Digital Diversity

Digital Diversity: Youth, Equity, and Information Technology is
about youth, schools, and the use of technology. Youth are
instrumental in finding novel ways to access and use technology.
They are directly affected by changes such as the proliferation of
computers in schools and elsewhere, and the increasingly heavy use
of the Internet for both information sharing and for
communication.

The contributors to this volume investigate how the resources
provided by information and communication technology (ICT) are
made available to different groups of young people (as defined by
gender, race, rural location, Aboriginal status, street youth
status) and how they do (or do not) develop facility and
competence with this technology. How does access vary for these
different groups of youth? Which young people develop facility
with ICT? What impact has this technology had on their learning
and their lives? These are among the issues examined. Youth from a
wide variety of settings are included in the study, including
Inuit youth in the high arctic.

Rather than mandate how youth should/could better use technology
(as much of the existing literature does) the contributors focus
on how youth and educators are actually using technology. By
paying attention to the routine use and understandings of ICTs by
youth and those teaching youth, the book highlights the current
gaps in policy and practice. It challenges assumptions around the
often taken-for-granted links between technology, pedagogy, and
educational outcomes for youth in order to highlight a range of
important equity issues.