Digital Divide or Participation Gap?

After reading both “Digital Divide or Participation Gap? Will Mobile Affect It?” and “Privacy and Data Management on Mobile devices” I believe that in todays world there is a digital divide. The use of mobile devices and laptops is very evident in our world, especially here at the University of Maryland. The way things work in lectures these days; lectures are structured so that students usually just watch a teacher give a presentation on a topic with a digital display like a PowerPoint for example. While the teacher is giving the presentation, students are taking notes on what is on each slide and what the teacher is saying. Taking notes is most easily done with a mobile device like a laptop or iPad. This is why you will see mostly every student with some sort of mobile device out during a lecture. There is, however, some students who do not have a mobile device like this and are immediately at an academic disadvantage. They could not have a device for many different reasons, but either way this is part of the whole digital divide topic. Technology is very expensive and can be difficult to afford for some people so that could be what makes the statistics in Kevin R. Guidry’s article the way they are.

According to the 2007 Educause Core Data Service survey, 65.1% of students from 994 institutions that participated in the survey use their own computer. This leaves out approximately 35% of people who do not use their own computer. Even though a majority of the students use their own computer, that 35% that don’t are missing out on one of the most important pieces of our technology-based culture that we have today. Like I said, most people would have their own computer if they could but some people cant afford it or aren’t aloud to have their own mobile devices. One place where this digital divide is really making an impact is in the classroom. Teachers and professors these days are expecting that everyone has Internet access and access to a personal computer. This can create controversy on assignments.
Sometimes teachers assign something that requires students to do research on a subject or something that requires a computer and printer and I have seen cases where a student was honestly unable to do the assignment because they could not afford their computer and didn’t have time to access a public computer because of the one day period to complete the assignment. I believe that teachers and professors must be aware of this digital divide and keep assignments basic and reasonable so that they are able to be done by students who are in the 35% group of this digital divide who don’t have their own computers. Compared to what I read about in the Privacy and Data Management article, what Kevin says is very similar, but for the people who don’t have computers or mobile devices is completely irrelevant. They don’t have to worry about privacy over the Internet or anything like that if they don’t even use it, but they are still at a disadvantage.