1 Introduction

Existing research on digital inclusion and digital inequalities points out to social inequalities in relation to gender, socio-economic disadvantages and cultural backgrounds (Livingstone & Helsper, 2007; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2015). As many fields of social life including education have been moved to the digital sphere with the Covid19 pandemic, these socio-digital inequalities crystallized even more. The inequalities in relation to digital technologies are related to access to digital technologies, skills and outcomes of digital media use (Livingstone & Helsper, 2007; van Deursen & Helsper, 2015; Ragnedda, 2016). Earlier research on digital divide focused mostly on issues related to access to the internet and hardware. As access rates started to increase, especially in industrialized countries, more recent research in digital inequalities moved towards the research of inequalities in digital skills and outcomes of digital media use. However, even in countries in the Global North, where the internet access rates reach up to over 90%, access inequalities still persist especially among socio-economically disadvantaged groups (Gonzales, 2016; Goedhart et al., 2019).

Many policies and projects for dissemination of hardware and increasing internet access have been carried out worldwide. This chapter focuses on a particular project for hardware dissemination that was developed in Bremen, Germany in 2021 to alleviate the negative influences of the Covid19 pandemic on education. All students in the elementary and secondary schools of Bremen were allocated iPads to mitigate the effects of unequal access to digital technologies and the internet on learning during the pandemic Focusing on one of the first schools, where the iPads were distributed, this chapter asks the question how far and under which conditions dissemination of hardware can contribute to attenuation of digital inequalities.

The chapter is based on a contextualized analysis of how a secondary school in a culturally very diverse and socio-economically disadvantaged secondary school in Bremen, Germany adapted to distance education based on the participatory action research project INCLUDED (MSCA, University of Bremen, 2019–2023). The fieldwork of the project continued for over a year before and after the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic (January 2020–April 2021). The research design of the project includes participatory observations (online and offline), interviews with the teachers and focus-groups with the students as well as development and carrying out of teaching content together with the teachers at the school.

The chapter will firstly present how the teachers and students at the researched school adopted to the different phases of the pandemic between March 2020 and January 2021 focusing on the inequalities in the distant learning environments of the students. Secondly, the chapter will focus on the impact of the dissemination of iPads to the students in this particular school. The chapter will argue that the quick dissemination of hardware to all the students was an important contribution to the improvement of their distance learning experiences. However, there were other factors such as lack of adequate learning spaces, lack of support and reduced well-being and lack of concentration that hindered students from actively participating in distant education.

2 Inequalities in Material Access to Digital Technologies

Inequalities in material access was the main focus of earlier digital divide research, which was often based on a binary perception of access to digital technologies as a matter of haves and have-nots (Livingstone & Helsper, 2007; van Deursen & Helsper, 2015; Ragnedda, 2016). As internet access rates continued to increase worldwide, the focus of digital divide research shifted towards second and third level inequalities (van Deursen & Helsper, 2015). However, we can see that access inequalities in relation to gender, education level, socio-economic background, rural and urban areas, disabilities continue to exist comparing different countries and comparing different socio-cultural groups within the countries (Hargittai, 2010; van Deursen & Helsper, 2015; Katz & Gonzalez, 2016; Ragnedda, 2020).

Furthermore, also the research on the first-level digital divide itself shifts from inequalities in physical access to inequalities in material access (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2019). The focus moves beyond the binary understandings of haves and have-nots of digital technologies and aims to capture the differences in quantity and quality of material access (Goedhart et al., 2019; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2019; Chen & Li, 2021). Gonzales (2016) argues that technology maintenance rather than initial access is one of the key issues for understanding digital divide today. Also the type of device used for accessing the internet determines the scope of internet use and its benefits (Napoli & Obar, 2014). For example, mobile internet access “offers lower levels of functionality and content availability; operates on less open and flexible platforms; and contributes to diminished levels of user engagement, content creation, and information seeking” (Napoli & Obar, 2014, p. 323).

van Deursen and van Dijk (2019) summarize these different dimensions of inequalities in material access under three points: “(1) differences in device opportunities, or the use replacement of a device by other devices with different technical capacities; (2) differences in the diversity of devices and peripherals; and (3) differences in the maintenance costs of devices and peripherals” (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2019, p. 356). One additional point that needs to be considered in relation to access inequalities is related to the convenience, comfort, and autonomy of access (Chen & Li, 2021). For example, the use of public spaces that are less private and controlled by public authorities, the sharing of a digital device with parents and siblings, more generally spaces of media use do influence the functionality and content of the internet activities.

Also young people around the world are affected by socio-digital inequalities in relation to access, participation and outcomes (Hargittai, 2010; Wilkin et al., 2017; Helsper, 2020). For example, young girls and young people with disadvantaged young people often lack high quality and private access to digital technologies and are forced to more often use digital media in public spaces (Helsper, 2020, p. 443). Furthermore, although a high number of people are reported to be able to use the internet in countries in the Global North, the neighborhoods and the regional contexts also do play a role in the digital inclusion of young people in these countries (Katz & Gonzalez, 2016; Helsper, 2020).

Several national and international policies and hands-on projects up to today have been focusing on the mitigation of the access and device gap. One of the most well-known projects focusing on the issue is the international One Laptop Per Child project that was initiated in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2005 and provided 3 million educational laptops to children around the world (OPLC, 2021). The project caught a lot of attention from researchers and the public especially with its quite ambitious program and techno-utopian aim of “facilitating access to technology as a way to combat the educational gap with the most underprivileged children in the world” as they formulate it (OPLC, 2021). However, the effects of the OPLC project was not as straightforward as the project proposed in many contexts (Ames, 2016; Cristia et al., 2017; Yanguas, 2020). For example, drawing on her fieldwork in Paraguay between 2010 and 2013, Ames (2016) reports that children receiving the XO laptops distributed in the framework of the OLPC project, did not have a linear increase in their media literacy levels or school success rates. But they have been primarily connected children to music, videos, and games distributed by the transnational conglomerates (Ames, 2016, p. 95). Based on their survey study in Peru (N = 1909), Cristia et al. (2017) indicate that they could not find out any significant effects of the distribution of the laptops on success in topics like mathematic and language. But they demonstrate that the overall usage of computers in and out of school contexts have increased with the use of the laptops (Cristia et al., 2017, p. 295). Yanguas (2020) similarly argues that the distribution of the laptops increased computer access among students in Uruguay, however, it did not really have an effect on educational attainment.

Also, national states have been investing public resources in technology access and infrastructure especially with a focus on educational programs. One example for this is the ongoing project DigitalPakt Schule that was initiated by the German Ministry of Education and Research in 2019 with a budget of 5 billion Euros in the following period of legislation (BMBF, n.d.).

The Covid19 pandemic leading to a transition to online education in a wide context made the issue of access inequalities a very visible topic again. Several schools, local authorities, activists, and local and national governments acted on the need to provide all students an equal opportunity to participate in online education during school closures. Receiving partial support from the DigitalPakt Schule program, the state of Bremen also acted with similar intentions and decided to allocate budget for iPads for all teachers and students attending primary and secondary schools in the region of Bremen as it will be discussed in detail in the following sections of this chapter.

3 Education and Digital Inequalities During the Covid19 Pandemic

The Covid19 pandemic had a tremendous effect on schools and education as school closures was one of the first measures taken against the dissemination of the virus around the world. Many schools continued education through different forms of distance education including the use of teaching portals, live meetings, emails, television and some even through letters and telephone calls. The wide use of digital technologies for distance education during the school closures due to the pandemic made it clear once more time that the students have very unequal conditions for participating in the digital society (Hüttmann et al., 2020; van de Werfhorst et al., 2020; Coleman, 2021).

One important issue here relating to the statistics on device ownership and internet access rates is that some of the young people, who are heavily affected by digital inequalities are not sufficiently represented in the online surveys that are often chosen as the method of data collection (see for example Heller & Zügel, 2020 for the case of Germany). The Telekom study that was one of the broader studies on digital access in Germany during the Covid19 pandemic reports that 88% of the German households have access to computers and internet at home (Heller & Zügel, 2020, p. 7). However, online surveys risk underrepresenting people, who do not have access to the internet or who have poor quality devices and access. Furthermore, such studies do not take the quality and quantities of material access and the convenience and autonomy of the usage, which are influential factors for participation in distance education as discussed in the previous section. Therefore, we do not know enough about young people, who are disadvantaged due to their socio-economic status, cultural backgrounds, disabilities and the overlapping of these different factors. For example, Hüttmann et al. (2020) report for the case of Germany that young people with migration background, who also more often belong to socioeconomically disadvantaged households than the German average, demonstrate lower skills of computer and information literacy (p. 6). However, migration background itself is not a disadvantage per se and for example, children with migration background more often receive social support from their extended family members (Hüttmann et al., 2020). Thus, there is a need for more qualitative and contextualized analysis on the complex picture of possibilities and disadvantages that young people face as they are using digital technologies.

4 Methodology

The presented research is based on a participatory action research project that was conducted in a secondary school in Bremen. This school is in a culturally very diverse and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhood of the city. Most of the students in the school or their parents have a migration background and come from families with lower socioeconomic status.

The analysis focuses both on the media repertoires of young people in their everyday lives and the integration of media in the context of the school. The research methods include focus groups with students in 8. and 9. Grades, interviews with teachers and participatory observations in the classroom context. Together with one of the teachers in the school, we also developed teaching content on media literacy education in the diverse classroom context based on the preliminary analysis of the collected data. The aim of the project INCLUDED to analyse if and how schools can contribute to reducing digital inequalities focusing on a culturally diverse and socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhood. For this purpose, the project analyses how students attending this school (7–9. Grade) use digital media for education and outside of the educational context and how digital media are integrated in the school curriculum.

The Covid19 pandemic influenced the field research and the research design of the project acutely. I started visiting the school for participatory observations in January 2020 and had conducted 3 focus groups with students and 2 interviews with teachers as the schools were closed mid-March due to the Covid19 pandemic. After this point, I started also following the developments in this school in relation to the pandemic, use of different methods during the school closures and the state of the distance education. Whereas I planned to conduct only one round of focus groups with the students, I changed my research design to include a second and third round of focus groups with most of the students to capture how they were dealing with the pandemic situation and distance education. The state of Bremen decided to distribute iPads to all students in elementary and secondary schools in Bremen in the summer of 2020 and this was an interesting development for the research project, which focuses on digital inequalities. I had done one round (two rounds with some of the students) of focus groups with the students before the dissemination of the iPads and then did a second round of focus groups with most of them three months after they had received the iPads and were using them for distance education. In total, I interviewed 47 students and conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with teachers and members of school administration.

The interviews and focus groups were transcribed and coded through a process of open and axial coding (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). The research data of the project covers a variety of topics including the integration of digital technologies in education, digital media use by the students for school purposes and outside of the school, the distance education during the Covid19 pandemic among other topics. This chapter only focuses on the context of the pandemic and the iPad project comparing students’ participation in online distant education before and after the distribution of the iPads as well as students’ and teachers’ perception of the iPad project.

5 Findings

The second round of focus groups in the Oberschule Bremen were conducted face-to-face in September 2020 shortly before the distribution of the iPad project to students and teachers. A third round of online focus groups were done in March 2021a few months after the students had received the iPads and actively used them for hybrid teaching and distance learning. The schools in Bremen were physically closed again between December 2020 and April 2021 due to the increase in the number of Covid19 cases and hospitalizations. This chapter presents the analysis of these two rounds of interviews before and after the distribution of the iPads focusing on the situation of material access among the students before the distribution of the iPads, students’ expectations from the iPads, the distribution phase and the perception and concerns of the students while using the iPads for distance education and other purposes.

5.1 The Bremer Oberschule During the Covid19 Pandemic

The school went from complete school closures (March 2020 to May 2020) to reduced rotating classes (June 2020), and then complete opening (September–October 2020) to reduced rotating classes to complete school closures (Nov. 2021–April 2021). With the sudden school closures, the school did not immediately adopt a common policy for school closures and the teachers decided themselves, how they would contact the students and practice distance education in the very beginning of the pandemic, the school adopted a common policy of online live lectures after the dissemination of the iPads. The financier of the project was the federal state of Bremen and the federal project DigitalPakt Schule with a budget of 51 Million Euros (Kumpf, 2021). The aim was to provide 100.000 tablet computers for the teachers and students in the federal state of Bremen within the time period from September 2020 till December 2020. iPads by Apple were chosen as the device to be distributed in the project due to supply and security issues.

5.2 Material Access Among Students and Distribution of the iPads

The Bremer Oberschule as a school, which is located in a socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhood, was one of the first schools to receive the iPads in October 2020. The students, who participated in the focus groups, were asked which digital devices they had available at home. Most of the students had access to the internet through their mobile phones and followed the distance education through this during the pandemic. A few students reported not having a mobile phone or a smart phone with a capacity to use the internet efficiently. Only a few of the students had an own computer at home, where they could carry on education related tasks or some had a shared computer that they shared it with their siblings and/or parents. Because of this, some of the students had quite high expectations from the iPad devices I: What do you think about the iPad project?

Rojda: Good! So I think it is good because I sometimes need something bigger than my mobile phone (…)

Atiye: And I find it also good because my mobile phone is very slow and is going nuts really

Even when the students had access to the internet, the quality of the devices made a difference in terms of what they could do with these devices. Some students, as it can be seen in the quotes above, reported having older phones, which have very small screens or were very slow. Although students like Rojda and Atiye were responding positively to the distribution of iPads, there were also other students’ questioning the aims of the project especially questioning the functionality of the iPads as it will be discussed in the section about the concerns of the students.

Quality access to digital technologies is not only related to the quality of the devices, which are used to connect to the internet, but also to the spaces available for using these technologies. Many students reported living in small houses and studying in rooms that they shared with several siblings.

Hazel: So I find it a bit, so not so good, I find. I mean online. Because many have many siblings and a small house maybe. I mean it is the case for me. And because of this, I have to come to the school even.

For many, it was difficult to concentrate on distance learning in this small and crowded space and they were easily distracted. The Oberschule Bremen reacted quite quickly to this issue by enabling students, who did not have a proper space to study at home, to come to the school even during the first phase of the pandemic. These students followed the online education in the buildings of the school during different phases of school closures. The school also very quickly reacted to the problem of access in the beginning of the pandemic by making all the laptops that the school owned available to some of the students, who had no means to participate in distance education. However, these devices were only available for a limited number of students and had diverging qualities.

The students were officially allowed to take iPads home and use them for educational purposes in the context of their homes, however, they were not allowed to install new apps. It was also not clear if they were allowed to use the browsers that were installed on the devices for searching for non-school related information or watching videos and series on video platforms. This was something that the students complained about, especially those who did not have a good alternative device for using the internet. It was also a concern among the students if they would have to give the devices back after the pandemic or after they finish secondary school as Rafael puts it for example: “I find it stupid, when I have to give it back because it is just absurd”.

5.3 Use of iPads During the School Closures

The schools in Bremen closed again due to the peaking numbers of Covid19 cases in the region shortly after the students of Oberschule Bremen received their iPads. With the argument that all students were secured a device with the necessary software, the school made the attendance to online classes compulsory for all its students. The students followed a similar course plan to the in-person schedule of the school starting at 08:30 with classes and ending around 14:30 in the afternoon. The students’ reactions to online live classes were mostly positive although some students complained about being very tired after sitting all day long in front of the screen or not understanding course topics as well as they used to in class. Hazel explains this as follows:

Hazel: aehm, for me it is the case that I don’t understand if the teacher is not standing next to me and explain it to me. I mean I don’t understand the online, what the teachers are telling me and so on. And explain how an assignment goes and so on, for example. I mean, it is better for me in the school (…) But I find that online classes better than the time as the schools were closed the first time. Online classes are better because we could not ask questions then. We maybe only received assignments. We could maybe send a message.

Nihal: As we had the (telephone) numbers and so on.

Hazel: Or through Itslearning, but online would have then been better

Overall, Hazel indicates that she can learn much better in the classroom setting in comparison to online environments. However, she also adds that having online live classes was still much better than the self-study period that they had in the beginning of the pandemic. She appreciates the opportunity to be able to ask questions online.

For several students, one of the main problems in the first phase of the pandemic and the accompanying school closures was the inability to structure the day. Many reported having severe sleep problems like not being able to sleep until late hours and sleeping through the day. The online live classes with a fixed schedule were a good response to these problems that students faced, and many students developed a rhythm for following the online classes through that. However, also in this period, one challenge was the continuously changing schedules and regulations, the students and teachers moved from face-to-face teaching to hybrid classes, then to online classes and back to in-class teaching only within the timeframe of 4 months in the period from December 2020 to April 2021.

Although many students stated that they were happy to have a structured day again through the online live classes, some also complained that sitting in front of the screen all day long. They also indicated that some of the teachers sometimes tended to extend the classes as they are online, something they could not do with the ringing of the bell as they were in the school. One of the students stated that she finds the obligation to sit in front of the screen all day quite contradictory to the general advice about not using screens too much:

Sophie: On the one hand, I find it practical, on the other hand, we are told that we should spend less time with technical devices and now we receive the iPads from the school. And then I find it that somehow there is a mistake here in-between. Why should I then look at the devices less, when it is allowed again for the school? (laughs) Because then we are also sitting in front of the devices, but just for the school.

Sophie rightfully asks if it is now allowed to sit long hours in front of the screen because it is for education. She among many other students report feeling overwhelmed and tired of the changes that came with the pandemic and also of sitting in front of the screens for long hours.

One issue that is not covered here due to the timepoint of the focus groups is related to how the iPads will be used for educational purposes after the opening of the schools. The state of Bremen also invests in the continuous using of the iPads and other digital technologies after the pandemic. The state has established a new directory under the Ministry of Children and Education for supporting digitalization in schools and offering trainings for teachers, who would like to use digital media more for their teaching practices (Stabstelle Digitalisierung). The mid-term effects of the investment in the iPads in Bremen remain open to be researched by future research.

5.4 Students’ Concerns About the Maintenance of the iPads and Surveillance

Whereas the students mostly appreciated the opportunity to have interactive classes again, they were also mainly concerned about three issues related to the iPads. The first issue was about the responsibility of carrying these “expensive devices” and their maintenance.

Rafael: (…) I ask myself, when it is broken, we have to pay for it then. (FG4)

Nihal: Yes, this responsibility is not there. It would just be broken. For us, we are such a chaotic class, I can say that. Yes, I would be afraid myself that I let it fall. (FG5)

Many of the students in Oberschule Bremen come from households with low income and/or receiving social support. Taking the responsibility of an expensive device was a big concern among many of the students.

The second issue that was raised often before and after the distribution of the iPads was related to their functionality and affordances. Several students indicated that an iPad can mainly do the same things as a mobile phone and is not very functional. “A laptop could have been better” in this sense as it can be seen in the quotes below:

Maceo: We do not really need it. If they just send assignments, it isa also possible on the mobile phone. It is just bigger. I find it unnecessary.

Leah: I think for the money that apparently the ipads cost, we could have received something better. Aehm, I think even a laptop could have been better, although you can carry the tablet better. But the thing is that you have the keyboard directly on the laptop. And especially no, where we should be applying for many things (internship), it (iPad) is unfortunately not something where you can write.

As Maceo and Leah formulate above, you cannot really write on an iPad without a keyboard. This would have been useful for writing applications for example, something that was an important topic for many of the interviewed students at the timepoint as they were applying for internships. Another student said that she would then herself buy a smart pen for the iPad, but then she does not know if she would be able to keep the device afterwards and she would not know what to do with the pen.

One last issue that was again discussed a lot among the students before and after the distribution of the iPads was related to issues of surveillance and data collection. Their main concern was not being watched by platforms or governments, but the teachers in school. As the students were handed their iPads, they were given detailed instructions on how to set a personal password on their devices to personalize and protect them from access by others. Yet, it was a big concern shared by many students as they could not be sure if the teachers were able to see everything that they did on their iPads. Mehmet, who presented himself as a quite technology-affine person in the focus group, was quite sure that this was the case:

Mehmet: This is just absurd and what I find most irritating is that, when we have Lockdown, I cannot work anywhere because I know that it is being surveilled. I don‘t know. It does not work for me. So..

Maceo: They will see what you do.

Alper: Wallah? (really?)

Both Mehmet and Maceo’s skepticism about the teachers’ access to the devices that they use and Alper’s surprised reaction show that students lack the knowledge about the possibilities of surveillance and data collection as they are using digital technologies on the one hand. On the other hand, they are concerned about being watched or about their data being collected and used by third parties as they also stated in other sections of the focus groups.

6 Hardware Distribution a Solution to Inequalities in Material Access?

This chapter focused on the issue of inequalities in material access to digital technologies among young people and if hardware distribution projects can be a solution to these inequalities. Based on the analysis of focus group interviews and participatory observations in a secondary school in a socioeconomically disadvantaged and culturally diverse neighbourhood of Bremen, Germany, the chapter presented a case of hardware distribution among young people as a reaction to school closures and distance education during the pandemic. This section aims to summarize and discuss the issues that this case study reveals in relation to the promises and limitations of hardware distribution projects.

Comparing the students’ statements in the second round of focus groups with the third round of focus groups after the distribution of the iPads, we can argue that overall, the quick response of the federal state of Bremen investing the budget to provide a good digital device to all students was a successful strategy to mitigate the negative outcomes of the pandemic and the school closures. All students having the same device of course did not give them equal opportunities for participating in distance education. For example, some students did not have a quiet room to attend online lectures, others did not receive much support from their parents for educational tasks and some had additional responsibilities at home with the pandemic like taking care of younger siblings. Nevertheless, the devices did make it possible for the teachers to offer online live classes. This opportunity was appreciated by a lot of students as it helped them to structure their day and also to ask questions when they did not understand a particular topic.

The access to a functioning and good quality device was an important starting point for mitigating the effects of digital inequalities that influenced the possibilities of participation in distance education for the students of the Oberschule Bremen. However, it was mainly the pedagogical approach that the school adopted by offering a full-day schedule to the students and the possibility of interacting with their teachers recognizing their needs in the particular social and cultural context that the school is in. In this sense, as Facer and Selwyn (2021) argue there is no easy fix to digital inequalities. How technologies are adopted in a particular context (especially the pedagogical approach in the context of education) and recognizing and responding to the needs of the people in a particular local context remain key to success of hardware distribution projects.

The functionality of the devices was another issue that was raised by the students. Some of the believed that the iPads did not offer many other functions than a mobile phone, which many of them already owned, except for a large screen. For many, who did not have a computer available at home, having a laptop or a similar device, which they could for example use to write job/internship applications, would have been a more efficient option. Another concern was related to the restrictions of not being able to use the devices for “non-educational” purposes. Several students did find a way to use the device for watching YouTube videos for example although the app was not pre-installed on the device. One question that needs to be discussed in relation to hardware dissemination projects in the context of education relates to what can be considered as an appropriate form of learning via digital devices. Students reported learning cooking, knitting, dancing or even writing through YouTube videos in the focus groups. They do also learn digital skills as they are playing around with digital devices. In this regard, moving away from rather narrow understanding of educational use of digital devices could open up new possibilities for formal and informal learning among students with the distributed devices.

Last but not least, there was a shared concern about surveillance by the teachers among many students. Some were certain that the information and the activities on these devices, which were distributed by the teachers and the school, could be accessed and seen by them. For this reason, they were worried about being tracked as they were using their iPads. This concern by the students not only points out to the need to inform target groups of hardware dissemination projects about the scope of the project and data protection while using these devices in detail while distributing the devices. But it also points out to a broader issue showing that young people are very concerned but not well-informed about data surveillance. Hence, they lack the data literacy to understand how and what kind of data can be collected and processed while using digital devices as they are using digital devices and how they can protect their privacy.

Presenting the findings of an in-depth case study of one particular hardware-dissemination project in the context of schools during the Covid19 pandemic, this chapter demonstrates that providing access is a necessary first step for digital inclusion. Providing high-quality devices to all students to reduce inequalities in participation in distance learning via digital technologies during school closures was an effective reaction by the federal state of Bremen. But the students’ responses also raise important questions about the functionality of the devices and their further use after the pandemic as well as concerns about data surveillance and overuse of digital screens. Thus, as private and public initiatives invest in hardware dissemination projects, there is a need for a multi-level response for alleviating the effects of digital inequalities in particular local contexts.