Posted on 05/30/2012 5:47:27 AM PDT by reaganaut1
...
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.
Im not antitechnology at home, but its not a savior, said Laura Robell, the principal at Elmhurst Community Prep, a public middle school in East Oakland, Calif., who has long doubted the value of putting a computer in every home without proper oversight.
So often we have parents come up to us and say, I have no idea how to monitor Facebook, she said.
The new divide is such a cause of concern for the Federal Communications Commission that it is considering a proposal to spend $200 million to create a digital literacy corps. This group of hundreds, even thousands, of trainers would fan out to schools and libraries to teach productive uses of computers for parents, students and job seekers.
Separately, the commission will help send digital literacy trainers this fall to organizations like the Boys and Girls Club, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some of the financial support for this program, part of a broader initiative called Connect2Compete, comes from private companies like Best Buy and Microsoft.
These efforts complement a handful of private and state projects aimed at paying for digital trainers to teach everything from basic keyboard use and word processing to how to apply for jobs online or use filters to block children from seeing online pornography.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Smart children will spend more of their time on the Internet on educational activities than dull children. Technology is a multiplier, not an equalizer, and the same is true for schools.
If you watch any TV at all, you will be bombarded with commercials for digital devices, fondly showing young, well-dressed, attractive, people in work settings, using their ‘Smart-Whatever’ to do anything but the tasks these people are supposedly paid for..
If the “rich-poor dichotomy” that the author postulates really exists, the Digital Industry is working its collective a$$ off to close that gap...
Wait a sec, here! This inequality is patently unfair to rich kids. The well off should be getting reparations and demanding more boob tube time.
—...digital literacy corps...—
I believe Obama calls it a digital literacy corpse.
Reminds me of this:
Then, after all kinds of programs to get affordable digital access available everywhere (one example that comes to mind is the incredible arrangement Comcast was forced to accept), we are now told that the new, redefined, "digital divide 2.0" is all about poor people spending too much time consuming digital junk food from the internet.
The politicians are desperate to take control of this new mode of freedom.
Who could have predicted this could happen?
Just like feel good ‘no money down’ affordable housing that led to them to foreclosure, who would have guessed?
How do they know this anyway?
Excellent post!
The Dems stopped worrying about the “digital divide” when they started moveon.org
The new divide is such a cause of concern for the Federal Communications Commission that it is considering a proposal to spend $200 million to create a digital literacy corps. This group of hundreds, even thousands, of trainers would fan out to schools and libraries to teach productive uses of computers for parents, students and job seekers.
Yeah, right. I can just imagine what kinds of "productive uses" the Obama FCC will be suggesting to the unwashed hoards who will find time to show up at schools and libraries.
Isn’t it about time we drop the word ‘digital’ since everything electronic is nowdays digital?
And what is the legal authority for the FCC to do such a thing?
I have no problem with individual FCC commissioners and employees ponying up out of their own pockets to fund such a boondoggle, but why should the taxpayers be fleeced for yet another foolish federal giveaway?
No joke. :’) Thanks sickoflibs.
Or just because most of the populace doesn't even know what the word 'digital' even means, nor could they tell the difference between an 'analog' and a 'digital' clock.
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