Home PublicationsL&LIssuesVolume 27 (1999-2000) April (No. 7)

This inaugural invitational event was designed to provide a forum for minority leaders at all levels of education to share information and discuss the unique technological perspectives, issues, and needs of their peers.

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We are all aware of the enormous divide between the technology haves and the have-nots. It is documented in the consumer and trade press regularly. One has only to attend a typical technology conference to notice the lack of representation from peoples of color.

In fall 1998, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) took a bold step and invited a few individuals to a meeting in New Orleans to address this inequity. From that initial event, it was clear that a larger meeting of representatives from the educational community was necessary. Thus, Lynne Schrum, then ISTE president, challenged the ISTE minority affairs committee chairs, Jenelle Leonard (U.S. Department of Education Office of Education Research and Improvement) and Jorge Ortega (Leon County Schools, Florida, and ISTE board member), to develop a plan for that larger meeting. This article describes the events and reflections of three of the symposium participants.

Increasing Awareness

On June 20, 1999, ISTE convened its first Minority Leadership Symposium at the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This day-long meeting was intended to establish a professional network among minority leaders in education, increase awareness of issues affecting minority communities, and develop strategies for increasing minority participation and leadership in educational technology.

Forty-four participants were invited from around the United States, including one from each of the six Regional Technology Education Consortia (R*TEC). Speakers included Karen Edwards Onyeije from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce and R. Guy Vickers of the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering (SECME).

Onyeije discussed the persistent gap between technology haves and have-nots reported in the NTIA’s (1995, 1998, 1999) “Falling Through the Net” series (www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/digitaldivide). Vickers discussed programs for encouraging minority students to become involved in technical fields.

Looking Back

As plans for the 2000 Minority Leadership Symposium move ahead, Bonnie Bracey, Cory Heyman, and Joyce Pittman look back at their experiences from the 1999 Symposium.

Bonnie Bracey

Bonnie: On the first day, I was rather apprehensive, because I had never really met many minority people in education. I was concerned, excited, and also not sure what ISTE had in mind. Sometimes Jenelle [Leonard] and I would be the only people of color at a conference. In the back of my mind I can still see Jenelle and me standing at the door of the 1998 NECC conference in San Diego, worrying because we saw so few minority educators. I knew the symposium would be different, but I wasn’t sure how different. As it turns out, the symposium was a signal, a start, a recognition that the leaders in technology saw the problems of the digital divide. That recognition freed me to pursue help for those across the digital divide knowing that I had the support of ISTE. Before the conference, I had lots of ideas and leadership agendas, which I only shared in educational circles. After the conference, I spread my wings, and broadened my circle of contacts. I sent Michael Hoy of Apple a copy of the symposium agenda, and as a result he provided me with Apple resources on disk and on the Web to create after-school community programs. I also reached out to the Urban League’s B. Keith Fulton, who had an educational project in the works, a CD-ROM for distribution nationally to people working in technology.

Bonnie has also been a leader in keeping her colleagues from the 1999 symposium connected. She maintains an informal mailing list, which she uses to keep her peers current on news and issues related to technology use in education. To join the list, e-mail Bonnie at BBracey@aol.com.

Bonnie: With the advent of the digital divide, for me, involving others is crucial. For example, I brought the issue of minority presence and influence forth at the Camden Technology Conference in Maine, where key educators from around the United States engaged in a no-holds-barred forum about the effects of the unofficial culture of Web, chat, video game, and other computer and Internet technologies. Their goal was an agenda to change the world, and so I helped to share the idea that we as minorities needed to be more involved. By the end of the conference, the leaders were asking how more minorities and people of color could be involved. I consider that a success. ISTE’s work with the symposium made me realize that perhaps sometimes we just need to make people aware. Awareness is key.

Cory Heyman

Cory: What I remember most from the symposium was the breadth of participation and quality of the participants’ professional experiences. ISTE did an excellent job of bringing together people from schools, school districts, universities, government, and the nonprofit sector. The afternoon reception with the business community was another important opportunity to reflect on access to technology. The day was well structured to provide an opportunity to hear from experts about the latest statistics and to interact and think proactively about the future role of ISTE in minority leadership development.

Cory recently started a new job as a research scientist with the American Institutes for Research, and in this capacity, he hopes to draw on his colleagues’ expertise just as he was able to do in his previous position.

Cory: When I attended the symposium, I was executive director of the Potomac Regional Education Partnership (PREP), an organization dedicated to improving educational opportunities for all students in the [Washington] D.C. metropolitan area and helping meet workforce needs. Our “Access to Technology” subcommittee was working to facilitate the creation of Community Technology Centers throughout the metro area. These centers would provide skills training and access to post-secondary distance education that PREP was helping to establish. The ISTE meeting had a substantial impact on the way the subcommittee focused its priorities. For instance, Guy Vickers’ (SECME) statistics about the “education pipeline” and minorities in engineering gave PREP the quantitative ammunition to justify our focus on technology and tailor our programmatic goals to increase the number of minorities in the engineering education pipeline. This theme resonates with the business community, which is currently focused on increasing the supply of technology-savvy workers.

Joyce Pittman

Joyce: I was in the final phase of data analysis and interpretation and was looking for verification that my analysis was indeed plausible at that point. You see, what was emerging in the data was that it was not necessarily the standards that were problematic, but rather the conditions of training, such as classroom practices, environmental conditions in the schools themselves, and access to technology, especially in urban schools. The same theme came up for discussion again and again at the symposium, in presentations and conversations with participants: technical assistance and access to the technology were more of an issue than the standards themselves. [Because of] a lack of knowledge and awareness of educational technology and requirements for moving from theory to practice, there were many instances where the support needs for teachers to integrate technology following training were underestimated. These discussions informed my theory that there is a need for more dialogue and research regarding training standards, technical support, access to technology, and a system of accountability, especially for minority educators.

The symposium’s influence on Dr. Pittman continues in her work at the University of Cincinnati. Along with other projects, she and Dr. Gary Phye at Iowa State are preparing a study that will analyze NCES (National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education) data on the characteristics of teachers in the 100 largest U.S. urban schools with a focus on African-American teachers.

Joyce: I have also been asked to speak to a group of 115 African-American high school students in Cincinnati who are participating in a special program to become teachers. The program, Project Reach, is administered by Liz Peavy, an African-American assistant professor in teacher education at the University of Cincinnati. When I shared with her the results of my study, From the Ground Up (Pittman, 1999b), Dr. Peavy immediately invited me to get involved with the project. I plan to hold a “town meeting” with the students and their volunteer leaders to learn just who they are, how they are preparing and being prepared to become teachers, and perhaps look at ways to expand the project to embrace technology. I will discuss the results of the Falling Through the Net II: The Digital Divide (NTIA, 1998) study, which Karen Onyeije presented at the symposium, and the crisis that the national push to emphasize technology poses to highly qualified minority educators.

Looking Ahead

ISTE is proud of its initiative, and looks forward to a larger, even more inclusive event at NECC 2000 in Atlanta (June 26–28). The plans are to encourage some of the participants in this year’s symposium to help plan and guide the next meeting. John Vaille, ISTE’s new CEO, said,

ISTE members can be proud that their organization has played an important role in broadening the national conversation regarding bridging the digital divide. The ISTE Minority Symposium will continue to provide a resource to educators as they face the challenge of providing every American student access to powerful technology learning tools.

Lynne Schrum, Minority Leadership Symposium Program Co-Chair, agrees,

It was an exciting event at NECC ’99, but I see that as just the first step. ISTE can take a leadership role in raising awareness of the entire educational technology community, but more importantly, we can leverage our reputation to broaden and deepen that community.

References

National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (1995). Falling through the Net: A survey of the “have nots” in rural and urban America. Washington, DC: Author. Available: www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fallingthru.html.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (1998). Falling through the Net II: New data on the digital divide. Washington, DC: Author. Available: www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/net2/.

National Telecommunications and Information Administration. (1999). Falling through the Net: Defining the digital divide. Washington, DC: Author. Available: www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fttn99/contents.html.

Pittman, J. (1999a). A study of professional development, research, practices, and policies to prepare inservice teachers in new technologies: Implications for training standards in new technologies. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Iowa State University, Ames.

Pittman, J. (1999b, June). From the ground up: Building a high-tech culture in the minority educator community. A technical report presented at the ISTE Minority Leadership Symposium at National Educational Computing Conference ’99, Atlantic City, NJ. Available: joyce.pittman@uc.edu.

Copyright © 2000, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). All rights reserved.