Addressing the Digital Divide with Emerging Technology

As a leader of educational technology I would create a pilot program that would make emerging technologies available to the underprivileged. The program would allow people of all genders, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds to benefit from basic IT classes. For example the computerized program would allow students that speak Spanish to have the program delivered in Spanish. The pilot program would provide laptops for students that cannot afford one.

An example of delivering emerging technology to others is concerning a group of girls in Kenya. The seed institute Cisco Networking Academy has a program that teaches girls in Kenya with the hope to help them get better jobs. More specifically, the goal is to train women and youth on ICT skills with two groups: housegirls and hasslers.

House girls: are girls who do house chores such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, etc. They get paid up to $50 per month from which they have to feed their families, pay fees for their siblings’ education and a host of other fees. The house girls are forced to drop out of school and are unable to get a university education. To get the girls to attend, Cisco and Seed leaders needed to convince the house girls’ employers to allow them to attend IT Essentials classes during the day.
Hasslers: are women who have faced many hassles including rape, sexual abuse by their own relatives; some are commercial sex workers who are trying to transform their lives. They hold regular sessions with them on job opportunities available for in the ICT field, the need to get certified and have a valuable skill that will change their lives.

This is an excellent program that these girls and women receive the opportunity to change their lives as they can transition from part of the population who does not even get counted in national statistics to being able to get a job that requires IT skills.

Reference:
http://blogs.cisco.com/emerging/comments/creating_greater_equity_with_emerging_technologies_in_kenya/

Red Queens and Technology

I viewed the movie Minority report online using Netflix. Netflix allows you to instantly watch movies and television episodes online on your computer or streamed instantly from Netflix over the Internet right to your television with a Netflix ready device.

The competition between DVDs and video is an example of red queen. Dr. Thornburg states, “Red Queen” is attached to certain phenomena when a competition between two forces results in the rapid development of them equally. The speed with which the competition took place was remarkable in reference to DVDs and videos. DVD’s were at one time available everywhere, from movie rental companies. However videos seen to be available online and via cable companies.

According to McLuhan’s tetrad DVDs and video on demand are about to become obsolete. The retrieval of the DVDs will render the video on demand obsolete and vice versa. The use of various online movie vendors such as Netflix has changed the way movies are viewed for quite some time. Netflix even offers a thirty day trail to try out the product.

References
Thornburg, D.D. (2008) Emerging technologies and McLuhan's Laws of Media. Lake Barrington, IL: Thornberg Center for Space Exploration.