|
|
gettyimages.com/Mint Images
DA District Administration
Digital divide drives new broadband expansion efforts
In some rural communities, connectivity isn't available even to families who can afford it
By: Matt Zalaznick
April 24, 2020
Even the students in rural Gilmer County, West Virginia, who have WiFi
or broadband internet access at home sometimes get caught on the wrong
side of the digital divide when the weather’s bad.
And students learning remotely without connectivity can snap a picture
of a completed homework packet and, if they can find a way to share it
with teachers, they get a boost in their grade.
Students aren’t penalized if they can’t take or send a photo since
district leaders decided it was no longer safe for teachers or staff to
collect the homework packets in person, says Kelly Barr, a 7th-grade
math teacher at Gilmer County High School.
“We can’t do remote learning online—we have students who don’t have
internet or their internet is so poor that it goes out when it’s
raining,” says Barr, who has also been a presenter at District
Administration’s Future of Education Technology Conference®.
“Hopefully, this situation will shed light on the digital divide we’re
dealing with.”
In South Carolina, all students in the rural Allendale County School
District received iPads. But some children have not been able to
participate in online learning because they can’t get internet access
or don’t have sufficient bandwidth at their home, Superintendent
Margaret Gilmore says.
The state helped the district convert nine buses into WiFi hotspots.
The vehicles are now parked throughout the large county to provide
internet access.
“It’s almost immoral and unethical for a community not to have these
resources that they need in order to survive,” says Gilmore, a member
of the District Administration Leadership Institute.
Will WiFi win more stimulus?
The plight of these students during coronavirus school closures—and the
possibility of disruptions next school year—has given renewed momentum
to national efforts to close the digital divide.
In fact, the Centers for Diseases Control has made reliable
connectivity for students one of its prerequisites for reopening states
and communities, as the agency also expects schools will have to close
intermittently in 2020-2021.
In recent days, bipartisan political support has built behind creating
an emergency relief fund to connect students, says Evan Marwell,
founder and CEO of EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit that has been
bringing broadband connectivity to schools.
Democrats have proposed a $2 billion “technology-neutral” program that
would allow school leaders to choose how to connect students.
Marwell says the most effective solution would be to help families get
home access from internet providers who are now offering free and
low-cost service.
Schools could also distribute more mobile hotspots, but there aren’t
enough of those devices to serve the 9 million students who lack access.
A sticking point right now is whether to the funnel an emergency fund
through the E-Rate program, an approach that Democrats have pushed for
but which Republicans have so far opposed, Marwell says.
Regardless, online learning will likely essential for the foreseeable
future. “Even if schools are open in the fall, they might be partially
open or they might have to close for periods of time or might have to
stagger schedules,” Marwell says.
A major infrastructure initiative to build out the nation’s broadband
network to rural America and other disconnected communities has also
gained bipartisan support, albeit more modestly.
But such a wide-scale project, which could cost around $80 billion in
new fiber optic cable and other infrastructure, probably isn’t going to
be approved in the near future, he says.
|
|
|
|
