End the Digital Divide

Schools and The Digital Divide

Donating School Supplies and Computers

The Communications Act of 1934 DIGITAL EQUITY "Everyone has the right to education."
Article 26 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 12/10/48
The law that established the Federal Communications Commission and remains its fundamental charter.
First paragraph of Section I: ``. . . to make available so far as possible to all people of the United States without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, nationwide and worldwide wire and radio-communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.''

BLACK AMERICANS WHO CROSS THE DIVIDE
RESOURCES
DONATING COMPUTERS, OUTREACH, DIVERSITY, CAMPUS CRIME

Who Owns a Telephone? and the Wireless alternatives

Digital Divide Must Read ARTICLES
PEOPLE AND BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
URBAN EDUCATION - Diversity Data
TOOLS FOR DEMOCRACY EDUCATION, CIVIL RIGHTS, CHILDREN'S RIGHTS
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
GENDER EQUITY SPECIAL EDITION
DIGITAL EQUITY RESOURCES, TOOLS, SITES, ISSUES
Tax Exempt & NonProfit Organization Information Center

ORIENTATION and STATISTICS

Get our legislators to spend one day of the year like the poorest of their citizens ... trying to get all of their computing needs for the day satisfied with their half-hour allotment at their local public library

2018

ISPs are required to deliver Form 477 data to the FCC indicating broadband availability and speed twice a year. But the FCC doesn't audit the accuracy of this data, despite the fact that ISPs are heavily incentivized to overstate speed and availability to downplay industry failures. The FCC also refuses to make the pricing data provided by ISPs available to the public.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/24/17882842/us-internet-broadband-map-isp-fcc-wireless-competition

2016

Compare & Connect K-12 uses price transparency so school districts can get more broadband for their budgets

2015

Digital Divides
Lee Rainie, Director of Internet, Science, and Technology research, details the digital divide that Americans face in accessing the internet to the Advisory Board to the U.S. Census Bureau. Using Pew Research Center data spanning 15 years, he discusses how household income, educational attainment, race and ethnicity, age and community type affect internet usage among Americans and how those demographics have shifted since 2000.

Hootsuite Podium plans to educate 1 million social media professionals for free by 201 7

2014
Hiring via social networks: work for the wealthy, connected and savvy. As recruiting shifts to closed networks online, many Americans without easy access or social media skills are at a disadvantage.

55 percent of Philadelphia households lack access to Internet : new early data shows rate higher than previously thought

ICANN
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is little known, but it wields a tremendous amount of power: It controls all of the Web's top-level domains (those letters after the “dot,” like .com and .org). Currently, ICANN is in the midst of creating hundreds (and possibly thousands) of new, generic top-level domains (gTLDs) that span a host of different ideas, from .web to .cars to .anything-else. These new gTLDs have the potential to dramatically affect the future of Internet browsing, and they're already stirring up some serious discussion. (Saudi Arabia, for one, doesn't want .gay, .bible, or other dozens of other proposed domains to be approved.) But the auction process to distribute them also has the potential for even greater impact than currently envisioned.
ICANN's new generic top-level domain process has been dragging on for years. But this year, it is finally coming to fruition, and as early as April 2013 we are likely to see the first group of new gTLDS—in essence, ICANN will empower specific legal entities to control how to use and sell these domain names.
For instance, the .web gTLD is widely desired by a number of different organizations, as it is the most likely contender to possibly challenge the king of all gTLDs: .com. There are currently eight applicants for .web, including Google, German Internet giant 1&1, and incumbent registry operator Afilias (which manages .org and .info) among other bidders. We expect that the bidding for .web alone is likely to be in excess of $5 million and could potentially reach $10 million or more. For the .app gTLD, there are 11 applicants—and we may see a titanic bidding war between Google and Amazon. There are hundreds more contended strings that are likely to go to auction and raise tens of millions of additional dollars—even $100 million isn't out of the question.
There are more than 1,900 applications for roughly 1,000 unique strings in this first wave. The $185,000 application fee is intended to fund the ICANN process, but the proceeds from contention auctions are considered “excess funds” that are not already earmarked to cover costs. The challenge will be to use these proceeds in a way that best benefits the public interest and the global Internet. In talking with key stakeholders over the last couple of years, everyone agrees that allocating these funds will be a challenge and likely to be fraught with politics.
We've been involved in the ICANN process since its inception, and believe that these proceeds can and should be used to do something game-changing and truly visionary: build and maintain free wireless Internet infrastructure for huge swaths of the continent of Africa or an equally disconnected, high-poverty area of the planet. This is an audacious idea that many might originally dismiss as impractical—but that's because their thinking is stuck inside the box. We know that it can be done—and how. Providing free wireless Internet infrastructure for the continent of Africa would be a dream come true—the kind of outcome that would help bridge the digital divide and garner huge socioeconomic benefits for decades to come. [snip]

Massive Digital Divide for Native Americans is a Travesty Still in 2011

2011 Should your ZIP code determine your access to the American dream? asks Sam Chaltain CNN.com . He finds an "unsettling irony," as we celebrate the 57th anniversary of Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education, in reading about Tanya McDowell, who faces felony charges in Connecticut for lying on her son's registration forms so he could attend a better school (echoing the similar case of Kelley Williams-Bolar in Ohio). If Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case before the Supreme Court in 1954, were alive today, Chaltain feels he would "urge us to stop celebrating our symbolic victory in Brown and start accepting our actual responsibility for tolerating a public education system that is, clearly, still separate, and still unequal." Marshall understood that without equal access to a high-quality public education, democracy doesn't work: "Education directly affects the ability of a child to exercise his First Amendment rights," Marshall wrote. "Education prepares individuals to be self-reliant and self-sufficient participants in society. Both facets of this observation are suggestive of the substantial relationship which education bears to guarantees of our Constitution." Chaltain elaborates: "In today's America, when it comes to public education, have we allowed our five-digit ZIP codes to become the equivalent of a lottery ticket to a better future? Is this really who we wish to be?"
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/05/16/chaltain.equal.education/index.html
http://colorlines.com/archives/2011/05/brown_v_board_of_education_feature.html

What A JOKE: K-12 National Education Technology Plan 2010 http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010
The National Education Technology Plan, Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology

2009 PERSISTENT FINANCIAL INEQUITIES
The combination of racial isolation and having high numbers of students who live in poverty means that poor students of color are the least likely to attend schools with adequate finances. Inequities in school finance should include those that are apparent after adjusting for demographic cost differentials.3 One recent report analyzed 2003 education data on per child expenditures for school districts each of the 50 states and for the nation. The graph get the PDF shows how when compared to the average district, after adjustments for the higher needs of students living in poverty, much less money per child was allocated to poor and minority students. the per pupil expenditures in the highest minority districts was $964 less than for lowest minority districts.4 When spending in the highest poverty districts was examined the study found that $1,436 fewer dollars were spent per student compared to the lowest poverty districts.

10/2009 Equity funding, a decade and a half later
In an interview with the National Access Network, Tim Hogan , attorney for the plaintiffs in the 1994 school funding case Roosevelt Elementary School District No. 66 v. Bishop in Arizona, describes the impact and the legacy of the decision 15 years on. It was a victory for students in property-poor districts in Arizona, since it ordered the legislature and governor to move responsibility for funding school construction and other capital items away from local districts to the state, and phased out local property taxes to support these. It also created a School Facilities Board to administer the funding for technology, transportation, facilities, and equipment. The problem, relates Hogan, is that in light of massive state deficits, all facilities are now chronically under-funded, and another suit has had to be brought. His organization (the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest) has moved away from an emphasis on school funding, especially in the wake of the Supreme Court's remanding of Horne v. Flores to the lower court, and Justice Samuel Alito's contention that "increased funding alone does not improve student achievement." There are two cases pending in Arizona around funding equity for charters, which Hogan thinks will be hard to argue. The state constitution guarantees adequacy, he says, not equity, and it was on the basis of inadequacy that he argued and won the funding case 15 years ago.

Nasa STS-93 wakeup call, flight day 5
"And the sign said, The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls & tenement halls, and echoed in the Sounds of Silence ".
~ Simon & Garfunkel

2006

According to Pew Internet &
American Life Project 79% of English-speaking Latinos access the Internet, beating out African Americans and whites. This 79% represents English-speaking Latinos only. According to the US Census Bureau, there are around 41.3 million Latinos in the US. Of these, nearly 14 million don't speak English well or at all. We have to address those who are marginalized in our society - those that don't speak English AND do not have internet access.

" The State of Americas Children ," 2005 edition Includes most recent (September 2005) U.S. poverty data. Chapter 4 can be downloaded for free, find the important statistics you need to know.

21 ST CENTURY LITERACY SKILLS

I f children aren't speaking English then what do K-12 Teachers, Administrators, Reading Teachers and Professors who teach teachers how to teach reading need to know about this?

Literacy Statistics Richard Riley Former Secretary of Education said "54 percent of all teachers have limited English proficient (LEP) students in their classrooms, yet only one-fifth of teachers feel very prepared to serve them . The US Department of Commerce's NTIA researched the percentages of households that had Internet access and since the the turn of the millenium in the year 2000 African Americans surpassed Latinos in access from the house.

STATE STATS: DROP OUTS ARE ALSO CHILDREN PUSHED OUT TO MANIPULATE THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND OUTCOME

"There's already enough stuff for everybody.
The money is a way of creating scarcity. There's machinery that can create a television set for every man and woman and child on the planet. If you don't have a TV because you don't have the money, the money is a valve that's been put between you and the TV. A valve, like ... that you can turn off. Right? Now I can also critique this position from the hindsight of being older, but at the time, and even today, it's still quite compelling. In a world of surpluses, you need new inducements, other than 'stuff', to get people on the treadmill." ~ Peter Coyote

" We may be broke, but we're never poor." ~Emmett Grogan

2004

Source 2004 "According to statistics from august bodies such as the Nua Internet survey and Nielsen-Netratings, just 600m of the world's 6.3bn people are wired to the web. Yet those online often forget that they are in the minority.

" A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age 2004 "
Figure 1 on page four of this document (produced by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Dept. of Commerce) indicates an overall figure for computers in households to be 61.8 percent. But wait! It gets worse! Those with Internet connections are at 54.6 percent and those with Broadband Internet access are at 19.9 percent. The figures for the poor are also still very bad in this report. So, in my view the old Digital Divide is alive and well. How many people known to have computers in the home are counting the Commodore-64 or Vic-20 on the top shelf of their now grown-up and moved-out kid's bedroom!

Motivate a student to finish High School and the young adult to finish college . Let the individual understand what skills are necessary, what it takes to get that job, and what kind of money they can expect to earn with the skills they have.

PBS Digital Divide Recommended Resources

The Teachability Index
"Can Disadvantaged Students Learn?" shows that students today in 2004 are actually somewhat easier to teach than they were thirty years ago.

teachers | digital divide |donate computer | computers in schools

2002

  • 49 percent of Caucasian children use the Internet at home, compared to only 29 percent of African-American children, and 33 percent of Hispanic children.
  • Children from high-income families are more than twice as likely to have home Internet access (66%) than children from low-income households (29%).
  • Despite strong growth in school access from 2000 to 2002 for low-income children (20 to 32 percent), their current school use still significantly lags behind high-income children (47 percent).

Between 2000 and 2002, the number of high-income families with high-speed Internet access almost quadrupled. The study shows school age children in these families watch less TV, spend more time online and get better grades. So we have an emerging gap between "connected" and "well-connected" kids. On one side we have kids with high-speed Internet access at home and plenty of computers in classrooms, and on the other, kids who must share a handful of computers in the school lab. Placing computers in classrooms is essential, but it is just the first step. Technology must become an integral part of teaching and learning in all our schools. We have no choice but to transform today's classrooms in order to build vital technological skills and knowledge for tomorrow's workforce.

President Bush stopped funding efforts for the Digital Divide OBIT:2002
As of 2005 the digital divide does not officially exist in this US, (George Bush) and while we sit on our technology assets other countries are leapfrogging to make a difference and how. Several years ago we used to go and share the possibilities. Now we may possibly be lagging so far behind that we cannot catch up.

U.S. Department of Education Publications March 24, 2000 ED Programs that Help Bridge the Digital Divide
Kirk Winters Office of the Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Education

US Office of Educational Technology - Digital Divide Facts and Grants

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has a mailing list to discuss Web standards, specifically relating to outreach and education.

THE DIGITAL DIVIDE STATISTICS 1999

US Technology Workforce

% of Total Workforce % of Tech & Science Workers
Woman
19.4%
46
People with Disabilities 5.5 14
African Americans 3.2 11
Hispanics 3 10
American Indians 0.3 NA
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1998 Source: National Science Foundation/ Science Resource

Education Boosting the Odds for Educational Use

Rural Areas Magnify the Digital Divide

Native Americans and the Digital Divide

A One Stop Place for Giving and Volunteering

Americans in the Information Age/ Falling Through the Net 1999 Fact Sheets on the Digital Divide

1998

Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide
On July 28, 1998, Secretary Daley released "Falling Through the Net II: New Data on the Digital Divide." At the request of Vice President Gore, NTIA issued this report analyzing telephone and computer penetration rates."

A Little History -- Trends in Universal Service and Access" Slide Presentation by Larry Irving Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information National Telecommunications and Information Administration U.S. Department of Commerce National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners Committee on Communications Summer Meeting July 29, 1998

AN_MSI
The Advanced Networking Infrastructure and Research division of NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate has awarded a four-year, $6 million grant (ANI-9980537) to EDUCAUSE , an association of over 1,800 member organizations and 190 corporate partners.

Rules For Life In Charles J. Sykes ' message about life to recent high school and college graduates. He listed 11 things they did not learn in school. He talked about how feel-good, politically correct teachings have created a full generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept has set them up for failure in the real world.

CyberCemetery of electronic files of defunct federal agencies

Freedom of Information Act 5 U.S.C.

People and Organizations Working on the Digital Divide

PEOPLE AND BUSINESS WORKING ON the digital and gender divide

Digital Divide

Donate, Get, or Recycle Computers for Learning

How the Arts Contribute to Bridging the Digital Divide

COMMUNITY TECHNOLOGY CENTERS

Technology Empowerment Network

The Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet)
A wonderful and robust organization laboring to ensure universal access to informatic tools and processes across their national networking efforts.The founder of the original Playing to Win, is Antonia (Toni) Stone. Toni later founded the Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet).

We are a network of more than 300 community technology centers where people get access to computers and computer-related technology, such as the Internet. The 300+ sites are enormously diverse in program areas and participating populations. Some are stand alone centers; others operate as one part of a larger organization, such as a multiservice agency or museum, job training center, shelter, cable public access center, etc. (see some centers' web sites and related links). All support equitable access to computers. What impact do these centers have on participants?

Phil Shapiro
THE MAN WHO GIVES COMPUTERS TO KIDS
Phil is a great guy; among his other projects is the One World Media Center. His home page
Issue: EdTech/Digital Divide
Phil Shapiro , an instructional technology coordinator for the Arlington County (VA) Schools, is making a personal effort to narrow the digital divide by refurbishing donated computers and giving them to low-income students. Shapiro believes that old, outdated, computers are better than no computers at all, because these computers still allow students to become familiar with keyboards, software and problem-solving. Arlington County Schools requires third-grade students to learn how to type. In donating refurbished computers Shapiro hopes to help the young students, who otherwise wouldn't have access to a computer at home, feel more comfortable as they're being introduced to basic computer skills in the classroom. Shapiro hopes that the computers he refurbishes will help prevent low-income children from falling behind their more affluent peers. ( Personal site) ( work site )

National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students
The At-Risk Institute, A new national institute devoted to improving education for at- risk students has just unveiled its home page on the Web. Dozens of studies, four national research centers, & experts on at-risk issues are featured in this new area created by the At-Risk Institute.

Economic Policy Institute
State of Working America 2000-01 online
Lawrence Mishel Vice President lmishel@epinet.org
Areas of expertise Income distribution and poverty . Labor markets . Industrial relations . Technology and productivity . Education . Wages . Unions and collective bargaining

Sound Partners for Community Health seeks to increase public awareness of specific health issues and facilitate citizens' involvement in making decisions affecting health care by fostering partnerships between public broadcasters, community organizations and additional media entities. By utilizing a variety of programming and community engagement techniques, the alliances supported by Sound Partners helps equip individuals to participate in community problem-solving around local health issues. Sound Partners is a program of the Benton Foundation and funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Read About CLC
CLC charter school (#77) web site, was formed to specifically address the at risk. In Kern County, California, you can find many bright and talented kids. They are also 'at risk.' Some of them live in shelters, or homes that are violent, and many drop out of school. CLC music director Cameron Weckerly and the music technology department help keep these students interested and coming back. In order to accommodate students , the operating format at CLC is a combination of technology based distance learning and small group instruction. Connie Sack and Ray Yocum , administrators at CLC, felt that a music tech program would jump-start their students' interest and it has. Weckerly , who holds an M.A. in Composition, has seen students with little or no musical training compose pieces in a very short time.

Cisco Systems www.netaid.org fights poverty

Digital Divide Tools for Democracy

digital divide TOOLS FOR DEMOCRACY

Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 or more for 411 information calls when they don't have to.
When you need to use the 411 information option,
simply dial 1-800-FREE-411 or 1-800-373-3411 without incurring a charge at all, except for the minutes required to make the call. This is information people don't mind receiving - Pass it on. This Works on your home phone also.

DIGITAL DIVIDE

GENDER DIVIDE & WHAT YOU CAN DO

How Much Money Will You Need To Buy A House and qualify for a mortgage.

SECTION 508 OF THE REHABILITATION ACT

Social Security Online: Kids and Families
"This site provides materials for parents, children, young adults and teachers to learn about Social Security and what it means to you." Features a FAQ, information about applying for a number for a baby, using Social Security for planning family financial security, and benefits for children, grandchildren, and parents.Also includes stories to illustrate how the Social Security system works and a link to the Social Security office locator. From the U.S. Social Security Administration.

Flood Insurance at floodsmart.gov

Federal Student Aid

Ripoff Report

VOTER EDUCATION

CHILDRENS RIGHTS ORGANIZTIONS

Age Discrimination Endangers Human Rights For Young And Old Alike
Jan Hunt coaxes tolerance for the effects of the human predicament and the cruelty towards a body not fully formed.

ASFAR
Fighting against the age equivalent of Jim Crow laws, ASFAR offers an intelligent, reasonable argument for the irrational restrictions and practices of people in power.

ACLU Student Rights
Put down the notebooks and pick up your cell phone! Legal defense for school campus rights by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Association For Children's Suffrage
Education and reform for the humanization of youth through voting.

Canadian Youth Rights Association
The Canadian Youth Rights Association had every reason to band together for freedom from repression - laws in Canada were so arranged that the organization had to be founded in a different country.

Election
The Internet Movie Database entry for Election (1999) lists cast, credit, and plot details.

Free Youth Internet
Yet another kernel of humanist sanity nestled under Oblivion.net that urges the revision of hierarchy and discrimination through the mature vessel of the satyagraha method and non-violent protest.

International Youth Rights Action Alliance
IYRAA publicizes several groups striving towards equality as well as providing an essay forum.

Oblivion Youth Suffrage Zine
Suffragists for the new millenium carry backpacks and make Web sites. Grassroots? You bet!

Peacefire
Peacefire helps information be free from censorship, one of the darkest demons against liberation, in spite of any forced software "protecting" youth.

Pump Up The Volume
The Internet Movie Database entry for Pump Up The Volume (1990) lists cast, credit, and plot detail

The Institute For Psychohistory
Radical psychohistorian Lloyd deMause reveals how different childrearing modes shape our mindsets, personalities, and worldviews. Discover how some parents inadvertently keep their children in a "double-bind" (Gregory Bateson).

Toronto Youth Action Committee
The sumptuous Web design alone shows the absurdity of discrimination against teenagers and the content remains a testament to youth power.

The National Child Rights Alliance
"Working for child rights and youth liberation worldwide." Includes a bill of rights and archive of activist articles.

World Congress Of Youth
This international organization coordinates meetings and protests to let everyone vote for the laws that govern their lives, regardless of age.

Wild In The Streets
The Internet Movie Database entry for Wild In The Streets (1968) lists cast, credit, and plot details.

Youth Options
Forums and boards for British Columbia youth that allow interaction with their government and with other revolutionaries.

Youth Speak
Working for young people's right to affect the futures they'll be living in after all the politicians and CEOs are acting as fertilizer

Teachers | Digital Divide Resources and Tools | Voter Education | Civil Rights | Democracy | Children's Rights

THE COMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1934
The law that established the Federal Communications Commission and remains its fundamental charter. First paragraph of Section I: ``. . . to make available so far as possible to all people of the United States without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, nationwide and worldwide wire and radio-communications service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.''

National Telecommunications and Information Administration

Empowerment Zone
Contains all sorts of work-arounds and guidelines for making software, Web site, and hardware accessible to the disabled. Maybe it will help.
The compliance date for government Web sites to be accessible was originally set for August 7, 2000, but this date was recently extended to a date 6 months from whenever the final guidelines are published. In the meantime, use the defacto guideline list from the W3C.

The Civil Rights Project - Education & Racial Inequity, Segregation, Research Racism, Color Lines, District Boundaries, School to Prison, Votes - Spoiled Ballots, Policy, Resources, News.

Democracy OnLine
Promoting online civic participation and democracy efforts around the world through information exchange, experience sharing, outreach, and education.

Freedom Channel

Look up your 4 + digit zip code

Look up City + State zip code associations

US Supreme Court
Find announcements of decisions, the court calendar, cases pending, court rules, and biographies of current justices.

Department of Commerce
Ways to close the "digital divide," the growing gap between the haves and have-nots of the information age. The meeting was called by the Secretary of Commerce, William M. Daley, after the department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration in July released its third report on the issue. Those being left behind by technology are racial minorities, the poor and people in rural areas, the study found. No one is a social engineer or a social activist when trying to bring radio service to inner-city communities and phone service to Indian reservations and computers to disabled people.

Recalled US Consumer Products
Safety Commission has launched a Web site for listing a variety of recalled consumer product categories.

Digital Equity Resources in Spanish

Recursos en espaol/bilinges y de interspara la comunidad hispana

RESOURCES: Medical Information in the Spanish and Other Non-English Languages

Library Services Online: South Texas Community College

Country Specific Search Engines

A Su Salud Health Information in Spanish

Medical Translation Resources

Foreign Language Patient Resources on the Net

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Spanish

Familydoctor.org Pamphlets in Spanish

Healthfinder in Espaol

MEDLINEplus in Spanish

Buscadores Electronics

Computacin Entretenimiento

Noticias Y Revistas

Referencia

  • Automundo -- biografas en varias idiomas, incluyendo el espaol.
  • ESL -- ejercicios en ingls para ayudar en las clases del ingls.
  • Your Dictionary -- (su diccionario) inglés-español y muchas otras lenguas.
Salud Y Nutricin

Otras Pginas

Entrepreneurship for K-12 Children

Entrepreneurship for K-12 Children

Children who are taught about entrepreneurship are more likely to start their own businesses and more likely to succeed with these businesses.

Most new entrepreneurs can point to a parent or close relative or family friend who ran their own business.

What happens to kids who live in impoverished communities where entrepreneurial businesses are rare, and parents are unemployed, underemployed, or simply struggling to get by?

That's what entrepreneurship education is designed to attack -- it seeks to provide the rest of us with the skills and education that the children of entrepreneurs get from simply sitting at the dinner table and listening to their parents.

The Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership poll found that nearly seven out of 10 youth (aged 14-19) were interested in becoming entrepreneurs. Yet, 85 percent responded they were taught little or nothing about how business and the economy work.

The best known and most effective programs work with disadvantaged youth or youth who reside in distressed urban or rural settings. Among them:

REAL ( Rural Entrepreneurship through Action Learning ) Enterprises, targets rural youth. Started in Georgia and North Carolina in 1990 is now utilized in more than 500 schools and community centers in 37 states. REAL trains both teachers and students, from kindergarten through high school. REAL programs help students write business plans and include a tight linkage with local entrepreneurs. These community links help ensure that student-run business also meet pressing local needs. REAL has also created REAL Online, an internet-based course for distance learning.

The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) is perhaps the America's best-known entrepreneurship education program. Founded in 1987 by Steve Mariotti, NFTE targets students in grades 7-12. Its work is focused on low-income, at-risk youth, many of whom reside in inner-city areas. NFTE also trains teachers. Since 1987, it has trained 1,200 teachers, and more than 30,000 young people in 43 states and 14 countries. NFTE offers a number of different programs. They are typically offered in public schools as an accredited course, but some community non-profits, like the YMCA, YWCA, and the Boys and Girls Clubs, also offer such programs. The NFTE Comprehensive course is the most extensive; an abbreviated version is taught as a Summer " Biz-Camp ." It requires each student to write a business plan for a real business, and the best plans receive "venture capital grants" that range from $50 to $500.

To learn more about entrepreneurship education, check out these resources:

Consortium on Entrepreneurship Education

Junior Achievement

Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership

NFTE

How the Arts Bridge the Digital Divide

the Arts Bridge the Digital Divide

SEE ARTS

While describing the different definitions of various divides around the country, Open Studio participants articulated the ways in which the arts were contributing to bridging the divide. These can serve as examples for other community technology centers :

The Arts encourage communications proficiency in the digital age.

Communities are defined by their cultures and measured by their ability to communicate.

"The arts, in its traditional forms, teaches us how to express our ideas, emotions and cultural influences in as many different forms as we can imagine," commented Gordon Soderberg, Open Studio Program Coordinator at Ink People Center for the Arts in Eureka, California. Open Studio sites find that arts and technology training increases a person's ability to use technology to manipulate images, sound, text and movement to create meaningful content that will engage users. Robin Oppenheimer, Seattle Art Museum, commented, "Without basic arts training at an early age, people will not be prepared to communicate well with the expanded aural/visual language of multimedia that will soon be part of our daily lives as the [technology] pipes get fatter."

The Arts help people learn about and explore technology.

Open Studio sites report that arts-based technology training increases individuals' abilities to manipulate the technology tools that can allow them to express themselves creatively through a variety of media. At the same time, the arts can become the "hook" for testing the new, faster, higher versions of these tools, essentially becoming the R&D labs for many businesses.

The Arts support the interests of business, communities and life-long education.

Local businesses, art organizations, school systems, economic development groups and members of the computer industry are all looking either for trained workers for technology, or ways of teaching technology to the workers they have. The expanding scope of technologies calls for an expanding scope of teachers who are able to teach professional level computer applications while helping to build the identity or self-reliance of their students. Open Studio sites find that artists who serve as technology teachers can do this particularly well as they are accustomed to working with people of varying ages, abilities, and interests. This flexible teaching style appeals to students and supports the labor and training interests of the community.

The Arts make content and culture relevant to communities.

Artists are not separate from the communities in which they live. One benefit of the convergence of arts and technology is that the technology itself is always secondary to _ creative expression_. In other words, technology is only one tool for creating cultural content and is not the end in itself.

Community arts organizations are becoming important centers in facilitating creative expression for the immediate and broader community, such as cultural preservation and advocacy for important community issues. As Bryan Warren of the Portland Museum, in Louisville, Kentucky, commented,

"A real example can be seen in classes taught to kids whose eyes glaze over as you discuss hardware, protocols and various tech anachronism. When the chance arrives to do photo manipulation or story writing those same eyes brighten up."

Media Alliance's Belinda Griswold offered the example of an artist-activist who spoke to an audience filled with community members, including artists. Once this artist-activist showed how she used the Web to further her cause, the audience became more interested in exploring new applications of technology for advocacy purposes .

Challenges for Arts Organizations Involved in Digital Divide Efforts

While the challenges that arts organizations face are somewhat similar to other community technology centers, arts organizations who have incorporated technology training into their missions face unique obstacles when talking with funders, advocating in their communities, conducting trainings and maintaining computer labs.

One frustration arises from an inadequate definition of the digital divide. Without a shared definition that incorporates the issues of creative expression, training and content, organizations have a tough time convincing funders to support their mission. In many cases, their traditional supporters in the arts funding community, are unaware of technology and its benefits. In addition, funders who support technology initiatives overlook the impact that the arts can have on the digital divide. Usually arts organizations are able to participate in digital divide initiatives only if they are part of a larger consortium of organizations, including school districts, large museums or cultural institutions. Yet the large size of these consortiums often prevent them from quickly responding to the changing shifts of the digital culture and needs of the community.

In contrast, many Open Studio organizations, which are small and community-based, have found that their close association with their communities allow them to be more responsive to technology needs.

Jessica Irish, Open Studio trainer with OnRamp , a small digital arts organization in Los Angeles, stated , "We feel we are uniquely positioned to provide direct and powerful steps in bridging the digital divide: we provide small classes, we operate on a production model, we provide all the youth that work with us with free donated computers as well as training, we have a growing 'word of mouth' outreach from artists all over Los Angeles.... and yet we most often experience our intimate and focused scale as a disability when it comes to funding."

These challenges are similar to those experienced by community technology centers as is the need to constantly advocate about the many uses of technology. Additionally, arts organizations must continue to justify and validate the importance of the arts. As Bryan Warren, Portland Museum, stated, "It is difficult to make an argument for art or technology in communities that struggle with the day-to-day material realities."

Like most technology centers , Open Studio sites find they must learn to accommodate varying levels of technology skills and must keep their labs up-to-date. Yet arts organization face the unique challenge of finding trainers who understand both technology and the arts -- and maybe who understand that the line of demarcation between art and technology is not very wide. Keeping the hardware and software up-to-date is an expensive process because artists tend to use multimedia software (graphics, animation, and streaming media), which is often more costly than traditional software programs (such as browsers, word processing, and email.) The amount of bandwidth available in a community also poses an ongoing challenge. Without broad and unlimited access, artists and arts organizations are limited in the amount of creative and diverse content they can produce.

The arts are uniquely positioned to help shape the dialogue about the digital divide and to create solutions for narrowing the technology gap.

Through the Open Studio program, artists and arts organization in low-income and underserved neighborhoods are learning to create online cultural content relevant to their communities. But being part of a community also means that arts face the same challenges as the communities in which they reside. If the neighborhood suffers from redlining of access to high-speed Internet connections or historically high poverty and low literacy rates, then those challenges will find their expression within the missions and operations of arts organizations. In the end, the greater capacity invested into the well-being of the community increases the potential of the arts and technology organizations. Conversely, the more capacity put into the arts and technology organizations' well-being, the greater the potential for community expression.

Benton Foundation 2000 www.benton.org