In this golden age of
technology, it is easy to believe that everyone has equal access to the Internet. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Nine out of ten low income families have internet
access at home, but the majority of them are under connected in the fact that
they only have internet access through their smart phones. Additional barriers to connectivity for
students is the fact that using the smart phone could lead to overages on data,
the phone may be turned off due to lack of payment, or more than one person
needs to use the phone. If by chance a
student might have internet access at home, there is often a problem of slow
connection.
Many more schools these
days are expecting students to use technology at home. A prime example of this is my two nephews
that live in a very small town on the outskirts of Joplin, MO. Last year, their school district went to a
one on one device ratio per student.
Each student was assigned a Chrome book and the community was expected
to get internet service if they did not already have it. As a single mother of two boys, my sister
struggled to make this a reality.
Once she got the internet
service, there were constant problems with being able to stay connected. Apparently, this small town did not have the
infrastructure in place to provide internet access to that many people. Therefore, many students suffered agonizing
loss of work and many hours of time working on their homework. I know that there were many occasions that my
nephews had to go to McDonald’s to use their free Wi-Fi in order to complete
their homework assignments. The fact
that the school district forced many families to get internet service that could
not perform properly is still a hot topic of discussion in this little town
over a year later.
I don’t know what would be
a good solution to make internet access more equitable for every student, but I
know that the learning gap will continue to grow if changes aren’t made. You can read more about this in a couple of
articles that address this issue.
The first one is from Mind/Shift and is titled What’s Lost When Kids Are “Under-connected”
to the Internet? and it can be found at:
Many low income students use only their phone to get
online. What are they missing? is the
second article is by The Conversation.
You can find it at: http://tinyurl.com/zkaos72
Perhaps one day everyone will have the same access to the Internet
regardless of their income.
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