News


A Need To Bridge The 'Digital Divide'
Thursday, August 23, 2007

Thirteen-year-old Mo’Nae Canada works on her digital movie-editing skills at the ATTAIN computer lab in the Martha Mitchell Center on the East Side.

It’s a wireless, broadband world, and rapidly evolving technology connects us all.

High-speed Internet networks instantly carry e-mails, phone calls and video files across the globe. Cell phones are essentially miniature computers. Handheld GPS devices provide detailed directions between any two points on the map.

But too many people have been left behind.

Internet use, in particular and technology use in general are lower among the elderly, the poor, those who didn’t attend college and those who live in rural communities, data shows.

“There are socioeconomic and demographic factors that are intertwined in people’s use of the Internet,” said Aaron W. Smith, a research specialist with the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Experts say this gap in technology use, often referred to as the “digital divide,” makes it more difficult for those groups to participate in modern society and the global economy.

People who can’t perform basic tasks on a computer, such as entering data in a spreadsheet or attaching a document to an e-mail, find it harder to do well in school and find a job.

“It’s a significant problem because, as you know, we’re in the information age. The ability to 1) know how to use technology and 2) have the access to technology impacts the quality of life in the community,” said Brenda W. McDuffie, president and chief executive officer of the Buffalo Urban League, which has pushed to close this divide in the black community.

GETTING UP TO SPEED
Initial attempts to bridge this divide centered on expanding wireless Internet networks and ensuring every classroom had a computer, and they’ve had some success, observers say. New initiatives focus on making sure that people are fluent in new uses of technology.

“We won’t be able to move forward globally until all of our citizenry is at a specific level technologically,” said Katrina L. Arnold, coordinator for the computer resource lab at the Martha Mitchell Center, which primarily serves East Side residents of public housing.

This division between those who have access to the latest technology and those who don’t became a point of concern in the mid-1990s. Early attempts to bridge this digital divide focused on reaching technology-deprived young people in school. Tech companies and the federal government funded programs to bring computers to classrooms in underserved communities.

At the same time, similar public-private coalitions pumped money into networks of “hot spots” that offered wireless Internet access in public spaces across the country.

“Over the last 10 years, every school received the Internet. Every school received reasonably fast network connections,” said Steve Macho, an assistant professor of technology at Buffalo State College who has studied the digital divide. “I think [this expansion] has had a big effect, because everybody can at least touch the technology.”

Recently, overall technology use has increased, data shows. In March 2000, 46 percent of Americans went online, a Pew Internet survey revealed.

Of that total, 48 percent of whites used the Web, compared with just 35 percent of blacks.

And people ages 18 to 29 were far more likely, 64 percent, than people 65 and older, 12 percent, to go online.

Overall Internet use rose to 71 percent of adults in a survey from this spring, Pew found. Still, a gap persists.

Seniors and those who haven’t graduated from high school are least likely to use the Internet, with rural residents, blacks and those in the lowest income level also trailing, the survey shows.

Pew’s Smith said this shouldn’t be thought of as a clean gap between those who use technology and those who don’t at all; it’s better to think of it as a continuum. Most people use some technology, whether a cell phone or MP3 music player, but the degree varies.

The national trends in technology use mirror the local picture, according to a 2006 survey from Scarborough Research.

Overall, 59 percent of adults in Erie and Niagara counties use the Internet, the survey found.

Within the Buffalo Niagara total, only 41 percent of those earning less than $50,000 per year reported going online, compared with 80 percent of those earning more.

A similar income divide was found when residents were asked if they owned a computer, digital camera, high-definition TV or MP3 player.

AFFORDING ACCESS
Income is a key indicator of technology access, experts say.
Also, if people aren’t introduced to the technology in school or at work, they won’t see the need for it, Smith said.

“Those who grew up in the wireless, high-tech world are known as digital natives. The rest are digital immigrants, and they find it harder to adapt,” said X. Christine Wang, assistant professor in the University at Buffalo’s department of learning and instruction. What is the divide’s impact?

The people who don’t have the access, and on top of that don’t have the knowledge to use the technology, are in danger of being left behind, experts said.

Research hasn’t shown a direct, cause-and-effect connection between technology knowledge and success in school, because other factors come into play, Macho and Wang said.

But it’s not easy living on the wrong side of the divide.

“You do need [a computer]. Because everybody wants you to put job applications online,” said San Bozeman, 37, who was at the Martha Mitchell Center ATTAIN lab last week to work on her resume and to research medical-technician jobs online.

In rural areas, the lack of high-speed Internet coverage can hamper economic development initiatives, said Richard T. Zink, assistant director of the Southern Tier West Regional Planning and Development Board, which formed a task force aimed at bringing broadband Internet to the region.

Businesses and people who want to work from home won’t move to a community where they have to rely on slow, dialup connections or costly satellite-based coverage, Zink said.

Technology access initiatives here have had some success in bringing computers to classrooms, libraries, community centers and public spaces.

However, it’s important to teach the unconnected how to use this technology, and many such classes are offered locally.

“People need to take advantage of that. You can’t sit back and say, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to turn on a computer’,” said Frank Mesiah, president of the Buffalo chapter of the NAACP.

LEARNING AT EVERY LEVEL
In a computer lab in a Lackawanna public-housing office, for example, Muslim women wearing head scarves and long, flowing dresses are taking a basic computing class.

The women are studying computers as part of their English as a Second Language class, and they face a double barrier of not knowing the language or the technology, said Courtney Hanny, their literacy instructor from Erie 1 Board of Cooperative Educational Services.

But the dozen or so women listen carefully as Hanny painstakingly covers the pronunciation, location and purpose of the space bar and other computer fundamentals.

“It’s good to help people [learn] how they can use math, how they can pay the bills, how they can help their kids with homework,” said Nadia Alhaj, 26, a Lackawanna resident who is taking the class. The next step is building that basic technology literacy into fluency, UB’s Wang said.

“The concern now has shifted from access to the quality of the usage,” Wang said.

For example, she added, instructors need the proper training so that they can teach students how to use cutting-edge technology in innovative ways.

That’s happening at the ATTAIN lab, a joint effort by the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority and the State University of New York.

Last Monday, a handful of preteens were finishing a summer project that required them to make a digital movie. They shot the video footage, edited it and added sound effects.

Mo’Nae Canada, a petite, soft-spoken girl of 13, who starts Middle Early College High School this fall, made the 49-second film “A Special Place.”

“It was a little weird” at first using the moviemaking software, Mo’Nae said. “Now it seems kind of easy because I know it.”

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