The New Gatekeeper?

Goode, Joanna. “The Digital Identity Divide: How Technology Knowledge Impacts College Students.” New Media and Society 12.3 (2010): 497-513. Print.

The digital divide is a common concept when discussing the role of technology in education. Joanna Goode’s article attempts to dig deeper into the significance of this divide than has previous scholarship. Her concern is that the prevailing discussions about the digital divide center on “deterministic” matters like access and use. In this article, she claims that to more fully understand the digital divide, we must consider sociocultural elements that contribute to the creation of this divide and how the divide affects students and their quest for academic success. She explores how students construct their own “technology identities” through narratives about their relationship with technology. The theoretical framework she applies to her study couches the student narratives in four key beliefs: “beliefs about one’s own technology abilities; beliefs about the importance of technology; beliefs about participation opportunities and constraints that exist; and one’s sense of motivation to learn more about technology” (502). She then highlights three student responses to the study as representative of different technological identities.

Not surprisingly, the student at the lowest end was from an economically disadvantaged area. Her high school lacked good facilities and qualified educators in general, not to mention its lack of technological opportunities. The two students who fell in the middle (fluent but indifferent) and upper (“highly fluent [. . .] and infatuated” [508-09, emphasis in original]) categories came from middle-class families and had ready access to technology at home and in school. Goode then focuses on the consequences for these students. The more adept students used technology efficiently: registering for courses, using various software applications for different classes, even saving money and time by using various online services. For the student at the lower end, the university’s reliance on technology and minimal support proved significant obstacles, limiting her ability to effectively perform activities such as research and registration. She also had limited knowledge of programs such as free home internet access for off-campus students.

Though Goode tries to distance herself from “deterministic” concerns about access and use, she does not fully elaborate on how her notions of technology identity significantly differ from previous work on the digital divide aside from her comments about the direct effects on students’ perceptions of their relationship with technology. However, the reminder her article creates for us as educators is particularly germane, especially for English studies pedagogies relying on new technologies. As educators, we cannot assume our students’ level of technological abilities. At the college level, we may tend to trust that students have the basic competencies needed to function effectively. Goode’s article reminds us of the pitfalls of such an assumption. We need to familiarize ourselves with our students’ technology skills (as we would with their writing abilities). This reiterates the importance of the New London Group’s calls for Overt Instruction and Situated Practice (Cope and Kalantzis 33-34). Students need particular competencies so they can effectively engage in critique and production—and so they can have better chances for academic success.

Work Cited

Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. “Introduction: Multiliteracies: The Beginning of an Idea.” Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge, 2000. 3-37. Print.