An End To The Digital Divide?

During a guest lecturer of Steve Kaufman and Shawn Kennedy from the University of Akron speaking about how current technology trends, compounded with the digital divide, continue to have a negative impacts on education in some capacities. Questions linger about where education is headed over the next century. What will education look like in fifty years?

Horace Mann's ideology about education being accessible to all is what has driven the free public school system in the U.S. over the last century. Before this, only the wealthy could afford to become educated. Currently, education has been drastically impacted by technology. The digital divide has more to do about a socioeconomic divide between the rich and poor. Demographics can dramatically impact a school districts capacity to keep up with the latest technology trends. With this, access to materials become more of a social justice issue between the haves and the have-nots. Schools in the wealthier districts can have all of the latest greatest technology and the poorer may have slim to none. While LiFi could prove to be a great beacon on a path to end the digital divide, its promises ignore the mere fact that one must be able to afford the modern luxury of a computer to utilize this technology.