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Net Literacy is an Indianapolis based 501(c) non-profit organization that promotes computer and Internet literacy. The program is youth-run, with adult mentoring. All participants receive instruction for free.
The students have their own operating board of directors to plan strategy, develop operational plans, write grant proposals, and organize their training efforts. The students are assisted by a small volunteer adult member board to sign and authorize contracts.
The honorary co-chairpersons are Senator Evan Bayh and Senator Richard Lugar. Dr. Suellen Reed, Superintendent of the Indiana Department of Education, also serves on the honorary board. Other members of the board include Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Joe Donnelly, Congresswoman Susan Brooks, past Congressman Dan Burton, Congressman Andre Carson, past Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard, Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry, past USIIA president Dave McClure, past Fort Wayne Mayor Graham Richard, and past Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett.
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In 2005, the student-volunteers lobbied members of the Indiana General Assembly, resulting in the passage of House Concurrent Resolution 85, honoring the program. The group was also recognized with presentations from former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Senator Robert Dole and President George W. Bush in a White House ceremony. In 2006, Net Literacy received the Mother Teresa Kindness Award from the National Caring Institute and was recognized as the “Citizen of the Year” by Topics and several other Gannett Company newspapers[ which? ].
The group has been endorsed by or partnered with over 400 organizations, including the Techpoint Foundation, the Indiana Recycling Coalition, the US Internet Industry Association, the AARP, the Urban League, the Indiana Association of Student Councils, Purdue University, the Verizon Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the United Way of America, Bright House Networks, the Corporation for Education Technology, the Indiana Department of Education, and numerous school districts.[ citation needed ]
Net Literacy’s programs are independently beginning to be developed by students in the U.S. and abroad. The US Internet Industry Association submitted [ when? ] a filing to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission naming Net Literacy’s model as their preferred approach to reducing the digital divide in the United States. [2] Net Literacy was selected by the European Union Study on Digital Inclusion as one of the 91 most promising good practice initiatives based upon an investigation of 32 countries including the EU Member States, the United States, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and India. [3] Microsoft's publication Innovating for inclusion: A Digital Inclusion guide for those leading the way, cites Net Literacy as one of the best of class digital inclusions examples. [4] Other organizations and consortiums, including the US Broadband Coalition with 170 members that including Google, Comcast, Verizon and Cisco Systems, cited Net Literacy and its model as a policy consideration in its Adoption and Usage Report.[ citation needed ] The report was prepared for the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of the U.S. broadband industry to support the FCC’s National Broadband Plan blueprint report to the U.S. Congress. The FCC cited Net Literacy and its programs (Digital Literacy Corps, Community Connects, and Senior Connects) in the National Broadband Plan presented to Congress in April, 2010.
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Senior Connects is a program of Net Literacy that was founded as the Senior Connects Corporation in 2003. Senior Connects targets retirement homes, independent living facilities and nursing homes, and provides computers and computer and Internet training to the residents. Through the Senior Connects program residents receive computer and Internet access. The program builds computer labs inside independent and assisted living facilities, teaches seniors how to use the computer and access the Internet, and provides access and increased computer access to seniors
Each Senior Connects team is anchored in a high school. Some high schools are piloting programs that invite senior citizens into the schools to use the schools’ computer labs.
The Safe Connects program targets K-12 students teaching Internet safety. Safe Connects works with public schools and the Department of Education to integrate the Safe Connects curricula into School curricula. The main categories of the curriculum include Internet predators, adult content, online safety and netiquette.
Volunteer high school students are provided with training materials to conduct classes for their younger peers in the presence of their parents. While first focusing on 4th through 6th grade and high school students, the Safe Connects website includes a section for students, parents, K-12 teachers, and other youth organizations. The program, which was approved by the Indiana Department of Education, has a 4-6 grade program, and 7/8 grade program, and a 9-12 grade program tested at several central Indiana high schools. The K-3 and 7-8 grade programs. In 2009, the Indiana General Assembly passed a resolution calling for all Indiana Public, educational, and government access (PEG) Channels to carry the Safe Connects programming.
The Computer Connects a program collects and refurbishes computers. The computers are then distributed by Community Connects to Senior centers and other community centers.
On all donated computers (unless otherwise requested), the hard drive is securely wiped using DBAN. On most computers that are refurbished by Computer Connects, a slipstreamed version of Windows 2000 with OpenOffice.org is installed.[ needs update ]
In 2006, high schools began establishing their own Computer Connects programs, repurposing computers to families on public assistance that could not otherwise afford to purchase a computer for their children to complete their homework at home.
The Computer Connects program provides computer labs to United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and Section 8 apartments, community centers, pre-school, after school, faith-based and other nonprofits seeking to establish their own computer labs, with the help of mayors and town managers, including the Indianapolis and Fort Wayne mayors.
Financial Connects' is a website that aggregates financial literacy videos and online interactive games. It also includes 20 original financial literacy videos that served as a pilot to test the feasibility of the project. One month after the Financial Connects website launched, Net Literacy received a $98,000 grant from State Farm insurance so the website could be expanded and serve as a national financial literacy website created by students. Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Tony Bennett commended the students on this project and the IDOE sent an email to every Indiana Principal and Superintendent encouraging them to participate in a contest which will provide 100 prizes ranging from $250 to $1,000 for videos and interactive games used on this website.
Environmental Protection Agency-compliant computer recycling is a part of the computer-drives. Asset Forwarding, a member of both the Indiana and National Recycling Coalition has endorsed Net Literacy and agreed to be the "point company" in a statewide computer recycling drive.
Net Literacy student volunteers adopt projects and programs for their community. As an example, during a Lilly Endowment summer program, 18 student volunteers built websites for 20 nonprofits as a community service, many of which could not have otherwise been able to afford an online presence. [5] A second project focused on building a website for the community group NESCO. [6]
The digital divide is the unequal access to digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide creates a division and inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information Age in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) have eclipsed manufacturing technologies as the basis for world economies and social connectivity, people without access to the Internet and other ICTs are at a socio-economic disadvantage, for they are unable or less able to find and apply for jobs, shop and sell online, participate democratically, or research and learn.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce that serves as the President's principal adviser on telecommunications policies pertaining to the United States' economic and technological advancement and to regulation of the telecommunications industry.
The global digital divide describes global disparities, primarily between developed and developing countries, in regards to access to computing and information resources such as the Internet and the opportunities derived from such access. As with a smaller unit of analysis, this gap describes an inequality that exists, referencing a global scale.
The Utah Education Network (UEN) is a broadband and digital broadcast network serving public education, higher education, applied technology campuses, libraries, and public charter schools throughout the state of Utah. The Network facilitates interactive video conferencing, provides instructional support services, and operates a public television station (KUEN) on behalf of the Utah State Board of Regents. UEN services benefit more than 60,000 faculty and staff, and more than 780,000 students from pre-schoolers in Head Start programs through grandparents in graduate school. UEN headquarters are in Salt Lake City at the Eccles Broadcast Center on the University of Utah campus.
The Universal Service Fund (USF) is a system of telecommunications subsidies and fees managed by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intended to promote universal access to telecommunications services in the United States. The FCC established the fund in 1997 in compliance with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The FCC is a government agency that implements and enforces telecommunications regulations across the U.S. and its territories. The Universal Service Fund's budget ranges from $5–8 billion per year depending on the needs of the telecommunications providers. These needs include the cost to maintain the hardware needed for their services and the services themselves. The total 2019 proposed budget for the USF was $8.4 billion. The budget is revised quarterly allowing the service providers to accurately estimate their costs. As of 2019, roughly 60% of the USF budget was put towards “high-cost” areas, 19% went to libraries and schools, 13% was for low income areas, and 8% was for rural health care. In 2019 the rate for the USF budget was 24.4% of a telecom company's interstate and international end-user revenues.
Nunavut Public Library Services (NPLS) is the public library system serving the citizens of the Canadian territory of Nunavut. The libraries which comprise Nunavut Public Library Services exist in the three administrative regions: Qikiqtaaluk, Kivalliq, and Kitikmeot.
The San Francisco Digital Inclusion Strategy (SFDIS) is a policy initiative in San Francisco, CA. It is part of TechConnect, which is an initiative aimed at achieving Mayor Gavin Newsom's campaign promise to provide all San Franciscans with free wireless internet access.
Information and media literacy (IML) enables people to show and make informed judgments as users of information and media, as well as to become skillful creators and producers of information and media messages in their own right. Renee Hobbs suggests that “few people verify the information they find online ― both adults and children tend to uncritically trust information they find, from whatever source.” People need to gauge the credibility of information and can do so by answering three questions:
WOAS is an American educational high school radio station that broadcasts a variety style music format on 88.5 MHz. The studio and transmitter tower is located at the Ontonagon Area School building. The Ontonagon Area School District holds ownership and U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensing for the station. Operation of the station is conducted by an all volunteer staff that includes students of the Ontonagon Area Schools and local community members.
The Internet in the United States grew out of the ARPANET, a network sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1960s. The Internet in the United States in turn provided the foundation for the worldwide Internet of today.
One Economy Corporation is a Washington, D.C. based, global, nonprofit organization that uses the power of technology to connect underserved, low-income communities around the world to vital online information and resources.
Public Knowledge is a non-profit Washington, D.C.–based public interest group. Founded in 2001 by David Bollier, Gigi Sohn, and Laurie Racine, Public Knowledge is primarily involved in the fields of intellectual property law, competition and choice in the digital marketplace, and an open standards/end-to-end internet.
Julius Genachowski is an American lawyer and businessman. He became the Federal Communications Commission Chairman on June 29, 2009. On March 22, 2013, he announced he would be leaving the FCC in the coming weeks. On January 6, 2014, it was announced that Genachowski had joined The Carlyle Group.
Technology For All is a nonprofit organization based in Houston, Texas. Developed in 1997 by local entrepreneurs, Technology For All services community-based organizations with computer technology, training, and other digital incentives “to empower under-resourced communities through the tools of technology.” Through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program grant, Technology For All (TFA) currently hosts 19 public computer centers.
Nichole Pinkard is an American computer scientist and associate professor of learning sciences and faculty director of the Office of Community Education Partnerships (OCEP) in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern. She is helping lead a collaboration with Apple and the Chicago Public School system to teach computer programming to teachers.
The digital divide in the United States refers to inequalities between individuals, households, and other groups of different demographic and socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies ("ICTs") and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information gained from connecting.
The digital divide is described as the characterization of the gap between individuals or countries that have access to technology and individuals or countries that do not. This also includes, but is not limited to: access to computers, internet, and information literacy. General contributions to the digital divide are geography and next generational users. Next generational users are more involved with using devices that can connect to the internet, while the geography factor focuses more on how an individual's location put them at an advantage or disadvantage to compete with the digital age. However, only a handful on people and communities are being represented. Underdeveloped geographical locations, like certain regions of the continent of Africa serves as one of the underrepresented minorities. In particular, South Africa faces many developmental problems that make it one of the more complex societies in the world to map the digital divide in. The country is divided by ethnic inequality and discrepancies in the level of development between different sectors. These obstacles result in disparities in access to information and communications technology (ICT). This disparity is commonly known as the digital divide. There has been another major contributor, namely, Telkom and its monopolistic hold on the progress of ICT in South Africa. South Africa faces unique challenges in addressing the digital divide, including ethnic inequality, disparities in development levels between different sectors, and a historically monopolistic telecommunications industry. Efforts to bridge the digital divide in South Africa involve a combination of government initiatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profit organizations (NPOs), and public-private partnerships, all working towards increasing access to technology, promoting digital literacy, and enhancing digital skills among the population.
EveryoneOn is a national non-profit organization working to eliminate the digital divide through partnerships with the technology industry, content creators, libraries and other organizations to deliver free and affordable technology and training to all Americans.
The homework gap is the difficulty students experience completing homework when they lack internet access at home, compared to those who have access. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey data from 2013, there were approximately 5 million households with school-age children in the United States that lacked access to high-speed Internet service. Low-income households and minority households made up a “disproportionate” share of those 5 million households; 31.4% of households with school-age children whose incomes fell below $50,000 fell into the group without internet access at home. According to Pew, this group makes up about 40% of all families with school-age children in the United States.
ConnectEd is a United States Federal Government Initiative that aims to increase internet connectivity and technology in all public schools to enhance learning. The ConnectEd initiative is funded through Title IV Part A of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which designates specific monies for the effective use of technology in schools. The 2016 National Education Technology Plan aligns with ConnectEd as a published action plan to meet these goals of technology integration and connectivity.
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