The Digital and Educational Equity Divide

     Before the coronavirus pandemic, there has always been the issue of digital equity involving accessibility to academic learning. Students of low socioeconomic class, students of different races and disabilities have less access to technology. This makes the achievement gap between students bigger. More recently, with the pandemic the accessibility to technology caused the gap in the digital divide to grow even bigger.

    Lets discuss the first reason that explains the accessibility issues with technology. The usually high price tag on good quality laptops are harder to obtain for students with a lower socioeconomic status. The low end of cost laptop being usually as low as $100, are likely to be an extremely slow computer. Some students may not be able to work to get themselves $100 for a laptop until they are 15, especially during the coronavirus times. The coronavirus times shut places down. If a student is younger than 15 or 16 and their family is poor, perhaps they have a phone or a laptop, but they may not have internet at home. There are students that are in this situation. Even if they have internet at home, there is a price tag on the quality of internet connection. These students will then have to travel and sit outside of a public restaurant or library to get reliable internet. There is this divide in internet connectivity, device quality, and access. Having this lack of access to quality digital time, this impacts their learning of information and gaining experience with this technology that could be used when they are trying to move up in the work field when they are older. Access and use of technology is still unequal to this day and that is my current issue with the digital equity divide.

Source:

 Landers, C. S. (2017). The Digital Divide : Issues, Recommendations and Research. Nova Science Publishers, Inc

http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/eds/ebookviewer/ebook/ZTAwMHhuYV9fMTUzMDQ1OV9fQU41?sid=bb4c494d-6be0-4adf-81e2-e4167073f798@sessionmgr4006&vid=1&format=EB&rid=5

 

 https://firstgen.naspa.org/report/the-digital-divide-and-education-equity