Legal Research

Will mobile close the digital divide?

By admin

I still remember when most people didn’t own a TV, and then most people didn’t own a colour TV and then most people didn’t have a home PC, and then most people didn’t have a cel phone. Eventually price and usability shifted and they became what amounted to a new normal of what households ‘needed’ to succeed. I think they form a foundation for participation in a civil society and thus verge on being a ‘right’. Since mobile access has so very few barriers to adoption and learning, it might be one of the bridges between all societal groups.

I enjoyed this editorial:

Digital divide closing with major mobile help

“A report at SPOTLIGHT begins: ?As the digital divide closes, thanks in no small part to mobile media, the question is no longer who?s using digital media, but how.?

The SPOTLIGHT report review ideas from an interview with Professor S. Craig Watkins, author of The Young & the Digital. It discusses causes why the black and Latino kids have surged ahead as mobile adopters.”

At some point schools will need to get real about smartphones and develop policies about in-school use that have shades of grey and not just B&W bans.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on March 23, 2010 (boomark / email).