This is a presentation on the digital divide and digital inequality created by Cindy Goodwill a graduate student in Educational Technology at Boise State University, September 2015.

Digital divide is a term that is used to describe the difference in opportunities available to people who have access to technology compared to those who do not.

The term digital divide was originally used to describe people who did not have access to telephones but now it refers to those who do not have internet access, and especially broadband internet access.

The term, digital inequality, expands on the term digital divide. Digital inequality is used to describe not only difference in access to the internet, but also the difference in access to what is on the internet based on what devices people use, the extent of use, gender, education, age, employment, rural vs. urban, and English vs. non-English speakers.

Idealists may say that the internet is free to everyone, but this does not mean that internet content is equally accessible by everyone. Even with a broadband connection, if you are a non-English speaker, the number of sites you can visit will be greatly limited. If you do not know how to use a computer, your access will be limited. If you live in a rural community your access may not be broadband, it may be a dial-up connection, or you may not have access to mobile phone service. Younger uses have more experience using the internet.

Those with the best access to information on the internet are usually young white English-speaking males, with a good education, living in an urban area who have a PC and are economically well off.

The advancement in technology that brought us the smart phone has greatly reduced the digital divide and digital inequality. Mobile phone service is usually less expensive to obtain than home based broadband service. People living in rural areas can obtain smart phones at a reasonable price and thereby give their families access to the internet.

This advancement has helped decrease the digital divide but it hasn’t solved the problem completely. It has been found that those who have access to the internet through mobile phones use the internet differently than those who use a PC (Pearce & Rice, 2013). Those who use a PC are more likely to use the internet in a way that will help them advance educationally or financially. Mobile phones are more likely to be used for social interaction and entertainment.

The growing trend seems to be that the internet will become like other forms of technology where those with more education and financial means will use the technology to further enhance their education and finances, while those with less education and financial means will use the internet for more social and entertainment purposes.

We often think of the digital divide in global terms. There are countries that have a good technological infrastructure and other countries that have a poor infrastructure. But the digital divide does influence us locally. Digital inequality influences the schools that our children attend. Some schools have access to computers in the classroom. Some schools have teachers who are well trained in using technology. Some children have computers at home that they can use to access the internet while working on homework or applying to colleges. Some do not.

The schools near where I live are considered to be very good schools. The issues they have with the digital divide include the following problems:

1. Lack of funding for computers in schools. There is a computer lab in the elementary school, but the ratio of students to computers is probably close to 7:1, so the students’ access to computers is limited. There are schools that are a lot worse off and there are schools that have a 1:1 ratio. The number of computers in a school show how important technology is to that school district. Technology is not very important in the schools where my family lives.

2. Teachers’ lack of education. Teachers in New York are required to have a master’s degree in order to teach but very little of that education focuses on new technologies.

3. Teachers’ lack of time. It takes a lot of time to integrate technology into the classroom. Teachers often work overtime just to keep up with their classes. They usually don’t have time to learn a new form of technology and integrate it into their classroom. It’s just too time consuming.

4. Some students have access to the internet at home while others do not. Consequently, teachers cannot give a homework assignment that requires the use of the internet.

5. Lack of support for technology education. Parents in this area are very concerned with high stakes testing in English and math. Very few parents would say they are concerned with the education their child is getting concerning computing. This issue is not a high priority right now.

What can be done to address these concerns:
1. Lack of funding would have to be addressed with the school district. Unfortunately, this is not a politically important topic at this time, so it will not get the attention or the funding that it needs until that changes, until the parents demand it, or if by some chance a superintendent of schools is hired who deeply cares about the education of children about technology.

2. Teachers’ lack of education can be addressed two ways. First, higher education needs to see the importance of training teachers to be prepared for 21st century teaching by increasing quality and quantity of their technology training. Second, the school district has to see the need for extensive and ongoing in-service training in technology so that the money they invest into their hardware and software is not wasted.

3. Teachers’ lack of time could be helped by increasing their in-service technology training. This will decrease the teachers’ amount of time spent learning new technology and then implementation will actually save them some time. Also, if they are learning through school sponsored in-service training they will not have to use their personal time to learn new technology.

4. Teachers often have to deal with different devices the students have access to at home. Teachers are very creative and they have already come up with creative ways to deal with this problem. Some teachers allow students to access the school computers during the school day, after or before school. The teachers give assignments that can be done a variety of different ways, enabling the students without internet access to do the assignment in a different way.

5. The media often influences what will be important to parents and schools in regards to education. Again, unless we get a superintendent or principal who is very concerned with technology education the amount of support for technology education will not increase.

With the rapid advances in technology, we will see the digital divide slowly decrease. This has happened before with telephones. The lack of access to phones and phone service is no longer a topic that is discussed frequently because phones have become ubiquitous. Over time, we will see the same thing happen with access to the Internet. However, the problem of digital inequality does not have an easy or quick solution. As technology changes and spreads around the world different, digital inequality will become a greater concern.

As educators we have a responsibility to help find solutions to these problems. The AECT code of ethics requires that we “promote current and sound professional practices in the use of technology in education” (AECT Code of Professional Ethics, 2001). Therefore, we need to work to find ways to overcome problems that limit the use of methods of teaching that have been proven to work and give students all the advantages we can in learning.

References

AECT Code of Professional Ethics. (2001, November 6). Retrieved September 10, 2015, from
http://aect.site-ym.com/members/group_content_view.asp?group=91131&id=30996...

Pearce, K. E., & Rice, R. E. (2013). Digital Divides From Access to Activities: Comparing Mobile
and Personal Computer Internet Users. Journal of Communication, (63)4, 721-744. doi: 10.1111/jcom.12045

Totolo, A., Renken, J., Sey, A. (2015). The Impact of Public Access Venue Information and
Communication Technologies in Botswana Public Libraries. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 10(3), 64-84. Retrieved from https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/EBLIP/article/view/23908/18...

U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology. (2010, November).
Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology National Education Technology Plan 2010 Executive Summary. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/netp2010-execsumm.pdf

Van Deursen, A. J. A. M., & van Dijk, J. A. G. M. (2014). The digital divide shifts to differences in
usage. New Media & Society, 16(3), 507–526. doi: 10.1177/1461444813487959