage, they believe in an epidemic of abductions by strangers,
despite evidence that the number of child-snatchings (about a hundred a
year) has remained roughly the same for two decades, and that the rates of
violent crimes against young people have fallen to well below 1975 levels.


All best wishes to all of you for 2011.

Robert Lake





http://www.cbf.org/page.aspx?pid=687



On Fri, Dec 31, 2010 at 11:54 PM, mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com> wrote:

> A quiet evening in a warm dry home sure is a nice place from which to look
> forward, backward, and around on a New Year's eve. For a variety of
> reasons,
> I wrote down the following thoughts. Bail at any time!  :-)
> mike
> ---------------
>
> Thoughts About Digital Technology and Poverty
>
>
>
> The other day I spoke with a friend, the son of a former college, who is
> now
> a professor in a technologically sophisticated field at a major American
> university. We were talking about an iphone application related to
> education. He thought that the iphone could revolutionize education,
> “pushing knowledge out to everyone.” I commented that the young people in
> the housing project where I work did not generally own i-phones. Sure some
> of them texted and all coveted mp3 players, but on the cheapest versions of
> the requisite technologies. My friend dismissed my concerns about reliance
> on educational practices that excluded a large part of the population on
> the
> basis of class, and hence, ethnicity. It was a new idea for him. Can’t
> afford an iphone? Really?
>
>
>
> The following morning I met a colleague who volunteers to work with staff
> at
> the housing project to provide additional resources for the families who
> live there. Christmas is a special time for charities. All is good cheer.
> The kids get to “shop with a cop” and the parents get some help as well. My
> colleague and a few co-workers organize “Secret Santas” from our
> university,
> arranging for those of us with money to provide Christmas presents for
> “needy families.” Kind of like the NY Times holiday fund raising drive.
>
>
>
> A few days before Christmas, the Santa’s helpers delivered the goods: food,
> clothing, bedding, toys for the kids, Avon kits for the mom’s. Something
> for
> everyone. At the apartment where I was a Secret Santa (having comfortably
> donated my money and presents in place of my time and presence) things did
> not go as planned. Santa’s helpers knew that the family wanted a bed for
> two
> of the children. So they planned to deliver a bunkbed. But when they
> arrived, they found that there was no furniture in the house at all, except
> two sofas, taken out of the dumpster by other tenants who had been forced
> to
> leave the project because they could no longer afford to pay the subsidized
> rent.
>
>
>
> The dad was home, and so was his almost-grown son. They are both looking
> for
> work. They are attending classes at a local job-training center. So far, no
> luck.  They could still pay the rent on the apartment. And the kids could
> get by on the meals they could provide. But when the unemployment checks
> stop coming, as they soon will, it seems like they may be the next tenants
> to move out. Out to where? God only knows.
>
>
>
> “You know,” my colleague mused after she and her coworkers had recruited
> more Santas Helpers to round up the needed furniture and food, “those
> people
> really have it hard. They are looking for work, but there is no work
> anywhere in that neighborhood, not for miles around. And they don’t have
> cars. Even if they find a job, how will they get there in a town like this?
> They are very discouraged. I would be too. I sure feel lucky to have a
> steady job here.”
>
>
>
> When I arrived home with this story, my wife, shook her head and replied,
> “You don’t know even where to begin.”
>
>
>
> I started to think about the impact of new severe cuts in family services
> that California is facing and the disastrous level of unemployment which is
> unlikely to come down any time soon for these people. Then the conversation
> with my high tech professorial friend came to mind. No, you don’t know
> where
> to beign, I replied, But wherever you start, I don’t think it should be
> with
> the educational potential of i-phones.
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>


-- 
*Robert Lake  Ed.D.
*Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA  30460

 *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
midwife.*
*-*John Dewey.
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