I'm continually surprised at the lack of both access and personal facility with these technologies among my students. Kids have wireless devices, phones and so forth. But the more fundamental knowledge of accessing high quality news online is often lacking. My class assignment in American Government makes an effort to rectify some of these gaps, but economic inequalities remain a huge impediment to literary fluency for many students in the current era.
See Susan Crawford, at New York Times, "Internet Access and the New Divide."
Sunday, December 4, 2011
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One has to ask whether it is another perceived "right" to have access to the latest and greatest technology or whether, like flat-screen TVs, the marketplace provides expensive access first and then evolves into a much more affordable commodity.
In the case of high-speed internet access, one should also question whether the access is primarily for entertainment or education. My own feeling is that the massive downloading requirement for videos is primarily for entertainment or casual inquiry, not an educational issue.
Let the marketplace work; it will. Even the most rural of locations has a reasonable alternative for internet access than the local phone line, for example: http://www.hughesnet.com/ among many.
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