more on week 4

Hi All,
I hope you are all having fun! I have sent avatars to all my friends they are great stuff. I have learned a lot this week and in reflection I feel that as learning managers of the 21st century we are faced with a lot of controversy. Technology is a wonderful thing, I'm all for technology in our schools, but what about the kids that don't have access to this resource? How do they get the opportunity to interact with fellow students and their teachers to achieve viable learning outcomes? In the state school where I work, computer labs are so hard to book. Students get very little access to computers at school, it becomes quite frustrating for teachers and students alike. The students rarely get time to finish their work, and those who have no access to a home computer are disadvantaged in regards to completing the task. How do we keep these students engaged if they don't have access to the right equipment?
You would be quite amazed at the amount of students that do not have home computers.
Blogs, wiki's Avatars and Mahara are all fantastic learning tools,in an ideal world it would be great to help students on-line if they needed it, the students would learn to interact and help each other, creating learning outcomes as well as team building and learning to network. In today's knowledge based economy I feel it's important to help students become futures oriented and gain a higher level of thinking. Again I ask how do we keep these students engaged, if they don't have acess to the right equipment?

Just a little thought to ponder

Cheers
Trish