The Great Tech Divide

While I was at eLCC listening to the presentations, one thing struck me.  The presenters (usually among the more seasoned instructors) seemed to be very concerned about the technological divide between themselves and their students.  They were concerned about students who are growing up on Facebook, Twitter and texting being over the head of the instructor.  There's nothing worse than having students show you, as an instructor, how to use the tools of the class.

While this is a valid concern, I think there's a bigger one coming; the divide between students' technical knowledge.  We will always have students who have more knowledge regarding technology than us.  (One of the best revelations I ever had in technology was discovering I was never going to know everything everybody else knew.  I just needed to tap into it by asking and observing.)  The problem is how do we keep the upper tech learner motivated while not over burdening the lower tech student.

Let me give you an analogy.  Student 1 is recently out of high school and has signed up for an online English Comp class.  She graduated from an online high school and is familiar with several LMS, blogs, wikis and ebooks.  She doesn't like carrying books, so she picked up an iPad to read and take notes on.  In her spare time, she likes keeping up with her friends with Facebook and is currently the mayor of the local hangout on Foursquare.  (Did you have to look up the last reference?  Here's a hint.)

Compare this to Student 2.  Student 2 was recently informed she will be laid off from a manufacturing job.  So, she has picked up a second job to help with the bills.  She has two children, one still at home, but has not yet reached retirement age.  She has to go back to school to get training to re-enter the workforce.  The first course she is going to take is English Comp because she did so well in it when she took it in 1985.  She has decided to take in online because of her busy home and work schedule.  Her home computer is a "hand-me-down" from one of her children.  She understands opening a browser, basic word processing and saving files.  However, she spends no more time online than she has to.

How do we teach both of these students?