Digital Divide 2.0

As part of the PG Certificate in Education, we were lucky enough to hear a fascinating account Sian Bayne from Edinburgh University. Sian outlined her semiotic analysis of Virtual Learning Environments, and their employment of analogue, rather than digital metaphors (books, chalk and blackboards and classrooms) probably consciensly or unconsciously designed to have meaning for people working in Education who may be less at home with the digital world.

She also described the use of Web 2.0 technologies that are employed on the eLearning Masters program she runs, which includes tagging, blogs and the use Second Life to meet online for tutorials. The students on this course are of course keen to take on and learn about the cutting edge and the new attitudes associated with Web 2.0. It would be fascinating to see work with these ideas and tools , and we should try to explore as far as possible what can be achieved.

It struck me though that Web 2.0 may be reopening the digital divide that exists between those who can use online technologies and those who struggle. This divide may be lengthening not on economic lines, but through a cultural divide between those who are growing up with delicious, YouTube etc. and those who are more confortable with solid artefacts and structured knowledge. The former category will increasinly include the majority of students. The latter will (for a while to come) account for the majority of Higher Education lecturers. Will we therefore ask students to work in the physical and web 1.0 world, or will lecturers and academics have to take the best of web 2.0 and add it to thier discourse and practice?