The following blog post was co-authored by Michael Chow, Marshall Hartlen and Andrea Livingstone
You can follow Michael here and Andrea here
Marshall’s thoughts: I am in the privileged urban side of the have/have nots. I have taken the availability of wi-fi and fast connection speeds for granted, and I am easily frustrated with lags in connection speed (this happens when working in my bedroom as our modem is not robust enough to deliver consistent full speed access at all hours) and then I am reminded of Louis CK’s frustrated rant “Its going to space! Would you give it a minute to get back from space!” (Tyler, 2015).
I am becoming aware of this divide; however, in my professional day to day I deal with a lot of students who, like Andrea stated above, have poor or no access to the internet once they leave the school. The majority of these students live in rural areas, and the biggest percentage of this group live on any one of the three reserves that are nearby. This has an impact on the way I teach these students, I cannot expect them to engage in the plethora of e-based activities I have created, and I can also appreciate the strong disadvantage this puts these kids at. The sad thing is, that I see it affecting their social lives as well. Because they do not have access to the internet when they leave the school their digital network disappears, and with it the important social aspects of the high school experience, to a degree at least. Continue reading The Digital Divide – Rural vs Urban in Canada