As a child growing up in the country, I remember when we had a dial-up connection to get on the internet. I can remember the connection being very slow, and as my sister, mom and I gathered around the computer, we would all become very frustrated with the lack of high speed internet. Fortunately for us, our aunt and uncle lived in a nearby town, so if we had special projects for school, we could go there and get our homework done at their house.
By the time I was in middle school, our local telephone cooperative had made high speed internet available to those of us who lived in the country; I remember how happy my sister and I were to finally have this available. I wonder how different the lives of my sister and I would be if we had only used a dial up connection for all of our school years. Would we have fallen behind in our grades in school and possibly not attended college due to that fact? Coming from a rural background and attending a very small school, this certainly could’ve happened.
I’m not sure that students who have always had the latest and greatest technology available to them not only at their homes but also at school can even begin to understand how difficult it is to come from a small school with limited technology. I wonder if some of my high school classmates weren’t able to get homework projects done due to lack of access to the internet or couldn’t afford to pay for high speed internet. Maybe instead of the perceived notion that they weren’t smart or just too lazy to get the work done, perhaps there was another reason that they were too proud to talk about.
According to the 2016 State of the States Annual Report which is the report on the the state of broadband connectivity in America’s public schools, there are 34.9 million students, 2.4 million teachers, and 70,000 schools who now have access to digital learning. That is 10.4 million students connected in 2016. However, there are still 11.6 million students left behind. These are staggering statistics for those of us who surf the web daily.
Sadly, there are millions of households across the country who do not have access to high speed internet. This lack of computers and internet access is called the digital divide and it affects the way in which students learn. Think for a moment if you were a student and your teacher gave you a homework assignment that required using a computer and having access to the internet. The student who was able to go home and work on their project would have an unfair advantage compared with the student who didn’t have a computer or internet access.
One might think that the student could go to the library to get their project done. However, the libraries are not necessarily open at convenient hours or parents might be working and unable to drive their children to the library to get the project done. The student with the unfair advantage might not be able to get the homework done, resulting in a failing grade. In parts of our country, like Appalachia and other poor areas, there is not internet access, or if there is, the people who live there cannot afford to the pay the bill for it.
According to an article in TIME from March, 2017, less than half the households living with incomes of under $20,000 are connected to the internet. This will almost guarantee that the students who live in these poorer areas will never be able to break free from the cycle of poverty due to the lack of information provided by internet access. If a student were able to somehow attend college, would that student ever be able to keep up with others in his/her class and graduate? I think the student would get frustrated or overwhelmed and probably drop out of college and get a job.
To help combat the digital divide, the 1 Million Project Foundation has been implemented. This is a group whose mission is to give students reliable access to the internet and the goal is to help one million students. Even though there are millions of students who are left behind in the technological age, it is hoped that in time, everyone will be able to have a fair and equal opportunity to gain access to knowledge that is available on the internet.
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