Dividing factors in my community come in many different forms. The community is diverse in income levels, age, culture, and occupation. There are families of high ranking military officials, doctors, lawyers, and large area farmers. There are also families of migrant, factory, and blue-collar workers. The large majority of the community is formed by the Air Force military base. The other two largest corporations in the community are the hospital and a Bar-S Food Company factory.
The vast range of family situations in the community cause this digital divide. There are students without even heat/air. Those students do not have access to internet or devices in their homes, making school the only place they have with internet access. However, "Smartphones have helped bridge the divide, as they provide Internet access to populations previously at a digital disadvantage." (Brown, 2020). Within the last year the community has just begun to have fiber-optic internet lines run. The fiber-optic lines have not made it through the whole community and the cost makes it difficult for some families to even afford it. There are many locations across town with free wifi, even in the low-income housing areas.
When it comes to the students being served in the Altus community the issue that I am concerned with is the lack of access to the devices necessary to complete assignments on a digital platform. While there is an issue with internet access, the student's having access to an actual device is also an issue. The school system is a 1:1 school with each student in grades K-12 having their own ipad assigned to them. The ipads are replaced after 4 years of usage. Students are not allowed to take the devices home until they are in the 9th grade.
During the COVID pandemic students could not do work virtually because there is not a high enough population with internet access and access devices. Our students were given packets of work that they could pick up at a drive thru location and complete at home. The packets were not required to be returned to the teachers and they were never graded for anything. Most families did not even pick up the packets, let alone complete them. Students were then passed onto the next grade unless parents agreed prior to the pandemic to retain the students. Since that time we are still fighting the COVID academic crisis with students who are not on level. By having better access to internet and devices, our students could have continued to work through the last 9 weeks of school instead of having a break of 6 months.
Resources:
Brown, W. (2020). Digital Divide. Retrieved from https://open.library.okstate.edu/learninginthedigitalage/chapter/the-digital-divide/.
Gallardo, R. (2022). The State of the Digital Divide in the United States. Retrieved from: https://pcrd.purdue.edu/the-state-of-the-digital-divide-in-the-united-states/.
van de Werfhorst, H.G., Kessenich, E., & Geven, S. (2022). The digital divide in online education: Inequality in digital readiness of students and schools. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9435462/pdf/main.pdf
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