Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Week 14: Servon, Chapter 9 Toward a New Agenda

Policy Makers: pages 226-227

"Policy must work to close remaining divides, focusing specifically on the disabled, African-Americans, Latinos, and those living in rural and inner-city areas."
"Policy makers must create and expand programs to address the training and content dimensions of the digital divide."
"Policy makers at the state and local levels should also continue to use flexible federal funding sources..to support innovative programs that address the digital divide and simultaneously confront other issues such as the IT labor shortage and persistent poverty."
"Policy makers at all levels of government should view the digital divide as an issue that cuts across departments and programs; failure to do so will have the effect of continued fragmentation and lack of unified response."

Community Technology Centers (CTCs) pages: 227-228

the article gives 2 visions that people have CTCs..
The first is to use the CTCs as training institutions, family learning centers, and gathering places
The second is to use CTCs only to fill present voids in other institutions, meaning that once those voids are filled CTCs would not be necessary
..Servon says that on their own CTCs probably won't help fix the digital divide so they need to work with other organizations and it will be most realistic for CTCs to partner with CTOs, libraries, or schools to help institutionalize their goals and reach more people.

Primary and Secondary Schools: pages 228-229

"Rather than creating separate computer classes, teachers should be given incentives to learn about IT and integrate it into their existing curricula."
"Government programs can also create incentives for collaboration between the schools and local CTCs."
..it also says that programs that are designed to be "scalable and adapt to students needs,should be studied in order to understand and document their potential and limits." and that federal programs should be used to institutionalize programs in schools, which will make for more equal access.

Post-Secondary Education: page 229

(by post-secondary education they mean 4 year college, community college, community-based training programs, employer-led training, and for-profit post secondary schools)

"Schools need to have flexible curricula, provide after-program services, and be responsive to employers' changing needs"
..it also says that all of the different types of post-secondary schools should work together and share their successes with each other so they can all improve.

The Corporate Sector: page 230

"Investing in areas that have not benefited fully from the information society simultaneously promotes larger social goals and enhances corporations' bottom lines."
..it says that corporate support is needed to help but that it is complicated to do

Philanthropic Organizations: page 230

"All of the actors that support digital divide work - corporate, government, and philanthropic- should share learning more widely and figure out how to complement each other's work."

Libraries: pages 230-231

"Libraries and CTCs need to engage in information sharing of what they have learned thus far in terms of how to apply IT."
..just before this this quote it says that library staff have had training in information science, which is an extremely important skill for CTCs and many CTC staff members have not.

Community-building Organizations: page 231

"CBOs (community-building organizations) can use new technology to increase the scale of their work."
"These organizations also have the ability to do creative and flexible programming."
"One of the most important roles for the CBOs will be to share these lessons with policy makers so that they can learn from this grassroots work and employ it to influence policy."

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