Digital Divide

For the purpose of the Service Learning Assignment of CSC300, I have to mention about the digital divide.  As described in other posts, I have only been installing a Moodle learning server at a computer lab and while I have had steady contact with those that work there, I have not interacted at all with the community members that use the lab.

However, although I didn't have any interaction with those community members, I believe I have made tremendous amount of impact to reduce the gap of digital divide.
The digital divide is described to be the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all (from Wikipedia).

With no doubt, the Moodle learning server is an application that can help reduce the gap of digital divide, and up until now, St. Christopher House didn't have it. Brandon and I have provided them the access to this fabulous application and this for sure is going to help lots of community members in other side of digital divide to have access to digital and information technology.

Now I will talk about the reason of the gap of the digital divide. Since I have not had much interaction with those people on the other side of digital divide, I don't have much of information to talk about the reason of this gap. However, from the discussion with Judi and Songyu, and the Internet research, I can think of a few reasons of this gap. Financial difficulties, cultural difference created by age gap, and lack of education are the main reasons of the gap between digital divide. It may also be the case if they are located in place where it is geographically difficult to have access to digital and IT. However, since I helped community house that is located in the middle downtown Toronto, I won't consider geographical case. Anyways, If they have one of these difficulties or a gap, then there is high probability of them being on the other side of digital divide. All the people that I saw in the lab were either between middle aged to seniors or usually looked poor and uneducated. However, St. Christopher House helps those people to have access to computer and IT devices for free and educate them without any charges so that they can learn how to use those tools. I'm very proud that I was able to have opportunity to be a part of this community service.