Essay on digital divide

For the articles listed for us to read, I found Besser’s article interesting because he describes how in a changing world we are failing to teach our students how to use technology effectively and to contribute to society. This is reinforced in Warschauer’s article when he uses the example of the hole in the wall experiment. This experiment showed that even if we give computer and Internet access to everyone, if we do not teach people how to use it then the people will not contribute to society, and therefore be more of a “consumer’’ rather than a “creator”. I can say that in my experience, I am more of a consumer. I have never created anything to contribute to society on the internet, but I use the internet everyday for information. This is in part I believe to the fact that I have never been taught how to create something over the web or to add to a website, proving the articles that we need to teach students how to create digital products. 

Over time, my ITC skills have increased greatly over the past 2 years, since my senior year of high school. This is because as school projects become more difficult it is necessary to learn how to make the projects easier using computer programs. I have also learned how to research better due to research papers I have completed in college. Compared to the model, I learned literacy from working in school during my early school years, while my ITC literacy was developed later in my life from teaching myself, there were not many effective classes that taught me how to use ITC. This can be attributed to not much time spent in a classroom learning how to use digital media programs, as well as low access in general to ITC information I believe this will change though because society is moving toward a more digital world, where everything that was once written is now digital. As this revolution takes place, Educators are now learning how ITC technology should be taught more in school so that students can actually contribute to society. This kind of literacy will be essential in the future to contributing to society and for carrying out everyday asks that were once written are now moving to strictly digital. This is a crisis to those who do not have access to get online in poorer countries because these people are now losing their chance to contribute to society, the digital divide having separated them from the rest of the world. But it is even more difficult to teach these people how to use ITC information because they do not have the time in the first place to get these people access to computers and Internet. The model presented by Warschauer provides a framework of criteria that can help us identify the crisis of the digital divide and provide us a way of getting help to those cut off from society. I believe this he same for someone like me, who because of my low ITC literacy, I have been unable to contribute to information on the web. With new approaches to making Itc literacy standard, I feel like future generations will better be able to contribute to Information on the web more than I have by my age