Understanding Internet Adoption as a Route to Digital Inclusion: Measuring the Digital Divide

• In Event: Poster Session 6
  In Poster Session: Insights on Technologies + Pedagogies (K–12, Higher Education, Massive Open Online Courses)

Abstract

Increasingly schools are turning to web-based tools to improve education— homework submission, school news, records management, high stakes testing, parent contact, and even course-taking itself. Further, “one-to-one” programs, or the practice of issuing students laptops for home use, are considered a key development in bridging the digital divide.

Yet many families still do not have at-home internet access to utilize these innovations.
This session will discuss current attempts to quantify the digital divide in districts and outline an approach for using publicly-available data to determine the extent of the gap in broadband adoption and computer ownership. Implications for web-based educational interventions, computer-based high-stakes testing, and device adoption programs will be discussed.

Authors

• Katherine E. Allison, Internet Essentials from Comcast

• David Urbanowicz, Internet Essentials from Comcast