Learning to Bridge the Digital Divide

Citation

(2001), "Learning to Bridge the Digital Divide", Education + Training, Vol. 43 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2001.00443bad.003

Learning to Bridge the Digital Divide

Books

Learning to Bridge the Digital Divide

Centre for Educational Research and Innovation and the National Center on Adult Literacy, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development£12ISBN 926418288, 2000

Keywords: Information technology, Developing countries

Across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), attention is focusing increasingly on what has been dubbed the "digital divide" – the gaps in access to information and communication technology (ICT). The stakes are high, as ICT is now so much a part of society and the catalyst for new economies to emerge. Exclusion threatens the ICT "have nots", whether individuals, groups or entire countries. Political awareness of the stakes at issue grows sharply, as indicated by the prominence of the digital divide in European Union and G8 discussions.

Education and training lie at the heart of these issues and their solutions. They are the lifeblood of twenty-first century knowledge societies, and ICT is critical to them. The gaps that define the "learning digital divide" are thus as important as the more obvious gaps in access to the technology itself. Learning is central in the more fundamental sense that the machines and equipment are useless without the competence to exploit them. Nurturing this competence is, in part, the job of schools and colleges. In part, it also depends on the learning that takes place in homes, communities and workplaces.

Learning to Bridge the Digital Divide analyses approaches by developed and developing countries, with special emphasis on Sweden, Portugal, the UK, Japan, the USA and Finland. The information is based on the Fifth US National Center on Adult Literacy and OECD Round Table, "The Lifelong Learning and New Technologies Gap: Reaching the Disadvantaged", which took place at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, in 1999. The evidence contained in this volume shows that ICT can be the solution to inequalities rather than their cause – digital diversity and opportunity rather than digital divide. But more needs to be done to make this a reality.