Week 9 Task 2

What differences to all this might the 'digital divide' make ? a) To socioeconomically related access issues within society? b)To globals access issues across countries and regions?

Of course Presnkyk's concept is assuming that everyone is connected to the internet whether they be the “digital immigrant” or “digital native.” But what about those individuals who are not even on the internet, they form part of what is know as the “digital divide.” In terms of the socioeconomically, it is for reasons of age, race and ethnicity, geography, income, educational factors. Firstly for age there are those individuals that of the elderly who may not have an idea about the Internet and probably have no intention of using the Internet. Although we live within a society that is not a third world country, there are obvious economic divides between individuals. For example, in the poorer areas of England technology such as the Internet isn’t necessarily readily available to all. So those children that have grown up within these deprived areas without the Internet in their home, can’t surely be classified as a “digital native” (Prensky, 2004) if they haven’t the means to be. As regards educational factors, a child's education within certain areas of the country maybe better than another child's elsewhere, this may mean that they may feel unfairly treated. As Norris notes there is a social divide between the “information rich and the information poor.” ( Norris, :4) Meaning that the level of digital development are different for each student and so these individuals may not be as “fluent” in the digital language as Prensky may have us believe.