New Learning Technologies: Promises and Prospects for Women

Technology can also positively affect a community. In one case, a community of otherwise unconnected women was created by first giving them access to the Internet through which they contacted each other; in another, women were notified of a university lecture on a topic closely related to their work, of which they otherwise would not have been informed.

Areas of most concern identified by this workshop are:

• that technology is not accessible to all women in all communities; barriers include cost, geography, lack of adaptations, lack of sufficient telephone service, language
• many communities lack the strategies and resources to ensure meaningful and relevant participation; such resources would include assessment tools, leadership, technical expertise, awareness of gender issues, awareness of disability issues and needs, and awareness of health and safety issues.

Possible solutions are:

• finding ways to assist communities to assess their need for technology .
• developing tools to help communities critically assess the impact of technology
• supporting women into leadership roles in their communities to affect decisions about where and what kind of technology will be introduced
• lobbying government, particularly Industry Canada, to have women's access issues recognized and addressed

Institutional Access (facilitated by Linda Shohet) Discussion focused on women's participation in the industry of new technologies: in decision making about who is re/trained to use technology; loss of jobs or loss of authority as a result of the encroachment of technologies; participation in the software industry that produces games and learning packages (compared to the participation of women in trades); use of computers primarily for clerical or service-oriented work.

Institutional departments to which technologies are first introduced are often the male dominated ones of math and sciences; the rationale for introducing technology is often administrative or related to record keeping rather than to pedagogy which means educational procedures and strategies have to adapt. The impact on education, and on adapting educational techniques so that women and girls are not left behind in learning technological skills, has implications also for teacher training.