A brief description of my experiences with the digital divide.

All throughout my life, the digital divide has greatly affected the world around me. I however, did not realize the effects of the digital divide until I was nearly an adult.

Growing up, I’ve never been too far behind technologically; although at the same time, I’m not exactly rich either. I lived in inner city East Cleveland during my early childhood so few if any of the people in my neighborhood had computers. In the year 2000, my mother bought a top of line desktop computer which was very exciting for us because, I wanted to play games online with it and because my mother had never owned a computer prior to this. At the time, we had a dial up 56k connection, so the internet connection was extremely slow and we couldn’t talk on the phone while connected to the internet. It was such a hassle I hardly ever even bothered to use the computer.  About a year later, we acquired a much better internet connection and I began to use the internet much more. By this time, I was in second grade, so I had no practical uses for a computer and at the time, I though computers were simply devices made for fun and entertainment. Late 2005, I moved to the suburb of Euclid because it was a much nicer neighborhood. It was here when I found a more practical use for my computer; to type papers in English class, which was normally an easy task. I’d never really asked any of my friends or classmates if they had computers, I just kind of assumed everyone either did or went to the library. I would get my assignments done very quickly, while it took many of my classmates much longer to complete the assignments. My friends frequently complained about the library computers, because it was difficult to reserve time to use one, and because the computers were very slow. Despite this, I was still very much blind to the issue of the digital divide.

For the longest time, the idea of people of not knowing how to use the internet still seemed ridiculous to me. While I was in high school, the amount I used my computer for assignments increased substantially; I did research, typed papers, emailed my teachers assignments and found help for complex math and science problems; I begin to realize at this point the computer was an academic necessity; however I was still unaware how few of my classmates had internet access. I once heard a teacher say “I asked the students in my class to email me their papers, but most of the students told me they didn’t know how to send an email! Most kids can use Facebook, why can’t they send a simple email? What’s wrong with kids these days!?” I thought it was ridiculous back then, but now I understand.  The reason most students knew how to use social network sites was because most of them had smart phones that allowed them to access the internet, and since social networking was so popular at the time, they would use their phone to access Facebook and Twitter. Basically, they only knew how to use things that were popular, because a lot of their friends used these sites; they never had the opportunity to sit down at their own personal computer (or Macintosh) and learn how to use a computer.

 It was my senior year when I finally understood the hardships of having limited access to a computer. I did the PSEOP (Post-secondary enrollments options program), which was a program that allowed who maintained high grades to take college courses at a participating college of their choosing. I did the program because it allowed me to take college courses early for free, however it did have a few drawbacks; I had to find my own transportation, if I were to get any lower than a C in any class I would have to pay for the class and books for that class, and the college credits counted very little as high school credits, so if I failed a class I would have also been held back and not been allowed to graduate. I chose to go to Cleveland State University (CSU) to take classes as a full time student because I thought the school looked like a very nice school after all of the new renovations made to it recently. Let’s keep in mind for future reference, that I did not own a laptop, nor could I afford one at the time.

I took the bus to go to downtown Cleveland, when I first entered the school, I was absolutely terrified. I didn’t know how hard my classes would be, I had no friends at school with me, and everyone around me seemed far more prepared than I was for classes. I noticed that just about everyone was using a laptop at the time, but that was the last of my concerns. The classes themselves weren’t nearly as difficult as I thought they were going to be however they all assigned large amount of homework weekly. Only problem was that most of the homework assigned would be completely internet based, I was usually assigned to look up journals online and type a paper, or read the documents my sociology teacher posted online.  While on campus, I had no type of internet access, other than the computer lab at Rhodes tower and the rentable laptops in the student center. The computer lab was almost always completely full, and had no type of reservation system, so if I wanted to use a computer there, I would have to get lucky and the rentable laptops were in terrible condition and were frustrating to use, not to mention they were only rentable from the student center which I was normally too far away from  to utilize In the time I had and because of this, I normally ended up waiting until I got home to do homework. The first semester was terrible; I had large gaps in-between classes but I couldn’t take advantage of them because I had no access to a usable computer. So between classes I normally would spend my time just sitting in one of the student lounges they had around campus and just staring in one direction until my next class, unless on some rare occasions when I saw one of my classmates, and I would talk to them for a while. After all my classes were done I would get on the bus and head home immediately, because of my large amount of homework, I didn’t have time to participate in any on campus events that happened later in the afternoon. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I got home at 4:00pm; on Tuesdays and Thursdays I got home at 1:00pm. I would get home, get on the computer and work to try and make up for all the wasted time on campus. It was extremely frustrating. However, the absolute worst came when it was winter; winter in Downtown Cleveland is terrible, the winds are extremely powerful, and it snows heavily. I remember days where I’d stand in a blizzard, waiting on a bus that would normally get held up in traffic. I’d be waiting until my fingers and feet became numb and piles of snow built up on my shoulders and head. I’d get home 3 hours later than I’d wanted and I would be extremely tired, despite this, I’d have to sit down at my computer and work. That all being said, the volume of online homework only grew during the second semester, however, the snow wasn’t as bad and it was at the end of the first semester. Second semester I had a math class that utilized the “Aleks” program and all of the work, homework, and quizzes were online; a history class that required a large amount of reading, however most of the document were exclusively online, a computer science course which was obviously, completely computer based, and English which also required an extensive amount of typing.

It all paid off though, I passed all of my classes and was done with school in May. I only had to settle with my advisor my college decision, financial aid, and scholarship opportunities. I was introduced to “college board” and online college search site that listed everything on would need to know about a school such as, mean ACT scores to be accepted, majors and minors available, cost, location, etc., and a variety of scholarships websites. I should also note that the entire financial aid system is online. In other words, if a student lacked access to a computer, then signing up for college would be nearly impossible.

After a month of relaxation, I graduated with honors from my high school. Over the course of the year I’d learned how important a computer and internet access were to education, and how difficult it is getting to succeed in school when you don’t have access to them. More and more, computers and internet use are being integrated into education, despite the fact that lower income families aren’t gaining more access to computers. This is when I understood that something had to change.