Address the Digital Divide
“William Gibson, the name who invented the term ‘cyberspace’, has said, ‘The future arrived. It just wasn’t equally distributed” (Soloway, n.d.). As a leader in educational technology, my response to this quote is to help make emerging technologies valuable to others by keeping a global perspective in mind and trying to understand different cultures well enough to help people incorporate new ideas about technological access into their culture (Thornburg, 2009). Having only ever lived in the United State of America, I have an enormous learning curve to begin understanding different cultures in other areas of the world. However, I am aware of the inequities and digital divide right here in the United States among different geographic areas of the country, as well as dramatic differences within a single town. I want to understand what technologies are appropriate and realistic in a particular culture while maintaining gender, cultural, and socioeconomic sensitivity.
The first and most important step in addressing these differences in technological access is financial support and education. According to Dr. Soloway, (n.d) the way to address the issue of leveling the playing field and eliminating the digital divide is to put a cell phone with Internet access in the entire community’s hands for everyone to communicate with each other and to create a climate of acceptance in which people not only have dreams but can actually experience these dreams as reality in their lifetime. I completely agree that the cell phone is the future emerging technology globally and it is the single technology device that can close the digital divide in a way no other technology can.
Reference:
Soloway, E. (n.d.) The digital divide: leveling the playing field [Podcast]. Retrieve from http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/courses/14936/CRS-WUEDUC8812-3730077/EDUC_8848_PK_Transcript.pdf
Thornburg, D. (2009). Diversity and Globalism. Laureate Education, Inc. Retrieved from
http:/sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4199715&Survey=1&47=5828341&ClientNodeID=984645&coursenav=1&bhcp=1
Nice post - your efforts towards cultural sensitivity are evident.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your post, I have the same question I posed in my blog. What makes the digital divide different than the other inequities in society? We don't give everyone a car, landline telephone, a TV, financial wealth or even healthcare -- lack of access to these things also result in segmenting of society into the haves and have nots! Therefore my question is what about access to digital tool make them different than access to other tools used across cultures and throughout society.
Thanks!
Debbie,
ReplyDeleteFrom where I stand we live in a digital society and thats what makes the tools different. I can't say that the digital divide is any more or less important than the other inequities in society. It's just the focus for this blog and those were my thoughts.
If digital divide crusaders really want to solve the world's inequities, they can direct their efforts toward issues that mattered before the start of technology. Promoting economic growth would be a good place to start.
Education is probably the most important issue that affects the ability to benefit from technology. Unless people can read and understand what they find on the Internet, all the computers and networks in the world won't be of much use. Taxes are another important consideration.