A scene from the digital divide

One of the courses I teach at the public middle school where I work is ambiguously named "ELL Elective." I've taken to calling it "Conversational English," since that gets at what we're doing better, anyhow. Basically, it's a class for 8th grade English language learners who have very limited English abilities. Most of them arrived in the US over the summer, though a few were here at the end of the last school year. We spend a lot of time talking about ourselves and each other, learning new words to use and questions to ask, and sharing our opinions about CNN Student News (which we watch almost every day) and the world.

One thing I want to do in the class, too, is identify and try to help fill some skill gaps they have. So this week, we've been in the computer lab. My intention was to do a quick overview (and/or refresher) about how to browse the internet and use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, and develop some keyboarding skills. It became quickly apparent on Monday that even these minimal technology goals were a step beyond where most of the students were. Students (and remember, these are 13-15 year olds) didn't know how to double-click, or that you need to press "return" after you input information to make the computer do anything with it. So we slowly went over these things, and after four class sessions I'm confident that students know how to find and open (and close) several applications, navigate to a web site by typing into the address bar, and search for web sites, news, and images on Google. We've even begun to play with Microsoft Word a bit, changing fonts, size, and color. Today we learned how to cut and paste. One student literally stared in amazement, mouth agape, the first time I demonstrated the technique.

Are these kids stupid? Absolutely not. I adore their creativity, their love for life, their trust and innocence as learners. Rather, they have a radically different set of schemata from the kids who grew up in my town. And they need to catch up, fast, if they hope to finish high school and be competitive job seekers.

So you know, I might just extend this computer skills unit by a few more days.