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Thursday, October
25, 2001
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Temple University Center for Research
in Human Development and Education |
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A Profile of the Digital
Divide in the Mid-Atlantic Region
No.104
by
Judith Stull
Temple University
The documented differences in access to and involvement in
advanced technology has become known as the "digital
divide." According to former U. S. Secretary of Education
Richard Riley, "The digital divide is largely centered on
racial, economic, and other demographic lines" (Riley,
2000). When it was first discussed, this divide referred to
unequal access to computers. It was then extended to unequal
access to the Internet. Now is the time to extend it even
further to include unequal access to technology-trained
teachers ready to incorporate these new technologies into
their classrooms on a daily basis. Despite gains made in the
past few years, this gap appears to be growing for those in
the most disadvantaged circumstances.
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Internet Access
Currently, there are two widely acknowledged components to
the digital divide: access to a computer and access to the
Internet. One recent study found that while 42.64% of
American households now have a computer (See Table 1), only
one third of the households with a computer report using it
to access the Internet. A child in a low-income White family
is three times as likely to have Internet access as a child
in a comparable African American family and four times a
likely as a Hispanic child. While some have argued that one
of the benefits of the Internet is that it can reduce the
effects of geographical isolation, a lower percentage of
people living in rural areas use the Internet than do those
living in suburban or urban areas. Furthermore, those with
household incomes of $75,000 or more reported the highest
home-based access to the Internet. Most people use the
Internet for e-mail (78%). Adults with low educational
attainment report the highest percent (70%) taking online
classes.
Internet
in Classrooms
Admittedly, substantial gains have been made in the number
of schools (89%) and the number of classrooms (51%) that are
wired for access to the Internet, but those students in the
most disadvantaged circumstances are least apt to benefit
(National Center for Education Statistics, 2000). The least
likely to connect to the Internet using dedicated lines are
elementary schools (60%) and schools with the highest
concentrations of students in poverty (50%). Although the
recent increases in schools' access to the Internet have
been in those with high percentages of disadvantaged
students (National Center for Education Statistics, 1999),
the highest poverty schools are still at a disadvantage, and
the connections are of limited bandwidth. The type of
connection is an important issue because "people within
industry say the focus on cd-roms is likely to be short
lived with material being be delivered over the Internet" (Zehr,
1999, p. 14). A recent study reported in The New York Times
(Hafner, 2000), however, raised a significant issue.
Specifically, there appears to be severe gaps in Internet
content geared toward the needs of low income and
non-English speaking immigrant groups in the United States.
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Copyright 2001 © MARTEC
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