• Research on the "Digital Divide"

Our group researched the "Digital Divide" by looking at how many 2nd, 3rd and 4th grade classes at our school have computers. We also wanted to find out how many of these classes are connected to the Internet. We split up into research teams and visited the 16 classes to count their computers and to take pictures.

We found out that all of the classrooms had at least 1 computer but none of the classes were on the Internet. Also, some of the classes had computers that were not working.

The only time the students get to use the Internet is when they go to the computer lab and we only get to use the lab for 2 weeks out of the whole school year.

Our conclusion is that this is not fair. We do not get to learn how to use the computer very well because we don’t get enough time to practice on it. We need more computers and more time to learn how to use them better.

• Our Ideas About How to Solve the Problem

1) Students can hold fundraisers to get the money to buy more computers.

2) We need to increase the number of weeks we can spend at the computer lab and they need to teach us how to use the computer and get on the Internet by ourselves.

3) Students should be able to go to the District Office and tell them about the problems we are having with computers, so they can do something about it.

• Our Photos

Our pictures show that we have computers at school, but that we don’t get to use them very often because there aren’t very many. Most of the pictures show empty computers with no one on them. We think this needs to change.