An edtech rant — “For Low-Income Kids, Access to Devices Could Be the Equalizer”

Is it me, or does this absolutely reek of the silver-bullet fallacy? Yes, yes, I know that those words appear in the first sentence, but having come from a low-income background… I’m not buying it.

Technology isn’t going to make up for the lost opportunities and inequities that low-income and predominately minorities face, no matter how well-implemented a particular program is. An iPhone, iPad or any other device isn’t the answer, y’all, and it’s sure as hell not the answer to racism– and you’ve read about that whole correllation/causation thing, yes? You can’t just say that the digital divide has been closed because you hand a kid a device and VOILA, the kid can access the web and all is righting itself in the world.  The device doesn’t fix the effects of being a child in a single-parent family, it doesn’t make up for not having enough food to go on the table, it doesn’t suddenly fufill Maslow’s heirarchy of needs because the kid is participating in school. It takes people– teachers, community leaders, administrators, parents– to help right the wrongs that are constantly perpetuated in our schools and in our society, and the voices we need to listen to the most are not always heard because they’re not predominately white, affluent or suburban.

Oh, and while I’m at it, can we get some info on the research methodology? Qualcomm and Cisco– when they did their research, was it conducted by a third party or did they do it all by themselves? You know, because data and research can’t at all be co-opted to tell anything but the truth or anything. Numbers don’t lie or anything.

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