The Digital Divide

To: School Board of Some City USA


Date: 7/16/2008


Re: The Digital Divide in our Classrooms

To Whom It May Concern:

Perhaps the most monumental breakthrough in the past twenty years or so has been the expansion of use of the internet and other available technology. This has especially become true in the past five to ten years.

The term "digital divide" describes the availability and usage (or non-availability and non-usage) of technology to members of a certain group. These groups can include geographical (those in rural settings vs. those in urban settings), economical (rich vs. poor) and generational (young vs. old), et al. With our continuing and growing reliance on technology, the effects of not being at least exposed to the technology (if not incorporating technology into everyday life) could be devastating to the future. For a nation whose lives are becoming increasingly dependent on technology and the internet, the fact that only 54% of Americans are online is a scary statistic. The most striking figures are those who are uneducated and poor have a much lower percentage of people using technology, and the internet specifically than those who are from an educated background and are not hurting monetarily. If this trend is allowed to continue, the poor, uneducated families will never be able to escape the vicious web that the digital divide was spun around them.

While we would like to believe that every child and adult has access to a computer, the internet and technology in general, we must realize that not all families can afford them or even want them. However, the farther behind the rest of the technologically-advanced world you get, the more your students will be hurt by it. After reading this, I hope you will agree with me that the "goods" of having and employing technology definitely outweigh the "bads."

For further information, please browse the NTIA's report on the expanding use of the internet in the United States. It can be accessed at: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/dn/html/toc.htm


What Can Be Done to Bridge the Digital Divide?

1. Create a committee among volunteer staff members whose main goals are to identify the gaps in the digital divide and come up with solutions on how the school board and the staff of each school in the district can approach tackling them. This committee can also work on re-mapping the curriculum so that technology is incorporated in some aspect, mildly or deeply. Quest Elementary School in Florida came up with a Technology Plan in 2006-2007. I think you could gather many ideas from their site: http://quest.es.brevard.k12.fl.us/techplan.htm

2. Get funding to open more computer labs that are open to the students during the school day and the general public during the after-school hours. Try to find volunteers who can teach basics of windows, MAC OS, Microsoft products and other commonly used programs. If the students want to use sites such as MySpace, make them incorporate some of the things you are teaching into using the sites. The doors to these labs should always be open and a monitor always on duty during non-class hours to assist students.

These computers do not necessarily have to be new. You can approach corporations to donate used equipment and ask the public for help as well. Many times businesses will upgrade all of their equipment and just throw out their old stuff. They would be glad to donate the equipment to a needy cause, especially if they can swing a tax write-off out of it.

Another donation or purchase that should be made is that every staff member and student should own a Memory Stick, also known as a FlashDrive or JumpDrive. Whether they are 256 megabytes up to 1 or 2 gigabytes, having mobile storage is a fantastic way to easily transfer files from one computer to another. If you can swing it, having email access via Yahoo!, Google Gmail, hotmail or on your own server for each staff and student would also help facilitate communication and collaboration.

Even if your school cannot afford to purchase software, there are plenty of free software sites out there whose products mimic or nearly copy those of mainstream software. These include OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org), which is a knock-off of Microsoft Office and GimpShop (www.gimpshop.com), which is a generic version of Adobe Photoshop.

Basically what I am saying is that there is both equipment and money out there to be donated, start writing grants, letters to corporations and asking by word-of-mouth.

The Department of Education lists several resources to obtain funding or donated computers. The site can be found here: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/digdiv.html

3. Teach parents how to use the technology as well as the students. The technology is useless if the students cannot use it, or struggle to be taught to use it. If somehow we can instruct the parents in the usage of the technology, along with the students, we can guarantee some positive reinforcement at home, regardless if the technology is available there or not. Along with this however, we must have the technology available to the students and parents at the school, because it is likely the students/parents will not have the same technology available at home. Whatever you are teaching the parents should be fun and applicable as well, have them make business cards or other things that can help them in their everyday lives. You may help them more than you ever know. The Henrico, Virginia school district has compiled a list of resources for parents that can be found here: http://staffdev.henrico.k12.va.us/parents/index.html

4. In addition to the parents and students, the staff will be completely ineffective if they are inadequately prepared in using the technology. Your staff should be required to attend a set number of workshops for whatever technology you plan to incorporate. By "staff," I not only mean teachers, I mean everybody that has contact with the students during the day; faculty, administrators, secretaries, etc. While teaching the teachers to use technology can be expensive, not doing it would make having the technology a complete waste of time. http://www.electronic-school.com/0398f1.html.

5. Attempt to help families who cannot afford a computer get one through donations, grants, etc. The Digital Union (www.digital-union.org) is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to address the digital divide by affording a personal computer to poor families who would not be able to own one otherwise. Another group who does this is the Triangle United Way (http://www.unitedwaytriangle.org/t4t/). This should be a main goal. By getting computers into homes, you can reinforce what you teach the students and parents in the classroom or labs.

6. Deeply look into and address the digital divide as it relates to minorities within the district. While the minorities may not only be not able to afford computers, they also may not be able to use those they have because of language difficulties. If possible, find programs (hopefully free or donated) that can be accessed in their native language. Ideally, helping them learn the English language and how programs work in English would be a long-term goal, but for the time being, just the usage of the technology should be looked into. In 2000, Microsoft launched a campaign to help bridge the gap among minorities. I was not able to find out whether or not they were still continuing the campaign, but asking couldn't hurt. The site is located here: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2000/01-13UNCF-HACUGrants.mspx

The below article talks about several different ways to attack the digital divide in an attempt to expand technology to all people. I would suggest reading it for further ideas.
http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/WCE/archives/zuniga.php

Other Resources:

http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/16/stories/2006031617270200.htm
The University of Iowa created a project called eGranary in 2006 to provide access to millions of documents without an internet connection. Described as the "Internet in a Box," it is made up of a 250 gigabyte external hard drive and sells for approximately $350. Updates are available constantly. Think of being able to access any site for research you could on the internet without actually having to have access to the internet. If you could obtain a site license and put this availability into all of your computers, the students could do research with even limited knowledge of the internet itself. But the brilliance is that they would be using the "internet" without even realizing it.

http://www.digitaldivide.net/
"The Digital Divide Network is the Internet's largest community for educators, activists, policy makers and concerned citizens working to bridge the digital divide. At DDN you can; build your own online community, publish a blog, share documents and discussions with colleagues, and post news, events and articles." I couldn't imagine a better way to work towards eliminating the digital divide than online collaboration amongst hundreds of thousands to millions of people all aiming at one goal. You can build your own online community, host a blog and much more.

http://www.upenn.edu/ccp/programs/digitaldivide/index.html
The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia has created a program (now on hiatus) to help their area in West Philadelphia overcome the Digital Divide. "The program conducts technological assessments to build computer labs for community use from donated and discarded machines. Additionally, Penn students work in local computer labs to support after school programs, teach youth and adult computer literacy classes, and also train members of the community how to instruct their own computer courses. We have also provided technical support and curriculum development to classroom teachers, after-school coordinators, and communities of faith." This is a great resource to begin the planning stages towards forming a group within the district to accomplish the same goal. Maybe by getting in touch with members, former members and faculty advisors in the program, you can gather ideas for a similar program in the district.

All of my suggestions are goals that are not only practical, but reachable. I will be highly disappointed if you do not take them into consideration. For these goals to be attained however, the staff, administration, parents and students have to be on the same page and willing to work together to put the plan into action. Technology expert Mario Armstrong appeared on NPR in 2007 to discuss the Digital Divide and what educational institutions are doing to overcome it. The full recording of the show can be found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6715965

In conclusion, while we need to gather the technology as a primary goal, we need a systematic approach to bringing it in the classroom. Parents, teachers, adminstrators and students need training and access to the equipment, the equipment needs to be made available at all times of the day and software needs to be purchased or gathered from donations. The curriculum should be changed to directly incorporate the technology and the entire community of learners need to buy into the program for it to work. If you assume that your entire district is on the lower side of the digital divide, you can attack all of the minorities (not just racial, but economical, age, etc) at once. I implore you to help our students become successful by taking advantage of all the resources out there. The process will be long, and will not occur overnight, but if you stick with it, I can promise you it will pay dividends for your students and community.

Respectfully yours,
Robert Kilner