Digital Education and the Challenges of Digital Divide.

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Digital education is transformative and impacts education equipping the learners for a better future. It's enhancing, give learners choices and freedom to go at their own pace and be better achievers.  It has been happening at the school and higher education levels in many nations at a space decided by each nation's ability to meet the financial demands it entails. Some have managed computers and laptops in their school systems; others have only heard of them.  

The covid-19 pandemic has stuck the world at lightning speed, allowing no time for people to deal with the disaster it caused; it left the education systems in almost all nations in disarray.  When people encountered a killer disaster, everything other than life turned non-count.  But, education cannot be left in limbo, and in the new dispensation of strict prohibitory physical distancing, the use of technology turned out the only option.  Not bad because technology is the future, and that should have already started in the classrooms.  Any future jobs depend on the skill and use of technology. 

Technology in education. 

Technology application in education is a high priority at any time.  I remember how much I wished for them in my classroom or a classroom to use them to enhance my learner's grasp of the learning concepts.  Present-day technology applications in education are even far advanced than in my days. 

For example, the use of Augmented Reality in a classroom: It's an application, "using technology to superimpose an image generated by a computer on the real world, and it enhances the things learners see and hear in their natural environment by using smartphones or tablets."  

Virtual Reality is another application. Using that, learners can access areas and environments from distant places and the best teachers without travelling.  "Pre-recorded lessons from top educators and experts, or to field trips to an aquarium, a manufacturing plant, or even a foreign country are now within everyone's reach." Imagine a history teaching the word war, bringing into the classroom the images in the waterfront. 

Video-conferencing through apps and websites on laptops, tablets, and cellphones can assist the teachers in teaching locked-down learners in real-time.  Teachers and learners can see and hear each other using a webcam, microphone and speakers.  They can share their screen with learners and ask questions using chat functions. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype and Google  Classrooms have wide applications in the school classroom teaching and learning.  

It's encouraging to learn about the enhancing side of these technology applications in education based on their uses and applications to afford these devices, the d, data and the power supply.  Needless to say, only schools in the rich area can boast to us about their investment for the future.   

What about the schools in poor areas where learners have to worry about the next meal of a day and the teachers are ill-equipped with such devices. The learners have no devices, no data, no regular power, no tech-savvy teachers.   These two scenarios are no exaggeration in the South African school system in the covid time ale preparing for a new normal post-covid time.  

In South Africa, like many other countries with vast economic disparities among the population, technology-based online education is another cause to widen the already existing inequality among the citizens.  And education experts have estimated that online schooling is not possible in 80% of South African classrooms due to a lack of devices, teachers and data. 

The situation in India is not any better, although the government endorses it as a flag-bearer in the digital revolution. 

1. A total of 320 million learners in India have been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and have transitioned to e-learning.

2. With huge regional and household disparities in access to the internet and technology, this transition has not been possible for all students and educators.

3. The rapid shift to e-learning prompted by the pandemic has resurfaced long-standing issues of inequality and a digital divide in India that must be addressed by future economic, education and digital policies.

The digital divide is a debilitating factor in education in developing countries and in developed nations.   In America, 44 per cent of adults in households with low income don't have broadband.  This is causing a 'homework gap' in the school-going children from these homes compared to those who have internet connections in their homes. 

The same is the case with the UK and many other nations. 

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