Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between rich and poor? Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? The authors use administrative data on North Carolina public school students to corroborate earlier surveys that…

For many years, debates over telecommunications network policy were marked by a relative lack of partisan and ideological conflict. In the last decade, this has changed markedly. Today, debates over a whole set of issues, including broadband competition, net neutrality, copyright, privacy, and others, have become more contentious. These…

Lilla G. Frederick Middle School in the Dorchester area of Boston doesn't just train neighborhood parents how to use technology--it offers families who complete the training a new laptop practically free (for $50.00). What's more, students and parents participate in training sessions at the school together, with students often acting as teachers.…

This article describes a collaborative teacher-researcher project exploring how 4-8-year-old children understood and worked with new forms of literacy at home and at school. Twenty-five teacher-researchers investigated young children's home based multimodal funds of knowledge and then planned school or preschool curriculum based on these findings.…

We show how coauthor, Delainia Haug, and her students use Web 2.0 technologies in educational and empowering ways. We offer an account of Delainia's purposes for her curriculum, along with units of study and students' responses to this curriculum. We argue that the curriculum, which focused on media analysis and production, engaged students--many…

Despite increases in computer access and technology training, technology is not being used to support the kinds of instruction believed to be most powerful. In this paper, we examine technology integration through the lens of the teacher as an agent of change: What are the necessary characteristics, or qualities, that enable teachers to leverage…

Johnson and Puplampu recently proposed the "ecological techno-subsystem", a refinement to Bronfenbrenner's theoretical organization of environmental influences on child development. The ecological techno-subsystem includes child interaction with both living (e.g., peers) and nonliving (e.g., hardware) elements of communication,…

Colleges are looking for ways to cut costs, and most students now own laptops. As a result, many campus technology leaders are taking a hard look at those brightly lit rooms with rows of networked computers, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to maintain. More than 11% of colleges and universities are phasing out computer labs or…

At the beginning of the 21st century, virtual learning was thought to have the potential to revolutionize learning arrangements. This enthusiastic notion has given way to a kind of disillusionment, which has, however, led to a more realistic assessment of the potential of e-learning, the development of new conceptions, new methodical approaches,…

This article reports on a study into the integration of ICT for students' personal use in the secondary mathematics classroom through using small software applications on handheld computing devices (graphical calculators). The handhelds were networked through wireless hubs so that data, software and output can be shared and an interactive space…

This paper is a comparative account and analysis of three mobile Web 2.0 projects instigated within a tertiary learning environment during 2008. Following the successful instigation of a mobile Web 2.0 project in the third year of a Bachelor of Product Design course during semester one, similar projects were initiated in semester two within the…

This study explores configurations of laptop use in a one-to-one environment. Guided by methodologies of the Concerns-Based Adoption Model of change, an Innovation Configuration Map (description of the multiple ways an innovation is implemented) of a 1:1 laptop program at a middle school was developed and analyzed. Three distinct configurations…

The focus of this study is to determine the teachers' usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in vocational and technical schools in Turkey according to their age, level of education, opportunity of access to computers and ways of learning to use computers. Study group of the research was four hundred and sixteen teachers from…

This position paper highlights existing and emerging, prospective digital divides in Norwegian schools and asks whether we are now moving from traditional digital divides to digital inequality in our digitized society and schools. Despite very good technology density in Norwegian society and schools in general, there is the reason to pay attention…

Public libraries have evolved into a primary source of Internet access in many communities, generating wide-ranging impacts in the communities that public libraries serve. Based on the findings of the 2007 Public Libraries and the Internet study, this article examines the ways in which the Internet access delivered by public libraries affects…