Free Republic

... As access to devices has spread, children in poorer families are spending considerably more time than children from more well-off families using their television and gadgets to watch shows and videos, play games and connect on social networking sites, studies show. This growing time-wasting gap, policy makers and researchers say, is more a reflection of the ability of parents to monitor and limit how children use technology than of access to it. “I’m not antitechnology at home, but it’s not a savior,” said Laura Robell, the principal at Elmhurst Community Prep, a public middle school in East Oakland, Calif.,...

... Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts. Ofer Malamud, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago, is the co-author of a study that investigated educational outcomes after low-income families received vouchers to help them buy computers. “We found a negative effect on academic achievement,” he said....

'Digital divide' efforts counter-productive, say profs Hundreds of efforts to reduce the so-called "digital divide" could be in trouble today, as new research has revealed that giving children universal home computers and internet access actually widens achievement gaps in maths and reading between rich and poor - and causes an overall skills decline across society to boot.

With a stroke of a pen, the Federal Communications Commission could connect millions of minorities and poor Americans to broadband. It is a well documented fact that in the United States there are two distinct groups: the broadband haves, and the broadband have nots. Recently the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration released a survey that found that over a third of people in this country do not access broadband at home. Nearly the same percentage do not have access to the Internet anywhere else. The survey also specifies that over 13 million minority American households do not...

Doug King publishes his keyboard music online and his wife, Marjorie, sells home-made pottery to customers in Iceland, China and New Zealand. But doing business from their rural Dane County house is virtually impossible without high-speed Internet. "We got to the point where we’re simply unable to do business" using the dial-up Internet their phone company provides, King said. The couple finally signed up for a wireless modem from Verizon, which in the last year has sought to build nine cell towers in rural Dane County to keep up with growing demand. But wireless service isn’t available everywhere, either, leaving...

About freeing the airwaves One of America's most valuable natural resources is our "white spaces" -- the radio airwaves, or spectrum, that have long carried analog TV signals. Three-fourths of the white spaces are completely unused today, and -- especially once TV is broadcast in digital only starting in 2009 -- could be used to kick-start a revolution in wireless technology, including universal wireless online access and numerous new products and services that can't even be imagined today. This fall, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will decide whether to make this spectrum available for anyone to use. At Google, we...

Intel 'will survive US recession' By Rory Cellan-Jones Technology correspondent, BBC News Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini says increasingly faster chips will drive the use of Wimax wirelss broadband. Intel will ride out any US recession and make a success of Wimax wireless broadband, the firm's chief executive Paul Otellini has told BBC News. He said: "People turn to computers to improve productivity during downturn, because at the end of the day the computer is a tool for productivity." Intel is the world's largest chip maker for desktops and laptops. Answering BBC News users' questions, he said Intel's developing world...

Municipal Wi-Fi Failing, Earthlink Pulls Out Shane McGlaun (Blog) - March 24, 2008 2:20 PM Protected by FormShield Earthlink bails on municipal Wi-Fi leaving low income families in a lurch When some large and medium sized cities decided to try and roll out city wide municipal Wi-Fi service that would be used by paying customers and by low-income families for free or reduced rates, EarthLink was one of the first ISPs to jump on the project. EarthLink pretty much cornered the market on municipal Wi-Fi and the projects in cities like Philadelphia were hailed as Internet for the masses. The...

PHILADELPHIA — It was hailed as Internet for the masses when Philadelphia officials announced plans in 2005 to erect the largest municipal Wi-Fi grid in the country, stretching wireless access over 135 square miles with the hope of bringing free or low-cost service to all residents, especially the poor. Municipal officials in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco and 10 other major cities, as well as dozens of smaller towns, quickly said they would match Philadelphia’s plans. But the excited momentum has sputtered to a standstill, tripped up by unrealistic ambitions and technological glitches. The conclusion that such ventures would not be...

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Now that more than 1 billion people use the Internet, international policymakers and computing experts are struggling with how to link the world's other 5 billion to the increasingly crucial network. "Ten years ago, to talk about 1 billion Internet users sounded exaggerated, unthinkable, but now we talk about the next billion," said Markus Kummer, the official heading a U.N. forum here Tuesday on governing the Internet. "It is clear sooner or later we will reach that number. It is also clear that next billion will be poorer than the first." The U.N. created the...

Digital Divide Separates White, Minority StudentsPOSTED: 2:58 pm EDT September 5, 2006 UPDATED: 3:18 pm EDT September 5, 2006 WASHINGTON -- Many more white children use the Internet than do Hispanic and black students, a reminder that going online is hardly a way of life for everyone. Two of every three white students -- 67 percent -- use the Internet, but less than half of blacks and Hispanics do, according to federal data released Tuesday. For Hispanics the figure is 44 percent; for blacks, it's 47 percent. "This creates incredible barriers for minorities," said Mark Lloyd, a senior fellow at...

TUNIS, Tunisia - A U.N. technology summit was focused Thursday on bringing more communications, including Internet access, to developing countries where the cost has been too high and the technology too low-tech. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Senegalese President H.E. Wade were among the leaders scheduled to address the World Summit on the Information Society, which ends on Friday. At the same time, several companies and organizations were unveiling their plans to bring the world closer and, in a sense, narrow the digital divide, by providing laptops that cost just US$100 (euro85) to portable, satellite-based radios that can pull in...

Detroit Unveils New Digital High School Project Is Part Of Deal Between School District, ApplePOSTED: 2:52 pm EDT September 27, 2005 DETROIT -- High school students will use wireless laptops, iPods and other top technology as part of a new school-within-a-school program touted as the first of its kind in Michigan. Gov. Jennifer Granholm joined Detroit Public Schools officials Tuesday to unveil the Detroit Digital Learning Community High School at the city's Crockett High School. She said she hopes that Crockett's "small high school" program will serve as a catalyst to encourage other schools to create similar programs. "The digital...

Chattanooga Housing Authority officials plan to install personal computers and high-speed Internet access in all of the public housing units at The Villages at Alton Park.   "We want young people in public housing to have the same access to technology as someone growing up in a middle class home," said John Hayes, deputy director of planning and development.   Housing officials will use a $250,000 Hope VI Neighborhood Network grant to provide the computers and unlimited Internet access for up to 200 public housing residents in The Villages for two years. After that, residents will have access to high-speed Internet services...

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040921-090816-9625r CHICAGO, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- Four years ago, the Internet cognoscenti were talking constantly about the "digital divide." The theory was access to the Internet was determined largely by class and income, and poor children were being effectively excluded from online activities. True once or not, that no longer appears to be the case. New research indicates the digital divide has disappeared. Nearly every child -- 96 percent of all youngsters, according to research released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation -- has been online. Now a new problem has emerged, experts told United Press International: The quality...

Back in 1996, Vice President Gore had a noble idea. It was to wire every American classroom to the World Wide Web. The idea came to fruition when the E-rate program was born. Often called the "Gore tax," about one-third of the 8% "universal service fee" that's levied on every American long-distance bill has been dedicated to connecting all U.S. schools to the information superhighway. At a cost of $2.25 billion per year, this program is credited with hooking up more than 90% of the nation's classrooms. Unfortunately, a recently uncovered trail of waste, fraud, and abuse demonstrates that some...

ASHINGTON, June 16 - When the El Paso school system wanted to upgrade its Internet connections three years ago, it tapped into a federal program that offers assistance for such projects. The program paid the International Business Machines Corporation $35 million to build a network powerful enough to serve a small city. But the network would be so sophisticated that the 90-school district could not run it without help.Foreseeing the problem, I.B.M. charged the district an additional $27 million, paid by the federal program, to build a lavish maintenance call-in center to keep the network running. The center operated for...

John Kerry is not swaggering around with a Palm Pilot on his belt like former candidate Al Gore, but he’s more than anxious to project the image of the hip, computer-savvy guy who wants to spread the miracle of high-speed Internet to the darkest corners of the country. The problem is that President Bush has also been riding the Internet bandwagon, promising to provide universal access to high-speed Internet by 2007. To help reach that target, he will order federal agencies to make it easier for companies to deploy the service. Furthermore, he is pushing Congress to make access to...

The revelation that $5 million in computer equipment became obsolete before it was ever installed in Chicago Public Schools drew the ire of South Side ministers, who complained Saturday that the "abominable waste" of tax dollars has short-changed students. The equipment was part of a $300 million package earmarked for Chicago schools over the last five years under the federal E-Rate program. The program is funded by telecommunication fees and is intended to bridge the "digital divide" between low-income and affluent students. On Saturday, the Rev. James L. Demus III, executive director of the South Side branch of the NAACP,...

Once it was edgy and cool. Now the Internet has settled down into a comfortable middle age and become merely ... indispensible. After spiking in the 1990s and early 2000s, the percentage of adult Americans online has leveled off in the past two years at 63 percent, says a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage is expected eventually to rise, but not as quickly as some had imagined. "It's no longer the case that the Internet population is growing by leaps and bounds," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project. However, "the Internet...