For this reason the rest of this policy review will be broken down into these categories. GLOBAL The term “digital divide” is used in this text to represent an imbalance of access and therefor ability between people who inhabit urban and rural environments. This being said, the notion of a digital divide can manifest in other forms. The three most predominant categories to facilitate a digital divide are gender, age and class (Warschauer, M, 2007). Pedagogically speaking, all forms of digital divide have an impact in today’s classroom. A vast amount of time is spent harmonising digital literacy to raise the skills of the less able students with the ones that already have a good technical ability. The superfast broadband initiative stands to lessen the rural / urban divide. “We want to do more than bridge the digital divide – we want communities to have the tools to participate fully in the Big Society.” (Government, HM, 2010. Britain ’ s Superfast Broadband Future.)
I am interested to see what implications this will have on the other categories of digital divide. As private companies push technology to the threshold of what is currently possible; prior, yet still worthwhile tech services become cheaper and more accessible. As superfast broadband becomes the new commodity, standard broadband prices should in theory decrease to reduce the class digital divide. I fail to see how superfast broadband will reduce the gender and age digital divides unless out reach projects are created to facilitate a better understanding of the technology. The government hopes that the superfast broadband initiative will help stabilise and grow the economy. “A world class communications network will help the economy grow as we recover from the recession” (Government, HM, 2010. Britain ’ s Superfast Broadband Future.)
Reports show that in times of recession young adults flock towards higher education as the answer to unemployment (Holmes, C. & Mayhew, K., 2010). The surge towards higher education may have been suppressed slightly by two factors; heightened student fees, which are now capped at 9k and reduced funding for H.E institutions especially outside of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) remit (BIS, 2011). The consequence of growth as a resultant of better communication networks in the UK might lead to an increase in funding for H.E, particularly areas that utilise the new communication infrastructure such as Digital Media, computer science and any online entertainment related courses.