Digital Divide explored via PBS

This site is a one of many PBS microsites. Different aspects of the digital divide are explored.

The content does not appear to be updated regularly but I found it valuable because the issues presented and the language used are accessible to non-technical people (there is even an explanation of what a PDF is!) and non-educators. Getting people of all professional background to understand the divide issues is key to solving them.

I particularly enjoyed the "voices" section in the classroom area.

An excerpt from an interview with Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., Educational Psychologist:

"A lot of parents actually think that computers are going to make their kids smarter than, for example, art or music class or maybe even gym class. And actually the opposite is the case because we know from good research that music, the arts, humanities, that broad ranges of studies and physical movement actually improve the brain. They actually make kids smarter. They help to bring together that integration of neural development of information and thinking and creativity and imagination that we are so badly going to need in the next century.

And so if you have a choice, you are certainly not going to cut those things to put in machines which have no demonstrated effectiveness at all in learning and may, in fact, be harming your kids minds. If bringing technology into any school means giving up the arts, the humanities, phys ed, library resources, time for kids to socialize together, I'd say that it is a bad allocation of resources. But in good schools where this is being done well, this is not happening because the computers are being used as an adjunct to a very rich, full program. And that is what we might hope that all our children would have an opportunity to experience. "