1. Beyond the Glow: Children's Broadband Access, Digital Learning Initiatives, and Academic Achievement in Rural Florida.
- Author
-
MARDIS, MARCIA
- Subjects
INTERNET ,ACADEMIC achievement ,BROADBAND communication systems ,MOBILE learning ,METROPOLITAN areas - Abstract
The United States has one of the highest levels of Internet penetration in the world, but still has 50 million Internet nonusers, many beyond the glow of urban areas. A persistent level of non-adoption stems from adults' lack of perceived need or benefit. Florida's unique move to all digital instructional materials and required online testing and course-taking in 2015 makes home broadband essential for maintaining a learning continuum. To date, little work has been done to determine the degree to which children have continuous access to broadband. In this paper, I present secondary analyses of Census, NTIA, student achievement, and school district data to discover possible connections between broadband access and learning. Results revealed lack of perceived need was the overriding factor for no home broadband. While neither school broadband nor community and district characteristics had significant relationships to one another or to student achievement, rurality had an unmistakable correlation, suggesting that children in rural homes that lacked broadband could be especially disadvantaged. Although existing data sets are imperfect and difficult to compare, initial explorations suggest that Florida's digital learning initiatives will benefit from widespread broadband in rural homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016