Dive Brief:
- With internet access at home becoming increasingly important for students to be able to finish their homework, some schools are having to get creative to meet the needs of those without it.
- Ed Tech Magazine reports the issue affects schools in urban and rural areas, and a school near Houston has addressed the need by sending students home with notebooks that have their own internet hotspots.
- Even before the need for internet at home is the need for a computer to access it, and the Merced Union High School District in northern California is among those that have turned to one-to-one device programs with Chromebooks to fill gaps in access.
Dive Insight:
As digital devices become more common in classrooms, teachers expect students to access some of this technology at home to complete their homework. A number of districts are figuring out how to provide internet access beyond the school buildings to facilitate online assignment completion. A district in New York outfitted buses with Wi-Fi, and one in Virginia stretched broadband coverage to all 726 square miles of its district.
Beyond getting the infrastructure in place, administrators need to worry about professional development and training for teachers to better use technology in their lessons and homework assignments. When students are being asked to complete worksheet problem sets on a digital platform, they are not really benefitting from the technology.
