A long-awaited report on access to digital learning hit the newsstands last week with a familiar headline: a digital divide, known as the homework gap in education circles, persists, especially for students of color, students from low-income families, and students in rural areas.

Our Children Are Leading Us to a Bright Future,
We Shouldn’t Let Them Go Alone

I will never forget the day of great shame as I came to call it, as I watched my then-five-year-old nephew program the VCR that had eluded my best efforts since the day I bought it.  They say “a child will lead them.”  I have never heard a truer statement.

To this day, I am still not exactly sure how to program a VCR—a device nearly as irrelevant in the present modern world as an abacus but I am pretty good with my blackberry as long as I don’t get fancy with it.  Of course my nephew, now a teenager, can make it do things far beyond my capabilities.  The reality is children in the digital age have embraced technology in a way that few of us who grew up in the dark ages when MTV still showed music videos have ever imagined.  This is clearly demonstrated by the findings released recently by the Project Tomorrow “Speak Up” survey and report titled “The New 3 E’s of Education: Enabled, Engaged and Empowered–How Today’s Students are Leveraging Emerging Technologies for Learning.”

As a West Virginia native it is always good to go back home and see something positive going on in my home state. I recently had the chance to do just that when I visited Shady Spring High School, which is located in Raleigh County, West Virginia. The Alliance conducted the visit in conjunction with a team from College Summit, which partners with Shady Spring High School, as well as other schools, districts, and colleges around the country, to develop a sustainable model for raising college enrollment rates community-wide. The joint visit to the school was to learn about the challenges that rural schools face and see how Shady Spring is successfully meeting those challenges. To see video from the site visit, click on any of the images below.