IDEAL Future Work Package 2 Report

28 some students may be disadvantaged particularly those from lower socio economic backgrounds. but not everybody has the technology at home and I suppose we just automatically presume that everybody can afford a laptop or everybody can afford to use technology or everybody has the space……. I think as teachers, we need to remember that not every kid has those facilities available to them as well. it can be fine putting stuff on Google Classroom, but not everybody can access it and not everybody can do the work that way at home (IE P1) First, the technology must be there. Pupils should have equal opportunities and the means to work safely as a teacher, but the school lacks the means. If a pupil does not have a computer at home, he is under a lot of stress and, as a result, is not helped in any way by the technology. (LV, In-service teacher with 2 years of experience) For some families access may not be an issue but the level of access may vary, where students share devices at home, or may have limited internet access this relates in particular to the second level barriers whereby it refers to the types of people have access which could be intermittent (Van Dijk, 2006) 29 There maybe two or three children in the school from the same family will need the laptop, so what we tend to do is we set homework for the week and it is handed in the following week, and in that way we tried to try to make sure, that it the children could complete the work (IE P22) They choose not to use digital solutions because they are concerned that not all students have access to the resources they need. (LV, In-service teacher with 2 years of experience Furthermore lack of student access to digital skills in the home can be a challenge with regard to ensuring the safety of students and support to complete independent studies. This is what Van Dijk, 2006 refers to as skills access. They the parents don't seem to have the IT savvy, …. lack of digital awareness, digital safety cyber safety like (IE P4) To solve this problem one future teacher with short teaching experience suggests Parents need to be informed how and which digital tools to use; the learning process needs to be made "transparent" and transparent also from the parents' side, so that the parent knows what was done in the lesson. (LV students 23) Some countries also highlight the potential of technologies to exasperate social in equalities, technology has been developed mainly by those of a certain demographic who are privileged, knowledgeable and dominated by a specific age. gender and race. Therefore it is it has the associated inherent bias of their experiences and privilege, because it is so dependent on resource and knowledge it can increase such inequalities already inherent society. Bias was also noted as a challenge with regards to access within the Spanish interviews “ The second problem is that we are widening social inequality. That is to say that the child who is not equipped at home, who has only his phone or the parents' phone, for example, to look at documents, to do his homework, he is not at all, at all equal to the one who will return, who will have access to a PC station, who will actually use the digital tool for learning. In other words, we are not erasing the social gap, the digital divide. Here, in our institution, it is every day. With the impoverishment of the poorest and the enrichment of the richest.” (FR P 16) 5.3.2. Finance Closely related to the challenge of access is finance and the availability of funding, inconsistent infrastructure is influenced by the lack of a stable funding stream allocated for technology. This 29 Van Dijk, J.A., 2006. Digital divide research, achievements and shortcomings. Poetics , 34 (4-5), pp.221-235.