Research Journal 3: The Digital Divide

I was listening to a podcast by "The Virtual Staffroom" this morning on the way to university. The topic was a fairly general discussion about integrating ICT into the classroom and some of the implications concerning curriculum and so on.

A couple of the speakers discussed the Rudd Government's election promise to provide laptops for every student in years 9, 10, 11 and 12 in public schools in Australia, and in particular detailed the implementation of this promise as it is taking place in New South Wales. According to Ben Jones, who is involved with the laptop rollout in the NSW Department of Education, all year 9 students in New South Wales would be provided with a laptop in 2010, with subsequent year 9 students being provided with the computers in 2011, 2012 and 2013, by which time the election promise would be fulfilled in New South Wales.

According to Ben Jones on "The Virtual Staffroom", the implementation is not as simple as unloading a truck full of laptops at each school. Serious consideration has been made for factors such as wireless networks and the amount of traffic they will need to support. For example, according to Mr Jones' discussion of the rollout, every wireless router in a school will be required to support up to thirty students connected at any one time. Considerations like this will ensure that the new technologies are not hampered by substandard "background" details.

Once again I find my conception of the "digital divide" shifting: if the government provides a laptop and software worth $5,500 to every student (source: http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/gotoschool/highschool/dernsw/transforming.php), surely there should be very little concern about a "divide" at all?

If implementation of the laptop scheme runs as smoothly as the New South Wales Department of Education purports, the "digital divide", at least in schools, should be practically nonexistent. So, is the "digital divide" a mountain made out of a molehill? Is it just another buzzword used by conservative educators and commentators to create an obstacle for educational engagement with technology?

At this point, I am inclined to think so... But we'll see what the next source says!