WWW: Beyond the Basics

3. The Internet Today

3.4 The Internet and Our Communities

The Internet has a great effect on our communities. It enables us to access and share information with the click of a button. It provides the academic community with items such as lesson plans, topics of research, and a host of other educational ideas from across the world. Students benefit because the Internet provides a resource to supplemental information for any subject. Educators benefit because the Internet provides a vast knowledge base to prepare for topics.

Although the Internet is a contribution to our communities, is it an equal distribution for all? If we lived in a society without any poverty or economic imbalance the answer to the question would be yes, but America is faced with millions of disadvantage citizens that are not privileged to have Internet access.

3.4.1 The Internet and Education

The Internet is used as a broad base of knowledge that contributes to the educational system. Students and teachers benefit from the use of the Internet, as well as administrators and others outside of formal education (Kahin, 1995). People are not only learning from the Internet, they are contributing and sharing knowledge through networked communities. The Internet is the advancement of education for all its users.

To help understand the power of the Internet in informal education, let's set up a scenario. Think of an enormous library with endless shelves of books, magazines, and papers. Now, include numerous people throughout the library to use as personal resources. Lastly, imagine that tools of all kinds were located in this library to assist you with just about anything. This fictitious library sounds like a wonderful place for anyone that desires to learn, and it is called the Internet.

Next, let's consider formal education and the Internet. If you look on most college campuses there is at least some information about that school and its policies. Some universities publish several courses on the Internet using the World Wide Web. Most computer classes have some type of information on a Web page providing students and potential students with course information and content. There are professors that prepare course notes for daily lectures that are available through the Web, and in some cases there are actually paperless classes that disburse all the course content on the World Wide Web. Although it is helpful to provide class material through the Internet, what kind of other benefits can the Internet provide?

In formal education on the elementary and secondary levels, teachers often try to find creative ways to keep young minds interested in current events and new subjects. To understand the capabilities of the Internet, let's examine another example. Imagine two elementary school classes one in the United States of America, and another in Russia. Now, imagine the schools have an information exchange program using the Internet. Each student in the American class has a Russian counterpart where both students spend several hours a day exchanging information and learning a new language. Each day the students interact with their partner by exchanging simple sentences, and sharing information about current events in their perspective countries. As part of the daily assignments, sentences are assigned, translated, and returned to their partner for grammar and spelling corrections. If the program continues for several months, the students will have a full collaboration of knowledge about another language and another culture. Each student will have practiced and improved language art skills by identifying spelling and grammatical mistakes, and will have acquired another language to use for communication (Kahin, 1995).

Is the scenario reality, or is that where the end of the twentieth century is leading us? It is actually a reality, this is a collaboration of several stories obtained. Can you see the benefit of the Internet in the classroom? To obtain more information about Education and the World Wide Web, see Chapter 6.

3.4.2 The Internet and Poverty

With the growing rate of the Internet, more economically challenged families are subjected to a greater disadvantage. What does this do to our society? Is it putting a greater gap between those that are privilege and those that are not? Are their actual solutions to make the Internet available for everyone?

Let's answer the first question, 'What does this do to our society?' When you have the less fortunate who are not properly equipped with proper information, it can create a gap between those who have internet access and those who do not have internet access. For example, the Internet provides information that can help search for lower insurance rates, better housing, and different job opportunities. If those most in need are without Internet access, some important information is less accessible. Unfortunately, the Internet is a resource that is skewed to those who can afford the access. There are some opinions that the Internet does not affect those in different financial categories. The main reason for this argument is that more and more libraries across the country provide Internet access to the surrounding communities. There are also arguments that the same information provided on the Internet is also provided in some other forms of communication. Therefore, those that do no have the privilege of the Internet still have accessibility to the information.

Regardless of opinions, the federal government has recognized the need for those below the poverty line to have Internet access. They have created several programs to help network some of our less fortunate communities. There are proposed tax cuts for lower income families that have a computer and Internet access. Programs are designed to provide free electronic mail for low-income families and the unemployed. Also, it is proposed to expand the concept of universal service from plain old telephone service to public access network services. These are a few of the programs for our underdeveloped and underprivileged families and communities.

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Copyright © 1996 Vonda M. Patterson, All Rights Reserved

Vonda M. Patterson <vondap@csgrad.cs.vt.edu>
Last modified: Tue Nov 26 13:13:33 1996