Bridging the Digital Divide with Laptops

From the Wired Campus Blog comes word that the University of Wyoming is considering a plan that would require new freshmen to purchase a university-approved laptop computer. The motivation is to level the playing field by ensuring that every student goes to class equipped with identical technology. Ah, but the real question is what would students be doing with those laptops?

There's nothing in the posting to suggest that faculty training in how to effectively utilize laptops is part of the plan. It's easy for universities to provide hardware and then assume that users will figure out how to use it in pedagogically sound ways. As you might guess, that assumption is usually wrong. The digital divide among faculty is probably wider than among students. When I directed my university's Teaching and Learning Center, I came to find out that some of our faculty didn't know how to use email, while others had already surged forward to effectively use Tablet PCs in their teaching. Now there's a digital divide to bridge.