The role of technology in education is an important one. But as James Paul Gee and Michael Levine detail in their recent Education Week article, we must address the “newly emerging digital-participation gap.”

Below is an excerpt from “Let’s Get Over the Slump: Innovation Strategies for Learning in a Global Age.”

More than 15 million children in preschool and the primary grades have just entered or returned to school, eager to learn. Unless we change our nation’s literacy priorities to address both the early reading gap and a newly emerging digital-participation gap, five years from now more than a third of these children will fail to attain the literacy and necessary 21st-century skills to engage with school. They thus will risk spiraling on a tragic trajectory toward academic failure and economic insecurity.

And check back tomorrow for a guest post from one of the authors, Michael Levine.