March 15, 2001

At Home and Online

By Julee Newberger

Elisabeth Stock believes that bridging the digital divide in the United States will take more than just hooking up computers in schools, libraries and community centers. Stock's New York City program, Computers for Youth (CFY), provides inner-city students and teachers with fully-equipped home computers, and offers training and services so that families can learn together.

“The program was founded to refocus digital divide efforts on the home,” Stock says. “The home is where family members can spend unlimited hours on the computer, something not possible at libraries or community centers.”

The billions of dollars spent on wiring public places do nothing to address the wide gap in computer ownership between high- and low-income families. Ninety-three percent of families earning more than $75,000 a year own home computers, as opposed to only 40 percent of families earning less than $30,000 a year. Studies show that children from lower-income families who do not have access to technology are at a disadvantage when it comes to their schoolwork.

“The lack of public support for home computer projects has significant educational consequences,” Stock says. “It is a missed opportunity for parents to become more involved in their children's education.”

Getting Online and Getting Help
In 1999, Stock and her colleagues launched a pilot project in a South Bronx middle school with students from primarily low-income families. Over a five-month period, they distributed computers and training to all 205 families and 23 teachers and staff members. The computers included software, modems and free Internet service.

Families also received a phone number and e-mail address for technical support provided by trained high school students in the community. These students served as a personalized “help desk,” providing one-on-one consultation to teachers and families.

The individual attention from the technical support staff helped to address what Stock refers to as the Fear Factor: people who don't have neighbors, friends or families steeped in the latest technology feel alienated and don't know where to go for help.

The Fear Factor may be as much an obstacle to bridging the digital divide as the cost. “It's not only an issue of affordability,” Stock says, “but an issue of helping people who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the idea of technology.”

The traditional corporate help-desk model may not be most effective for new computer users. To date, the CFY staff has resolved over 130 tech support problems, from confusion about dial-up networking to software problems. “Most new users don't call traditional tech desks for help,” Stock says, “Yet when CFY representatives visit schools in the program, children come immediately to request help.”

Barriers to Online Content
There has not been much research on another aspect of the digital divide: what type of information is online, and for whom is it created? The Children's Partnership recently reported that many underserved communities are not benefiting from Internet access because they cannot find content that meets their needs. Problems include a lack of urgently needed local information, and barriers related to literacy, language and cultural diversity.

Stock and her colleagues addressed these barriers by creating a default home page on the Web for families served by the program. Community Corner is a bilingual site that highlights online content relevant to low-income, ethnically-diverse populations of children and families. The site has carefully-chosen links and information that connect people to resources close to home.

"A lot of Web portals have so many links that for a new user it's overwhelming,” Stock says. "We're trying to have fewer links, but make them really useful."

To create and maintain the content, CFY hired Web-development interns from the communities served. These interns identify and annotate Web links for the site and ensure it continues to meet the community's informational needs.

More Than Just Access
Research shows the importance of having computers in the home for children's learning, but just having access might not be enough. In a national study, Professor Henry Jay Becker of U.C. Irvine found that higher-income children used their home computers for a wider range of applications overall than did lower-income children. CFY's strategy of providing computers and technical assistance for both families and teachers may be the key.

In a preliminary study completed after CFY's first year of operation, teachers reported that their students' schoolwork improved not just in presentation but also in quality. Students said their computers help them organize their schoolwork better, and they enjoyed doing research online. The Internet also had a positive social impact on inner-city kids, who reported that e-mail helped them break their social isolation.

“I think it helps them to have another way to connect to the world,” says one teacher in a CFY school.

CFY was able to keep the program's cost-per-family to less than $1,000 by leveraging investments from the business community and the households themselves. The business community donated Pentium computers, which staff upgraded and reconfigured before distributing to families. Once the computers were taken home, the families made additional investments by purchasing complementary equipment such as printers, scanners, or educational CD-ROMs.

Stock hopes that in the future, government programs will emulate the program and put a focus on bringing technology into homes. “Now that we've proven the project is worthwhile and can be replicated,” Stock asks, “then what's stopping us?”

Bridging the Divide at Home
The U.S. General Accounting Office recently reported that the digital divide in the United States is narrowing, with more women and rural residents using the Internet than before. But according to other sources including the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, noticeable divides exist between those with different income and education levels, different racial and ethnic groups, old and young, single and dual- parent families and those with and without disabilities.

“We would love it if there were no digital divide,” Stock says, “but we don't believe the digital divide is going away as quickly as others say it is.”

Since putting the program in place at the school in the South Bronx, CFY has worked with three additional middle schools: one in East New York (Brooklyn), one in East Harlem and one in West Harlem. Overall CFY has trained 914 individual members of these four school communities and distributed 443 home computers. For all these families and teachers, CFY provides ongoing technical support free of charge.

“The next challenge is to expand the program in New York City, or go national,” Stock says.

As a 1996 White House Fellow, Stock built the nationwide Computers for Learning Program, which enables federal agencies to donate thousands of surplus computers directly to needy schools.

“A computer is like a musical instrument,” Stock says. “If you have the opportunity to not only learn it in school, but to go home and practice on your own time, that's really when you learn how to use it, and become comfortable enough to teach someone else.”

• The Benton Foundation's Digital Divide Network offers information to help everyone succeed in the digital world.
• Learn about government programs designed to bridge the digital divide.