Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010

Cathy Michael, who writes the Communications & Legal Studies blog, posts a link to the text of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010. She quotes Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on the importance of the act:

The 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act is the most significant disability law in two decades.  The law’s provisions were endorsed in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan.  They will bring communication laws into the 21st Century, providing people with disabilities access to new broadband technologies and promoting new opportunities for innovation.

More pertinent quotes from Chairman Genachowski can be found at the Communications & Legal Studies blog and the full text of the act can be found here.

You Can’t Just say, ‘Here’s a Computer.’ You Can’t Just Say, ‘Here’s Cheap Internet,’You’ve Got to Teach a Man to Fish.

Every time I talk about transliteracy I mention this problem.

Providing access to highspeed broadband is only the first step.You have to think about the cost of hardware, the learning curve to use the hardware effectively.  After that is learning how to navigate the internet.  It’s not intuitive, there is no instruction manual and there is no formal training.

It is great that there is a national broadband plan but it does next to nothing to address the issues related the access and training once high speed is availabe.

So I love this quote from Waz: Top gadgets encourage broadband adoption

“You can’t just say, ‘Here’s a computer.’ You can’t just say, ‘Here’s cheap Internet,'” he said. “You’ve got to teach a man to fish.”

Read More:

• FCC’s Broadband Action Agenda Fails to Address Training and Education
• Librarians Play a Vital Role in 21st Century Literacies
• Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy Warns of “Second Class Citizens” in the Digital Age
• International Briefing on the U.S. National Broadband Plan
• Study: How The American Public Benefits from Internet and Computer Access at Public Libraries
• FCC Proposes Digital Literacy Corps
• Digital Literacy Skills Essential to Closing Broadband Gap #knightcomm

Digital Literacy Skills Essential to Closing Broadband Gap #knightcomm

[tweetmeme source=”librarianbyday” only_single=false] The Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy sites the Broadband Adoption and Use in America (pdf) report released by the Federal Communications Commission in Digital Literacy Skills Essential to Closing Broadband Gap when emphasising the importance and need for digital literacy

The survey findings reinforce the growing body of research that finds digital literacy skills are critical to bridging the gap between those who are able to fully participate in the information age and those who live as second-class citizens in informed communities

How do we close this gap? The Knight Commission recommends support and funding for public libraries.

Enhancing the information capacity and digital literacy skills of individuals isn’t limited to traditional educational institutions, however. The Commission recognized that digital skills are skills to be acquired and honed over a lifetime, and that other community institutions, organizations and individual citizens have a role to play. Along these lines, the Commission has recommended that  communities fund and support public libraries and other community institutions as centers of digital and media training, especially for adults (recommendation #7).

Links

• Digital Literacy Skills Essential to Closing Broadband Gap
• Broadband Adoption and Use in America (pdf)
• Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age

Chief Executives of Netflix and CommonSenseMedia Comment On the Digital Divide

[tweetmeme source=”librarianbyday” only_single=false]

This New York Times piece Will the Digital Divide Close by Itself? From the Google’s Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age provides a look at and arguments about the digital divide from two different perspectives.

From Jim Steyer, chief executive of CommonSense Media and co-sponsor of the event

“every kid needs to be digitally literate by the 8th grade” and called for a major public education campaign to make that happen. He argued that technology and learning are synonymous and that schools, parents, and kids must get up to speed in the next five years.

On the other hand:

Reed Hastings, the founder and chief executive of Netflix, contradicted him directly, saying it would take well more than five years to bridge the divide.

Mr. Hastings, an avid education philanthropist and proponent of school reforms, argued that at the advent of any new technology — television, cars, even rockets — people get riled up and wring their hands over a growing gap between the haves and have-nots.

He said that gaps narrow naturally as the market evolves and prices drop, enabling more people to bring new technology into the home and schools.

Most interestingly:

“We need to shift our expectations,” Mr. Hastings said. “This is a natural part of the evolution of technology.”

If I understand this correctly he is saying that the digital divide is part of an evolutionary process where technology and access to technology will be ubiquitous. I’m not sure I make the connection.

Most importantly:

Failed school reform might point to the need for more efforts outside of the classroom.

This is where libraries need to step in. We need to help students close the digital divide because what that means, what were talking about is the same thing as transliteracy. Becoming transliterate closes the digital divide. If schools can’t or wont, libraries need to step forward. We’ve done it for years with literacy, we need to do it now with transliteracy.

Originally blogged at Commentary On the Digital Divide from the Chief Executives of Netflix & CommonSenseMedia | Librarian by Day.