By Jessica Okay. Jackson, Jeffrey Starr, Ed.D, and D’Andre Weaver, Ph.D
For greater than a decade, Digital Promise has been on the forefront of conversations and efforts to shut the Digital Studying Hole—brought on by variations in how learners entry and use know-how each out and in of college to enhance studying alternatives and outcomes.
Recognizing that offering know-how and connectivity alone isn’t the reply, our digital fairness efforts have moved past entry to units and dependable high-speed web. Digital Promise’s new Digital Fairness Framework gives steerage and coverage suggestions for states and Okay-12 schooling programs to bridge digital divides and enhance outcomes for all learners. Utilized collectively, it’ll be certain that all individuals residing, studying, and dealing in the US are capable of thrive in as we speak’s digital world.
Okay-12 colleges are a vital pathway for creating digital literacy, making certain equitable entry to know-how, and getting ready college students for fulfillment within the digital age. The Okay-12 Digital Fairness Framework is a scientific manner for leaders, academics, and coaches to advance digital fairness by closing the digital educating and studying hole in colleges. It gives methods to bridge the digital entry, design, and use divides outlined within the 2024 Nationwide Academic Expertise Plan.
By way of the Digital Fairness Framework, faculty and system leaders can set up a basis able to not solely reworking present educating practices and studying experiences, but additionally future-proofing their colleges for the evolving technological panorama.
The framework consists of 5 interdependent domains:
- Management for Digital Transformation: Strategic and inclusive steerage by district, faculty, and group leaders that enact a imaginative and prescient for deep know-how integration throughout the schooling system.
- Coherent Methods, Sources, and Insurance policies: The alignment and activation of programs, assets, and insurance policies with an outlined strategic and steady enchancment plan for deep know-how integration.
- Constant Entry to Gadgets and Connectivity: Each learner has sufficient and constant entry to high-speed web, units, and rising applied sciences and studying instruments, each inside and out of doors the classroom.
- Digital Competency: The digital abilities, mindsets, inclinations, and behaviors which can be important for individuals to successfully use know-how to completely take part in a digitally pushed society.
- Highly effective Studying Propelled by Expertise: A learner-centered mannequin that seamlessly integrates rising applied sciences, digital assets, and instruments into instruction, leading to participating and related educating and studying experiences that result in deep understanding.
Whereas we have fun advances made in every particular person area, digital fairness could be realized solely when all 5 domains are current, and the framework is incomplete if any of the domains are missing. For instance, if leaders and coaches don’t combine know-how into important programs like skilled studying communities, teaching strategies, and evaluation mechanisms (Coherent Methods, Sources, and Insurance policies), they could battle to keep up and maintain efficient, technology-enhanced educating and studying into the long run.
An extra framework which is able to present comparable steerage for establishments of upper schooling will probably be launched within the close to future.
The State Digital Fairness and Alternative Framework units the enabling circumstances for equitable entry, use, and workforce readiness for all individuals in our digital society. It outlines methods to broaden state-supported applications designed to enhance broadband infrastructure and improve digital literacy in the US. Its holistic strategy locations learners on the heart of insurance policies originating from three financial sectors: Schooling, Housing, and Workforce, with a deal with traditionally and systematically excluded communities, in addition to residents with studying variability.
On the coronary heart of the Digital Fairness Framework are three core rules: Inclusive innovation, which emphasizes collaboration with these most impacted, underserved, and underrepresented; Steady Enchancment, which displays a dedication to at all times striving for extra equitable outcomes; and Sustainability, which underscores the idea that these efforts require considerate planning for the long run to make sure enduring affect. These rules haven’t solely guided the event of this framework—but additionally function an expression of our highest hopes for its use to help learners.
Discover the Digital Fairness Framework and dive deeper into the context behind it in our new paper, A Framework for Digital Fairness.
Jessica Okay. Jackson is the deputy director for analysis, analysis, and design for the Digital Fairness workforce at Digital Promise.
Jeffrey Starr, Ed.D is the deputy director for studying supply and design on the Digital Fairness workforce at Digital Promise.
D’Andre Weaver, Ph.D is the Chief Digital Fairness Officer at Digital Promise.