Digital Divide- Inner City VS. Suburbs

In my mass comm. class we have had a couple conversations about technology and how there seems to be a gap in the use and knowledge of technology. The best example that i find of the digital divide is in education. Kids who attend inner city schools vs. kids who attend private schools or schools in the suburbs. I am from the suburbs and my family still lives there. We have too many computer labs to count in almost every school in Stillwater, MN. When my younger sisters were in middle school they were even required to RENT A LAPTOP and use that for all of their school work, they were also taught how to use the laptop for their school work. Now, this surprised me a little bit...that the school required kids to rent laptops, but imagine if you were a kid from an inner city school......this would surprise you a lot seeing that you might have never used a computer for school before.

My boyfriend is a teacher and has taught in many schools around the cities and suburbs in Minnesota. He tells me about the technology that these schools have or have not. Many of the schools in the inner cities do not even have computer labs, and if they do there are not enough computers for all the kids to be able to use them. Also, even with the access to these computers many of the kids don't know how to use them correctly....maybe they know how to play the games and surf the net, but do they know anything about PowerPoint or xcel? My sisters do, because their school devoted the time to teach them how to use these functions....and they were only in 7th grade.

If someone complains about the fact that some schools are held back by not having access to computers, a response might be to give the school more computers....but access does not mean knowledge or equality. In an article we read titled "The Digital Divide" they authors say the common solution to many "gaps" is access and availability, but like i have pointed out before what good is the access and availability when you do not know how to use the technology? My solution to the problem is access along with education.

Students graduating from college and applying for jobs know that many a time the qualifications listed on job descriptions is efficiency in Microsoft xcel and PowerPoint. Most classes in college do not teach you about xcel and PowerPoint because they assume that you already know how to use it, but what about the kids who come from schools that don't have computers and if they do they don't know the skills to use the programs on the computer? What do they do when they are applying to jobs? How do we close the gap in knowledge so we can give kids an equal chance of succeeding?

These are all legitimate questions that need to be answered. Being more critical will make people realize that this is not just a problem that you can throw money at. Yes, money can help provide the technology but there is more to it than that. We need to show people why it is important that they have the knowledge to go along with the technology...we need to give them an incentive to learn about the technology and most important we need to provide the knowledge about the technology.