Digital Divide: Educational
Points Of Interest: Introduction, Local Issues, Global Issues
Amongst others, the digital divide it effecting education as we know it today. In many class rooms technology is being used in some way or another be it an “interactive” white board or a simple tape player. However this may not be the case for everyone as some education facilities only span to having an “old-fashioned” chalk board.
The divide in education is something that not only has local issues but global issues as well. Local issues may include a difference a variation in technology across schools whilst global issues may be the divide between technology and no technology. The digital divide with education doesn’t only effect schools but “evening” classes and learning over the internet.
Schooling is certainly the biggest part of education were technology either exists or doesn’t. The difference in technology between schools can be massive or very marginal. A local example which exists in Somerset of the digital divide is between public government run schools (i.e. Hugh Sexey middle school) and private independently run schools (i.e. Sidcot School). Hugh sexeys currently offer “interactive” white boards in the majority of class rooms running off up to date pc’s with LCD monitors. However a mere 20 minutes drive up to Sidcot and there is a local divide. Sidcot offers similar interactive white boards but in only a few of its classrooms and the pc’s have only recently been updated on older machines. The first questions which may come into mind is why has one school got all the equipment and the other one hasn’t? Well the true answer is government funding. The government is very keen on promoting the use of technology with education and gives a lot of funding to public schools. Private schools however which are not government ran has little funding from the government as it is independently run. Private schools do try and compete with public schools but the government feed public schools so much money that private schools would have to raise substantial amounts of money to even keep up. This situation affects all schools in similar positions. As mentioned above, the government is constantly giving public schools the money to buy into technology and it doesn’t seem like that funding will be reduced, if anything the funding will increase.
However, there is a global divide as well as a local one. It is all well saying are parts of the UK are getting less technology than other but there are parts of the world which receive no technology. Education in parts of Africa is only just available let only with technology over there. There are in fact more important issues for them such as poverty which takes priority over forms of technology in education. As soon as poverty starts to decline then maybe technology maybe introduced in there education system.
In all, the digital divide is something which does exist with education and the divide will probably never go but thanks to the government, the idea is that the divide will eventually shrink. Only time will tell if the governments plans pay off.