Imagine that you were never exposed to any type of new technology and had no access to the digital tools that people use everyday. How would your everyday life be different? Would it be possible to compete with your classmates in academia? Would you be at the university you are today? Could you succeed in a world where technology impacts every aspect of life? These were the questions that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Jackie Robinson (JR) scholars asked the other 250 JR scholars at our annual Networking Weekend in New York this past March.
This year the UCLA JR scholars were asked to prepare a workshop for the rest of our fellow scholars. Many of the JR scholars, including myself, are members of the National Society of Black Engineers, and through this organization we were able to learn about the "Digital Divide" and help within our community to combat this problem. The term "Digital Divide" refers to the gap between those individuals and communities that have access to technology and its tools and those who do not. Many of the UCLA JR scholars thought that this would be a great topic for our workshop in New York.
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The groups that are suffering are less educated, African-American, Hispanic, and living in low-income and single female households.
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The first step in teaching others about the "Digital Divide" was letting them know that it actually exists. We accomplished this in New York by defining the Digital Divide and providing statistics that we obtained from the study done by the U.S. Department of Commerce. We informed the JR scholars that although America’s technological growth as a whole, in a period of three years, has grown between 51.9% to 397.1%, there are groups that have not benefited from this growth. The groups that are suffering are less educated, African-American, Hispanic and living in low-income and single female households.
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These populations of the least connected are among those that could most use electronic services to find jobs, housing or other services.
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In fact statistics show that 39 percent of classrooms in "poor" schools were connected to the Internet as compared to 62 percent for wealthier schools. These populations of the least connected are among those that could most use electronic services to find jobs, housing, or other services.
After presenting this information to the JR scholars, we received extremely positive feedback and broke into a very long discussion and debate over possible solutions. The general consensus was that the priorities of our communities need to be changed to see the importance of computers and Internet access. We all felt that we could help by giving back to our communities in the form of helping to set up computer labs in schools and communities. Another solution was that we bring children from inner city schools to our universities and into our computer labs, a program that has already been implemented at UCLA by the National Society of Black Engineers.
The one objective that we established before we went to New York to present our information, was that we would get people thinking about the "Digital Divide" as an important issue that deserves our attention. At the end of our presentation we told everyone to take what they have learned and take it to their respective universities and let others know because this problem cannot be ignored. After the presentation was done and I gathered up the material that we had presented, I walked to the door and I saw a group of JR scholars in heavy conversation. As I neared the group I realized that they were in a heavy debate over the deeper issues of the "Digital Divide", and I knew that we had accomplished our objective.
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