OzShacks.com.au
Title
Ozshacks.com
Description
Excerpted from the website:
- After having competed in the ThinkQuest competition during its previous cycle, Ammu and Ngoc began to realize something: when students create their own original content for the Web, it is content that has personal, regional, or cultural relevance. The Internet, since it is essentially demand-driven, has a dearth of content for low-accesss users and communities. This led to another thought: as the "Digital Divide," as it has been termed, steadily gains infamy, the main point of focus of media and awareness campaigns remains that of mere physical accesss to computers and the Internet; however, is it not just as important to have accesss to relevant, meaningful content? Similarly, in education, it is imperative that students have accesss to teachers who are willing and able to use technology effectively in their curricula and that their communities acknowledge, accept, and embrace technology's importance and potential. Many people do not realize that the Divide e xten ds beyond simply the fact that some people have computers and others do not. Computers by their mere presence are of very limited use. We thereby determined that we would create a site regarding this Divide; moreover, a site that breaks it down into four easy-to-understand sections, each of which discusses a distinct set of barriers to digital equity in the classroom: the physical barriers, digital barriers, human barriers, and socioeconomic barriers. We hope that such a division will make the Divide more easily conceptualized, consequently making potential solutions more apparent.
