Bridging the Digital Divide
Technology Tutoring Aids Parents’ Ability to Enforce a Child’s Right to Learn

Beginning in fall 2005, the Teachers College Education Zone Partnership project provided 30 parents with computer basics every Saturday morning while their third- and fourth-grade children participated in their Math & Art Buddies activities

Instructional technologist Dr. Yaowen Chang started the parents out by teaching them how to use e-mail and showed them how to access the Internet. Then they moved on to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop and freeware such as Composer, a software program that they used to create their own Web pages. The parents also experimented with “moodling”, the latest online instructional technology at TC, and chronicled their Saturday experiences in personal blogs.

Maria de la Hóz, mother of a 3rd grader, used a computer for the first time in the Saturday class. Now, she uses the Internet everyday. She’s learned how to streamline weekly tasks such as grocery shopping; now, De la Hóz comparison-shops online before going to the store.

James and Lucille Grant attended each Saturday with their three daughters. “It reinforced things I already knew, but it also gave me confidence to try new things,” Lucille says. Her husband James was a novice like de la Hóz, but sees how critical this knowledge is for parents and children. “Technology is the way we’re going,” he says. “If you don’t know it, then you’re lost.”

In addition to acquiring technical skills, parents discovered how computers provide a virtual community and a portal for learning. The Saturday sessions also included lectures on psychological and physiological factors that influence learning and introduced the parents to ways of ensuring their child’s right to learn is protected and upheld. Parents also learned test-taking skills to better prepare their children for state tests. They spent two Saturday sessions working through the 3rd and 4th grade math tests prior to their children taking these high stakes tests last March.

“What we wanted to convey to parents was what teachers in training are supposed to learn, and to show the kind of learning experiences that their children should have,” Chang says. “Now that you have had a taste of it, what are you going to do about it?’

At the close of the graduation ceremonies where parents and children received their certificates, third grader Bouboucar B. asked program director Arno, “When does the program start again?”, echoing the sentiments of the parents and children who are looking forward to their Saturdays at TC to begin again in the Fall.