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In the old days, if you grew up in a home full of books and learned to love them at an early age, you did better in school than students with little exposure or access to printed information. In the current days, if you grow up with your own computer connected at high speed to the Internet, we might expect you to do better in school than students who are not as blessed with digital resources. Today about half the homes with school-age children in America enjoy this access, while half do not. And the results of the digital divide are being felt in classrooms at all levels. Previous articles in this series have looked at how some public authorities, such as the State of Maine, have supplied computers and connections to all students in order to erase the advantages of the wealthier computer-owners, in the same spirit as the builders of public libraries of a century ago. The basic tools of learning and information must be available equally to all. This week's article looks at the nature of the digital divide in a different way.

Simply owning a computer and subscribing to the Internet does not bring you the advantage of "connectedness." It's what you do with the computer that counts.

Most of the students at the College of Communication are on the upside of the digital divide. 98% of them come to school freshman year with a computer in their hands, and most have been using it daily for a decade. But on the first day of class, when I query them closely on what they actually know how to do with a computer, their answers sound like this:

I do instant messenger with my friends, we email, and I surf the web. For what? Oh. movies, news, sports, that kind of stuff.

All my music is on the computer, I have over 2000 MP3's that I have downloaded, and I make my own CD's and give them to my friends. And I do the regular stuff: email, IM, and I write my school papers on it.

We keep up with the latest multi-player games, all the cool ones. Have you seen Raiders of the Lost Wooly Mammoth? The graphics will scare you senseless..

My new laptop can play an entire DVD on a single battery. I can watch in my room, on the bus, even in class if I use headphones..

Will any of these students do better in school than their non-computer-owning peers? Not if that's all they do with their digital resources. These kinds of activities will not make them better writers, historians, scientists, or mathematicians. Using email and instant messenger may make them faster at the keyboard, and the games may develop their mouse skills, but these do not translate to a big advantage in the curriculum.

And these students' experiences are not far from the mainstream. Broad surveys of high school and college students' use of computers find that their top activities are email and entertainment. Even if every student were issued a free computer upon entry into Kindergarten, if they continued in this pattern of usage, the effects on their learning would be slim.

The digital divide we should fear most is the split between the educational and entertainment uses of the new technologies. If these new and powerful tools in the hands of our young people end up focused on trivial pursuits, if they become defined by the society as grown-up Gameboys, and if we find ourselves as educators on the wrong side of the divide, we will have lost a major battle with the forces of ignorance.

The folks in Maine who are implementing the computer-in-every-knapsack campaign are finding that, in order to take full advantage of the digital equity they have bestowed, the schools and teachers and parents must ensure that the computers and networks are occupied by educational forces. Teachers are learning to give homework assignments that force students to use the technology for serious writing, deep historical research, sophisticated science, and new ways of looking at math. They are making sure that the students' time with the technology is taken up for the most part in worthwhile pursuits. Of course these students use instant messenger and listen to music on their computers, but that's not the chief usage. In fact, today in many poor Maine communities we can find more accomplished young masters of technology than in the wealthy computer-owning suburbs on the other side of the digital divide. What the Mainers do with their computers is far more valuable to them than the trivial usages of their wealthier peers. They will as a result know how to use a computer to find worthwhile facts and interesting opinions, to use a variety of digital tools for analysis and thinking, and be able to present their ideas in the most appropriate electronic form. This will make them better students, more competitive in college courses, and more fitted to the world of work, than their well-to-do counterparts.

The digital divide is real, but it goes far deeper than who has a computer and who does not. It's a divide stretched by the forces of entertainment pulling in one direction, and of education in the other. As educators, we have a responsibility to do as much as we can to provide the assignments and expectations that attract the computers to our side of the mountain.