Technology Creating a Larger Divide

This is the essential problem with the participation gap—student that are not proficient users of technology are left behind in accessing more educational opportunities and leaves them further behind in becoming full participants of this new society. “As these rates increased, the focus expanded to include differences among high school and college students: for example, inequality in access to college-preparatory tracks and elite universities, or variations among different kinds of children in class size, school resources, or the availability of advanced placement courses” (DiMaggio 7). This participation gap creates more educational opportunity gaps in alarming new speeds in ways that they cannot overcome without proper support. Without this support in libraries and other educational institutions, these students will not be able to troubleshoot “the problems that invariabl[ly] emerge” when using technology (10). The impact of this on their self-efficacy is detrimental in their continuance in trying to persevere with using technology and these students often resign themselves to lower level courses in school, which then limits them in future endeavors. “We hypothesize that, in the long run, education will be a strong predictor of the use of the Internet for the enhancement of human capital, the development of social capital, and political participation” (13).
Additionally, these students will appear to be less intuitive learners and will be judged accordingly. Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, states:

Those experiences, which were widespread among the middle class and rare among the working class, become a kind of class distinction, which shaped how teachers perceived students. These new forms of cultural participation may be playing a similar role. These activities shape what skills and knowledge students bring into the classroom, and in this fashion determine how teachers and peers perceive these students. (12)

These judgments create the path that students take starting in elementary school. Jenkins quotes Castells in his article, who writes, “‘Increasingly, as computer use is ever less a lifestyle option, ever more an everyday necessity, inability to use computers or find information on the web is a matter of stigma, of social exclusion; revealing not only changing social norms but also the growing centrality of computers to work, education and politics’” (12). The implications of the participation gap returns to their inability to create policy that directly affects them.