If you are a student in one of the islands’ one-room schoolhouses, how do you meet and interact with other kids who are not on your island? Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? Skype? How about videoconferencing with each other during school hours? For the past year and a half, approximately 30 island students have been sharing videoconferencing classes with each other across miles of open ocean. Thanks to a distance learning program grant awarded to the Island Institute by the United States Department of Agriculture, all 13 Maine island schools have installed a live feed video system that allows students and teachers to communicate with each other on a large screen partitioned among the participants, which then zooms in on the teacher giving a demonstration or a student asking a question. Nowhere has this technology been more valuable than among five of the smallest outer island schools.
With classes as small as two or three students on several of the islands, it is hard to develop a peer group—particularly, as is the case on one island, when the only other student in your class all day is your brother. But island students now routinely interact with each other through a jointly developed curriculum that outer island teachers have painstakingly developed themselves during the past three years. And their students have taken notice. Island kids have readily adapted to the special cadence, like a slight tape delay, required as a question from one island classroom yields to an answer or comment from another. It is like communicating from an orbiting space capsule, which, in a sense, is how island students, especially those in one-room schoolhouses, experience their isolation. But no more.
It should come as no surprise that the island students have adapted so quickly to the new technology—usually well ahead of their teachers. We are, after all, exceptionally social primates. We like to know about others—especially if those others share similar isolated circumstances. This past fall, the outer island students organized a virtual student council. Island kids ran for five different offices—you guessed it—campaigning with virtual interactive multimedia posters. The president’s race featured four front-runners from four different islands and four different grade levels. Not your average election. The winner campaigned on a platform of introducing variety to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich fare that had become a staple during face-to-face inter-island events. Parents are even getting into the act and are forming an inter-island P.T.A.
All this got me to thinking about the digital divide. The biggest fault line along this divide is not as much socio-economic as generational. If you are under 30, there never was a time when computers were not integral to your education and life. If you are under 15, there never was a time when search engines were not integral to wanting to know something—know anything. If you are under eight, there never was a time when you couldn’t post updates on your status to anyone you had “friended.” All parents struggle to keep up and are ultimately unsuccessful.
Twenty years ago, a digitally precocious 10 year old tried to convince his father to buy Apple Computer stock that was then selling for around $8 a share. His clueless father figured Apple was about to go out of business. A number of years later, the precocious teenager, now with an attitude, tried to convince his father to invest in the initial public offering for Google. His clueless father still did not “get it,” partly because Wall Street Journal commentators were certain that the stock was overpriced in the now famous Dutch auction that launched the company into the stratosphere. Lately, another opportunity looms with an imminent Facebook I.P.O. Who wants to let their lamentably limited network of friends know what book you had just finished or movie you had just seen, he asked? I mean, who could possibly care? And even if they cared, who could ever make money from knowing this?
But a less precocious, more worldly 30-something son texted a patient and judicious thought across the digital generational divide. Dad, he said, I don’t think you should bet against the entire next generation of the world. It occurred to me that perhaps I should post this on my Facebook page to see if anyone “likes” it.
In the meantime, if you need any reassurance about the future direction of technology in our lives, just ask any Maine island student.
Philip Conlking is president of the Island Institute based in Rockland, Maine.