The Australian Bureau of Statistics, private enterprise and not-for-profit organisations have explored the proliferation of internet use in Australia and around the world. The ABS has verified the existence of the digital divide, although the instance of internet use is improving within multiple societal groups. Studies by the ABS have documented the influence of factors such as gender, age, geographical location and income on individual use of the internet. Gaps have been identified in the frequency of use of the internet between disparate groups such as youth and older generations, and in the early days of the internet gaps in usage were apparent even between males and females. The individual’s occupation also has an understandable impact on internet usage, with white-collar workers and professionals having a predictably higher rate of usage than blue-collar workers. However, although most of these gaps have been noticeably narrowing over the course of the last decade, the gap between income brackets is the area of most concern to educators, media commentators and policy makers, and this is the gap that has been the slowest to diminish.
From the perspective of educators, the greatest concern with the “digital divide” is its effect on the quality of education provided to students from low socio-economic backgrounds, who have a lower internet usage than students from middle- to high-income backgrounds. Employing ICTs in the classroom and beyond is problematic when students from low income backgrounds may be educationally disadvantaged by their lack of access to internet in the home. The risk of disadvantaging these students may affect some schools’ decision to implement online teaching practices such as learning management systems and the use of tools such as wikis.
However, as we see the implementation of the Rudd Government’s 2007 election promise of a computer for every student in years nine, ten, eleven and twelve, the question of individual accessibility is becoming less of a factor in education. The implementation of the one-to-one program is already underway, with the first year nine students across New South Wales having received their laptops in 2009. I would contend that the presence, or lack, of information communication technology infrastructure within schools will become more of a concern than the current “digital divide”. The notion of the “digital divide” may be more easily applied to differences in levels of ICT infrastructure between schools, rather than between individual students. For example, schools with lower access to funding will experience greater difficulty integrating the laptops into their ICT infrastructure than better funded schools.
A major difficulty in characterising the “digital divide” is that the name implies a dichotomous relationship between the digital “haves” and “have nots”. In reality, the divide is a spectrum, with individuals experiencing widely varying accessibility and usage. The “divide” does not take into account individual habits of use; that is, whether individuals use the internet for work related purposes only, for educational requirements, or purely for entertainment purposes. Similarly, a person who accesses the internet at their local public library, or in their school’s computer labs, may report that they have internet access; but their level of access is vastly different from a household with three or four wireless-enabled laptops and an unlimited broadband connection. Considerations such as these mean that the “digital divide” would be better characterised as a spectrum rather than a dichotomy.
The “digital divide” is quickly narrowing, thanks primarily to competition making ICTs more affordable and accessible even to people from low income backgrounds. Policies such as the Rudd Government’s “Digital Education Revolution” are also assisting to narrow the gap between the digital “haves” and “have nots”. Although the implementation of the “Digital Education Revolution” will increase the number of students with a computer, it will not increase the number with reliable, high-speed, affordable internet connections outside of the school environment. Educators must therefore keep their students’ varying levels of accessibility in mind when employing ICTs in their teaching methods, particularly where non-school-based learning such as assignments and homework are concerned, so as not to disadvantage students whose internet access is limited. I believe in the near future the nature of the “digital divide” will become not so much a consideration of varying internet accessibility between individual users, but between institutions. As better funded or more progressive schools implement ICTs in their physical school environment and teaching practices, and lower funded or more reluctant schools do not, the gap in performance between schools will widen. The introduction of national assessment and publication of NATPLAN scores on the My School website may also mean that this widening gap will have an effect on enrolments at lower-funded schools, which will in turn effect a self-perpetuating cycle of poor funding, poor ICT implementation, shrinking enrolments and decreasing academic performance by students. To avoid this eventuality, governments will need to mirror the “Digital Education Revolution” with substantial infrastructure funding and personal development for educators, not simply distributing computers to students.
Bibliography
Blanchard, Metcalf and Burns. 2007. Bridging the Digital Divide: Creating opportunities for marginalised young people to get connected. Available at http://www.inspire.org.au/what-we-do-actnow-bridging-the-digital-divide-youth-action-project.html. Accessed 28th February 2010.
Blanchard, Michelle; Metcalf, Atari; Degney, Jo; Herman, Helen and Burns, Jane. ‘Rethinking the digital divide: findings from a study of marginalised young people's information communication technology (ICT) use.’ Youth Studies Australia, 27, 4, Dec 2008, p. 35-42.
“Learning to be part of the knowledge economy: digital divides and media literacy”, Lyndsay Grant, September 2007, www.futurelab.org.uk
“Episode 31: The Culture Shift”, The Virtual Classroom podcast, 19 January 2010, Accessed 3 March 2010.
“Equipping Every Learner for the 21st Century”, CISCO, 2008, http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/ekits/Equipping_Every_Learner_for_21st_Century_White_Paper.pdf?POSITION=LINK&COUNTRY_SITE=us&CAMPAIGN=Century21Learning2008&CREATIVE=Equipping+Every+Global+Learner+for+the+21st+Century&REFERRING_SITE=NewsatCiscoPressKit, Accessed 28 February 2010.
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