Students who lack home access to up-to-date digital devices and high-speed internet are said to be

Technology has become a crucial part of our lives today, paving the way for a large window of opportunities for all people. And in recent years, our eyes have opened to its impact on students and schools. Students can now learn, work, research, collaborate, and independently develop knowledge largely because of the advent of the internet and information technology. 

However, although technology has offered many benefits, it does come with its problems. In the case of education, that includes the digital divide.

The digital divide refers to the inability of all to have equal access to technology in order to experience learning, where the wealthy have this access, and those from middle- and low-income backgrounds do not. This technology includes hardware such as mobile devices, televisions, and personal computers, as well as connectivity to the internet, such as access to data and Wi-Fi. 

It also includes the inequality in being able to use technological equipment and resources in the first place. 

Every student is entitled to have adequate access to educational resources and support services to improve their academic performance. Recently, however, the education sector has felt the immensity of the digital divide, with half of the 1.5 billion students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic lacking access to computers and the internet. This is despite a global need to adopt remote learning in order to adhere to social distancing protocols. 

As of September 2021, according to UNESCO, about 117 million students were still out of school due to mandated lockdowns. The impact of the digital divide continues to be felt globally, as 1.3 billion school-age children around the world do not have internet at home to access learning resources. This is especially evident in low-income communities, like those in sub-Saharan Africa — where 71% of teachers are unable to access tools, resources, and internet for remote learning and 89% of learners do not have a computer at home.

Students who lack access to digital tools and connectivity are more likely to miss out on up-to-date information from the web, essential education milestones, and access to resources, tools, and edutainment.

This lack of access has the potential to affect children for the rest of their lives, as according to Business Insider, without quality remote education, they will not have the same access to quality jobs. 

The increasing gap in the digital divide has significantly undermined access and delivery of education. As we start a new year, here are six initiatives that can help improve — and even possibly eliminate — the technology gaps in education globally.

1. Governments Need to Improve Affordability of Digital Resources

According to the United Nations, governments can become powerful instruments in bridging the digital divide by ensuring affordable, easy-to-use technologies. The high cost of internet connectivity, the price of technological devices, electricity tariffs, and taxes are major contributors to the digital divide for both teachers and students. 

With the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting global economies, it is projected that aid to education may drop by an estimated US$2 billion by 2022, according to UNESCO.

In the coming years, based on recommendations from American University’s School of Education, educational leaders and policy makers need to continually liaise with governments and big corporations on ways to improve financing to help schools, learners, and teachers afford access to digital technologies for learning. This will help boost the expansion of information technology infrastructures, and reduce the cost of internet access. 

2. Digital Skills Acquisition and Empowerment for Schools, Teachers, and Students

With digital competence becoming increasinly intertwined with our lives, an alarmingly high number of people still lack basic level technical skills and competencies, putting them at a disadvantage, according to the Digital Divide Council.

Teachers and students need to be fully trained on how to effectively use what the internet and modern technologies have to offer. The less students can use these tools, the more the digital divide widens. This is why the United Nations is launching a new global initiative focused on improving the digital learning and skills of children and youth — some 3.5 billion by 2030 — in marginalized communities.  

Going forward, educational leaders can also actively help by surveying the needs of stakeholders, formulate action plans with policy makers, provide skills acquisition training, connect with potential digital resource partners like telecoms companies, and assign appropriate resources to continuously bridge the gap, according to American University.

3. Digital Literacy Awareness 

The general public needs to be enlightened on the economic and social development benefits of integrating technology into the education space. The World Bank reports that there's value in many people seeing a need to become digitally active. 

To fully reap fruitful results, governments should also create opportunities for feedback through which the masses can share their views, needs, and opinions about how they wish to see improvements.

Creating more awareness for digital literacy by building user confidence, explaining the benefits of utilization, and understanding security and privacy constraints have a proven positive impact on education outcomes.

4. Inclusion of Local Languages in Education Content Creation 

Educational online content creators should aim to make information available in as many languages as possible. According to the World Bank, when users are confident that they can see content in their native or local languages, they are more inclined to use similar tools that provide personalized benefits. 

Content creation tools and language translation resources can cushion the language digital divide, and at the same time create opportunities for better and more accountable support to all categories of learners needing it most.

5. Improving Opportunities for Learners With Disabilities

Specially designed assistive and adaptive technologies — such as screen readers, magnifying devices, augmentative, and alternative communication devices that aid persons with difficulties in verbal communication, telecommunication relay devices, interactive white boards, close captioned videos, and more — can boost independence, participation, technology equity, and access to quality education for learners with disabilities.

These technologies make education easily accessible to all categories of learners.

6. Addressing the Gender Digital Divide

According to the World Bank, there is a special need to reduce the gender digital divide in 2022 and beyond. For example, in South Asia, there are 26% more male mobile phone users than women. Barriers and constraints in accessing the internet impede women's and girls' full involvement in the social and economic progress of their communities and countries. In 2021, we witnessed long-standing development gaps between men and women moving online, with about 1.9 billion women not having access to the internet globally.

To achieve definitive success in bridging the gender digital gap, we need a comprehensive action plan to enlighten decision makers about the burdens it poses. And according to the World Bank, systems need to be put in place to analyze available data, implement the results, and measure progress made.

TopicsDigital DivideAccess to EducationGlobal Goal 4Educational ToolsGlobal Citizen Life

A year after the pandemic exposed deep inequities in K-12 students’ access to technology at home, the picture is looking very different.

In a recent EdWeek Research Center survey, more than three-quarters of teachers said more than 75 percent of their students have adequate internet access at home for consistent participation in remote learning.

Access to digital devices like tablets and laptops is even more widespread: More than half of respondents said every student has adequate access to the devices they need for online learning, and another third said that’s true for more than three-quarters of their students.

The flip side of that coin, though, is that 6 percent of respondents said fewer than half their students have adequate home internet access.

Similarly, 5 percent of respondents said half of their students or fewer have adequate access to devices.

Those percentages of students without devices may seem small, but it’s worth putting them in context: If even 5 percent of K-12 students in the United States aren’t adequately connected to learn from home, that’s more than 2 million students.

It makes sense, then, that close to half of district leaders said they plan to invest “a lot” of money going forward in devices, and close to three-fifths said they’ll be investing “some” or “a lot” of money to expand home internet access for students and families.

Some of the factors delaying progress to close the digital divide are out of schools’ hands.

Schools are still feeling the effects of supply chain strain from the early days of the pandemic, when factories were running out of the materials needed to make laptops fast enough for them to be shipped on time. Nearly a third of respondents to the EdWeek Research Center survey said they still haven’t received all the technology items they ordered during the pandemic.

Here’s a look at the work currently underway at the different levels of government—school districts, states, and federal agencies—to bridge tech access gaps.

School districts are aware much more work needs to be done

Districts have gotten creative with expanding technology access during the pandemic, partnering with local businesses and Native American communities, distributing devices and hotspots, and paying for families’ internet service. One Wisconsin district is even using drones tethered to a power source on the ground to expand internet connectivity for families in rural areas.

A recent Common Sense Media report found that the K-12 internet access gap has shrunk by between 20 percent and 40 percent over the last year, and the device access gap by between 40 percent and 60 percent.

Still, the report estimates between 9 million and 12 million U.S. students still lack adequate internet access at home for remote learning. Progress for Latinx families has been particularly slow, the report says, possibly because of “certain adoption barriers more commonly or acutely experienced by Latinx families, including language barriers and reluctance toward providing personal information.”

Celebrations of progress toward closing the digital divide tend to leave out the work that remains to be done. Much of it will require a concerted effort to funnel more resources to low-income communities in both rural and urban areas.

Thomasville, Ala., lies 60 miles from the nearest interstate highway and 100 miles from the nearest metropolitan area. “We’re the rural of the rural,” said Sheldon Day, the city’s mayor since 1996.

During the pandemic, the city government has broadcast its internet signal to as many public facilities as it can, asked local businesses to share their networks as well, and brought Wi-Fi-enabled school buses closer to where students could reach them and complete online schoolwork.

The town sent hotspots to families who didn’t have internet access at home. “If they had a decent cell signal, they could access those. The challenge has been, in the middle of Timber Country, cell signals get absorbed by the timber,” Day said.

Families who did have internet access at home struggled through even slower connections than their urban counterparts, because the service providers’ networks in rural areas weren’t strong enough to withstand the unusual increase in online activity.

“We’ve got children who are going to lose two years of educational attainment and adults who are going to lose two years of opportunities to bridge a gap in their technical training attainment that could help them get a real good paying job,” Day said.

Thomasville is in the southern Black Belt region, characterized by its rich black soil. That region is lagging behind much of the country when it comes to internet connectivity. According to a recent report from the University of Alabama’s edPolicy center, more than 10 Black Belt counties have less than 50 percent internet connectivity, and two counties have virtually none.

These numbers highlight the formidable challenge ahead for turning the rapid nationwide progress on closing the digital divide into change that lasts over the long haul. Providing robust home connectivity, experts say, will require gaining the trust of families who might be skeptical of school districts’ or governments’ involvement in their daily lives, or confused about how to operate unfamiliar technology.

It’s worthwhile to view the value of efforts to close the digital divide for the ripple effects they may provide.

Day said many parents in the area have grown more technologically savvy than ever before as they’ve had to play a more active role in helping their students learn on their newly acquired digital devices.

“Over the past year our parents have probably been more educated on technology than the children, which is going to make us better going forward,” Day said.

States that put a device in the hands of nearly every student offer roadmaps to replicate

A handful of states have recently declared that they’ve officially closed the digital divide, at least when it comes to device access. These states offer roadmaps that could be replicated elsewhere.

Every K-12 student in Texas now has access to a working digital device at home, thanks to a coordinated effort among district superintendents, the state education department, state legislators, and the governor’s office.

Launched in May, Operation Connectivity quickly surveyed hundreds of districts to find out their immediate technology needs. Among the first findings: Many districts were struggling with bulk deliveries of laptops and tablets on back order. The state used its bargaining power for a bulk purchase of 1.3 million devices for $200 million—at a 40 percent discount from market rate—in less than three months.

This is not a problem that we can throw enough money at and it will go away. It’s systemic.

By the end of 2020, in a state with 5.5 million K-12 students—including 3.3 million who are economically disadvantaged—the connectivity initiative had helped districts add 4.6 million devices.

“We feel very confident that at the end of the first phase of connectivity efforts, we went from having a very low ratio of devices in students’ hands to being truly one-to-one across our entire state,” said Gaby Rowe, who’s leading the Operation Connectivity initiative in Texas. “We know now we’ve built one leg of that stool very firmly.”

The state was able to provide resources that individual districts couldn’t have put together on their own. The connectivity initiative crafted a machine-learning platform that helped quickly analyze more than 120,000 invoices, leading to faster reimbursements for districts that used their own money to buy technology. “The best advice I can give people is, ‘Think like a startup,’ ” Rowe said.

Connecticut has also provided every K-12 student with a laptop or digital device. Efforts to bolster internet connectivity are ongoing.

Nick Simmons, director of strategic initiatives for the Connecticut governor’s office, believes these efforts reflect the positive outcomes that come from a coordinated government approach to longstanding challenges.

“We played the role of an aggregator for districts—this is how many students in that area need your support, and then connected the internet company directly with the district,” Simmons said. “We sent families a voucher so they could call the cable company, give that company their voucher, and get a technician over to the house. All of that was paid for by the state.”

Federal government eyes continued support for addressing tech equity challenges

A bipartisan group of U.S. House members has re-introduced a bill called the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. If passed, the bill would authorize $94 billion to build internet infrastructure in places where it doesn’t exist, expand affordable options for families who struggle to pay internet bills, and ensure that all K-12 students can access online schooling from home.

Notably, it would also nullify existing state laws that prevent the creation of local and municipal broadband networks, and prevent such laws from being written in the future. Close to two dozen states currently either prohibit municipal broadband networks or make them difficult to create.

Broadband advocates view municipal networks as valuable tools for lowering the cost of internet access across the board, and for serving as a stable public option that can work well for areas that traditional internet service providers don’t have a financial incentive to reach.

In the meantime, the $2 trillion federal stimulus package recently signed into law by President Joe Biden includes $7 billion for school districts to get students and families connected to the internet at home, not just in the physical classroom.

That support will be very helpful now but doesn’t represent a comprehensive solution to the problem, advocates say.

Last month, Biden proposed a massive federal infrastructure investment package that aims to build universal broadband access in the United States by 2030.

“An emergency broadband benefit is great, but it’s just a start,” said Kim Keenan, co-chairwoman of the Internet Innovation Alliance. “This is not a problem that we can throw enough money at and it will go away. It’s systemic.”

Page 2

A year after the pandemic exposed deep inequities in K-12 students’ access to technology at home, the picture is looking very different.

In a recent EdWeek Research Center survey, more than three-quarters of teachers said more than 75 percent of their students have adequate internet access at home for consistent participation in remote learning.

Access to digital devices like tablets and laptops is even more widespread: More than half of respondents said every student has adequate access to the devices they need for online learning, and another third said that’s true for more than three-quarters of their students.

The flip side of that coin, though, is that 6 percent of respondents said fewer than half their students have adequate home internet access.

Similarly, 5 percent of respondents said half of their students or fewer have adequate access to devices.

Those percentages of students without devices may seem small, but it’s worth putting them in context: If even 5 percent of K-12 students in the United States aren’t adequately connected to learn from home, that’s more than 2 million students.

It makes sense, then, that close to half of district leaders said they plan to invest “a lot” of money going forward in devices, and close to three-fifths said they’ll be investing “some” or “a lot” of money to expand home internet access for students and families.

Some of the factors delaying progress to close the digital divide are out of schools’ hands.

Schools are still feeling the effects of supply chain strain from the early days of the pandemic, when factories were running out of the materials needed to make laptops fast enough for them to be shipped on time. Nearly a third of respondents to the EdWeek Research Center survey said they still haven’t received all the technology items they ordered during the pandemic.

Here’s a look at the work currently underway at the different levels of government—school districts, states, and federal agencies—to bridge tech access gaps.

School districts are aware much more work needs to be done

Districts have gotten creative with expanding technology access during the pandemic, partnering with local businesses and Native American communities, distributing devices and hotspots, and paying for families’ internet service. One Wisconsin district is even using drones tethered to a power source on the ground to expand internet connectivity for families in rural areas.

A recent Common Sense Media report found that the K-12 internet access gap has shrunk by between 20 percent and 40 percent over the last year, and the device access gap by between 40 percent and 60 percent.

Still, the report estimates between 9 million and 12 million U.S. students still lack adequate internet access at home for remote learning. Progress for Latinx families has been particularly slow, the report says, possibly because of “certain adoption barriers more commonly or acutely experienced by Latinx families, including language barriers and reluctance toward providing personal information.”

Celebrations of progress toward closing the digital divide tend to leave out the work that remains to be done. Much of it will require a concerted effort to funnel more resources to low-income communities in both rural and urban areas.

Thomasville, Ala., lies 60 miles from the nearest interstate highway and 100 miles from the nearest metropolitan area. “We’re the rural of the rural,” said Sheldon Day, the city’s mayor since 1996.

During the pandemic, the city government has broadcast its internet signal to as many public facilities as it can, asked local businesses to share their networks as well, and brought Wi-Fi-enabled school buses closer to where students could reach them and complete online schoolwork.

The town sent hotspots to families who didn’t have internet access at home. “If they had a decent cell signal, they could access those. The challenge has been, in the middle of Timber Country, cell signals get absorbed by the timber,” Day said.

Families who did have internet access at home struggled through even slower connections than their urban counterparts, because the service providers’ networks in rural areas weren’t strong enough to withstand the unusual increase in online activity.

“We’ve got children who are going to lose two years of educational attainment and adults who are going to lose two years of opportunities to bridge a gap in their technical training attainment that could help them get a real good paying job,” Day said.

Thomasville is in the southern Black Belt region, characterized by its rich black soil. That region is lagging behind much of the country when it comes to internet connectivity. According to a recent report from the University of Alabama’s edPolicy center, more than 10 Black Belt counties have less than 50 percent internet connectivity, and two counties have virtually none.

These numbers highlight the formidable challenge ahead for turning the rapid nationwide progress on closing the digital divide into change that lasts over the long haul. Providing robust home connectivity, experts say, will require gaining the trust of families who might be skeptical of school districts’ or governments’ involvement in their daily lives, or confused about how to operate unfamiliar technology.

It’s worthwhile to view the value of efforts to close the digital divide for the ripple effects they may provide.

Day said many parents in the area have grown more technologically savvy than ever before as they’ve had to play a more active role in helping their students learn on their newly acquired digital devices.

“Over the past year our parents have probably been more educated on technology than the children, which is going to make us better going forward,” Day said.

States that put a device in the hands of nearly every student offer roadmaps to replicate

A handful of states have recently declared that they’ve officially closed the digital divide, at least when it comes to device access. These states offer roadmaps that could be replicated elsewhere.

Every K-12 student in Texas now has access to a working digital device at home, thanks to a coordinated effort among district superintendents, the state education department, state legislators, and the governor’s office.

Launched in May, Operation Connectivity quickly surveyed hundreds of districts to find out their immediate technology needs. Among the first findings: Many districts were struggling with bulk deliveries of laptops and tablets on back order. The state used its bargaining power for a bulk purchase of 1.3 million devices for $200 million—at a 40 percent discount from market rate—in less than three months.

This is not a problem that we can throw enough money at and it will go away. It’s systemic.

By the end of 2020, in a state with 5.5 million K-12 students—including 3.3 million who are economically disadvantaged—the connectivity initiative had helped districts add 4.6 million devices.

“We feel very confident that at the end of the first phase of connectivity efforts, we went from having a very low ratio of devices in students’ hands to being truly one-to-one across our entire state,” said Gaby Rowe, who’s leading the Operation Connectivity initiative in Texas. “We know now we’ve built one leg of that stool very firmly.”

The state was able to provide resources that individual districts couldn’t have put together on their own. The connectivity initiative crafted a machine-learning platform that helped quickly analyze more than 120,000 invoices, leading to faster reimbursements for districts that used their own money to buy technology. “The best advice I can give people is, ‘Think like a startup,’ ” Rowe said.

Connecticut has also provided every K-12 student with a laptop or digital device. Efforts to bolster internet connectivity are ongoing.

Nick Simmons, director of strategic initiatives for the Connecticut governor’s office, believes these efforts reflect the positive outcomes that come from a coordinated government approach to longstanding challenges.

“We played the role of an aggregator for districts—this is how many students in that area need your support, and then connected the internet company directly with the district,” Simmons said. “We sent families a voucher so they could call the cable company, give that company their voucher, and get a technician over to the house. All of that was paid for by the state.”

Federal government eyes continued support for addressing tech equity challenges

A bipartisan group of U.S. House members has re-introduced a bill called the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. If passed, the bill would authorize $94 billion to build internet infrastructure in places where it doesn’t exist, expand affordable options for families who struggle to pay internet bills, and ensure that all K-12 students can access online schooling from home.

Notably, it would also nullify existing state laws that prevent the creation of local and municipal broadband networks, and prevent such laws from being written in the future. Close to two dozen states currently either prohibit municipal broadband networks or make them difficult to create.

Broadband advocates view municipal networks as valuable tools for lowering the cost of internet access across the board, and for serving as a stable public option that can work well for areas that traditional internet service providers don’t have a financial incentive to reach.

In the meantime, the $2 trillion federal stimulus package recently signed into law by President Joe Biden includes $7 billion for school districts to get students and families connected to the internet at home, not just in the physical classroom.

That support will be very helpful now but doesn’t represent a comprehensive solution to the problem, advocates say.

Last month, Biden proposed a massive federal infrastructure investment package that aims to build universal broadband access in the United States by 2030.

“An emergency broadband benefit is great, but it’s just a start,” said Kim Keenan, co-chairwoman of the Internet Innovation Alliance. “This is not a problem that we can throw enough money at and it will go away. It’s systemic.”