Last week, I discussed the global digital landscape and how the digital divide is impacting the global economy and posed the question about why is it important to us. Today, I want to focus on the greatest needs facing Iowa students and educators using online and blended learning.
In Iowa, the ICN (Iowa Communications Network) was ran throughout the state beginning in 1989 with a promise that students could unilaterally learn whether they were at Indian Hills Community College, Kirkwood Community College, Iowa Lakes Community College, or any of the other 12 community colleges in the state. Today, the fiber optic backbone reaches all 99 counties in Iowa and extends to 500 sites throughout the state including K-12 buildings, libraries, hospitals, and both private and public colleges and universities and totals 3100 miles of its own backbone and leases another 3500 miles of backbone. The ultimate goal was that no one would be more than 15 miles away from an accessible ICN point.
Having the state's network in every county helps ease some of the digital divide, but there's still a divide happening in areas where carriers aren't fronting broadband costs because it would be cost prohibitive. In addition, there is a difference between what is available in a more urban area and what is available in rural areas. Students who can access the internet via broadband connections at home exist where there are local internet service providers or rural cooperatives; however, the further away from an urban area someone is, the less options they have when it comes to internet service and/or providers.
Three years ago, I lived in a town that had two options for internet. One ISP offered DSL; the other offered cable internet. Being that the town only had a population of approximately 2500, there was very little competition, which meant that if we wanted cable TV and high-speed internet, our monthly bill totaled more than $127/month. In addition, the service never had to be good, because we didn't have any other provider we could go with unless we wanted to reduce our bandwidth.
I also lived in an area in the early 2000's where the only option for internet was dial-up. This was a mere seven miles outside of a town with a population of more than 25,000 people and DSL was the most popular high-speed internet at that time. However, being outside the city limits the possibility of DSL wasn't even an option. The only option that I had at that time was to pay for a landline and add dial-up internet to it.
Another example where the digital divide among the Iowa landscape was apparent was two years ago when a family member lived outside of a small southern Iowa town next near the Mississippi River. The only two options for internet in that area were satellite or dial-up. This meant that although the family could access the internet, it wasn't an ideal setting for someone that might be looking for a job, streaming videos, or even online banking.
In the early 2000's the normal procedure for finding and securing a job wasn't necessarily by going online and filling out a job application; however, today it is extremely important to be able to access the internet to search and apply for jobs. In addition, the classrooms from the early 2000's looked like the classrooms from the 1960's, 70's, 80's, or 90's. However, as devices became more interactive, classrooms shifted. Today, you can find classrooms with interactive white boards, 1:1 devices, and interaction among students and teachers via blogs, wikis, and sometimes social media.
Even distance learning has shifted from making the teacher the center of the classroom to putting the student in the center and providing access to anytime, anywhere classes. This model of asynchronous learning helps students truly learn the material and be more focused on the meta-cognition of learning than on what the teacher is saying.
With these shifts in the educational setting and the move to having more flipped classrooms it is possible to get in the trap of the "have" and "have-not" students. One of the variables that plays into this is the availability of high-speed internet (which as of today is greater than 4 mbps) in all areas, regardless of whether someone lives in a rural area or an urban area.
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