Home Access Taskforce: to ensure all children (in England) have home access to the internet

Picture reused from previous OLPC post

The BBC reports on the Schools Minister Jim Knight's 10 January speech at the BETT show (a largely schools oriented ICT in education trade show). Excerpt:

"The government is to set up a taskforce to ensure all children have access to the internet outside of school. The government says more than 800,000 children and young people in England are currently not online at home and wants to close the 'digital divide'."

"I am setting up a home access taskforce which I will personally chair. I want this to bring together key industry players, the voluntary sector, and education representatives to look at the issues, because ICT at every child's fingertips is not the be-all and end-all of our ambitions."

Echoes of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), but with the initial internal study by Dell, RM, and Intel, the impression is that there will be an emphasis on providing devices running proprietary "industry standard"  rather than open source software, and costing rather more that the OLPC machine's $100+. OLPC is directing its efforts at developing countries, but you would imagine that they'd not slam the door in Jim Knight's face if he was to open a dialogue, assuming he has not already done so. Personally I think the issue is as much about connectivity as devices. Increasingly, internet access is like a utility: if connectivity was ubiquitous and free (and there are examples of area-wide WiFi networks with the basic level of connectivity free, not to mention creative initiatives like Fon), then organising the provision of devices would become much more straightfoward.

Comments

[rufus sanders]

Totally agree that if connectivity is not ubiquitous, technology is not enough on its own: I run a laptop leasing scheme in a tough school in Croydon. As successful as it is, the people who drop off are in the lowest 10% socio-economically and there is no "direct" funding (capital spending only) to alleviate the fact they can't afford phone lines. As my school can't blanket-buy connectivity - it is unfiltered and open to abuse - we don't. So whilst my scheme is supposed to address the "digital divide" and hopefully bridge it, in some cases we end up actually widening the gap. See New Addington OnLine website for more.

[Steve Bellamy]

One idea I have come across is using a schools 100 MB/s broadband access that lies dormant every evening from 4pm to 8am. Technologies exist that can beam this out to at least the local community reducing the total outlay on 1:1 broadband connectivity at home. This can include primary schools to spread the web and as part of a wider charitable laptop scheme you can spread the cost of 1:1 broadband across the whole fleet