Digital Acess

What is Digital Access? You may wonder what this means. Digital Access is full Electronic Participation in Society. Meaning that you can actively participate using any electronic device in the community.  On a personal note, if I lacked digital access, then I would be embarrassed. I would constantly feel left out and confused. My family and friends also have digital access, and they’d probably feel the same as me. Digital Divide is the gap between those who have internet access and those who don’t. In education, the digital divide is quite the nuisance. If your child doesn’t have internet access it can be difficult for them to study, do research, and other assignments. Also if they aren’t exposed to it, it can be hard and embarrassing for them to keep up in class. To me, this digital divide has no real effect, because I’ve grown up with the internet. I can use it well enough to get around and even to help others. Personally, in my school, I really don’t notice a big digital divide. At least, nobody is vocal about it. Sometimes when printers break down or run out of ink that can be a problem. The biggest thing I notice is kids complaining about poor service or Wi-Fi. Teachers should realize that kids can’t always use the school library computers, because teachers with entire classes will book the computers in there instead of in a computer lab. As far as the digital divide affecting students, if it were more apparent, then it would definitely be an unacceptable inconvenience. However. It isn’t currently that apparent in my current community. However digital Access is a different story. Some kids really don’t have any internet, or if they do it may be down or broken. This would stress and confuse students. They would feel awful. This could affect them knowledge wise by limiting their resources of education by only using textbooks. The internet is a suitable alternative to textbook learning because it has the answer to any question you could ever have, and its more hands on. It has different methods of teaching you. Not having internet access could potentially affect children’s careers in many ways. A lot of jobs require online applications. If your child doesn’t have access, the company won’t do anything. It would just be a big disadvantage, and the child wouldn’t get the job over something as silly as this. That could increasingly affect their emotions in a negative way. As the article stated, Obama passed a technology access bill. This was to take steps and help ALL Americans fully access technology easier; even with their disabilities. Some of the steps being taken are: Providing Audible descriptions of on screen action, which helps the blind more accurately and fully enjoy television. Adding captions to online TV programming to help out the deaf, and making the equipment used for internet telephones calls compatible with hearing aids. These are all great steps to help close the digital divide that this country is facing. At school I believe we could do the same things in classrooms. As it is, we have special speakers around the classrooms for kids that are hard of hearing. It would be great if we could focus on closing the digital divide, other than focusing on those with handicaps. Some children simply live in households where it is unaffordable. The government should lower the pricing to make it cheaper for these people. Also some kids don’t know anybody that can help them learn. So schools should have a program of some sort to help out kids that truly struggle with figuring out the web. It is a truly beneficial and useful tool that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Everyone should equally be able to use the computer; After all, we do live in the 21^st century. There really is no need for these problems to exist.

Article Sources:

 http://onlineathens.com/stories/100910/nat_717778029.shtml

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