Lingering gaps
Continuing a bit more from yesterday’s post, another factor that sometimes gets overlooked when it comes to implementing Web 2.0 in education is disparities in bandwidth. It’s probably pretty safe to say that there are a lot of college faculty who enjoy not only high-speed connections at their campus offices, but also at their homes. But this isn’t necessarily the case with students, especially when it comes to those out in the rural areas. And, of course, one of the key reasons students from rural areas enroll in distance ed courses is because of the commute time. Yet, it’s easy to think, in the year 2010, that we’ve conquered the broadband mountain. Not so, says the FCC. Issues related to cost and complexity discourage 93 million Americans from broadband participation.