TCS Communications workers prepare a conduit for connection on West 20th Avenue in Lakewood last week. In many far-flung and urban districts, the digital divide centers on sufficient data-streaming capacity to allow students to take the kinds of classes that many small schools can't offer in a bricks-and-mortar classroom. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)

On Colorado's education landscape, the "digital divide" looks something like this: While one classroom streams online coursework to students, others log off the Internet so a school's meager bandwidth can handle the load.

The gap between the technological haves and have-nots, once defined by access to the computer hardware that drives high-tech learning, now centers on an information superhighway that too often recedes to the digital equivalent of rutted rural back roads.

As a result, classes ranging from Advanced Placement to world languages to credit-recovery courses may not be available in areas with lagging local Internet connections denying many students the same instructional options as their better-connected counterparts.

"If a kid on the plains has good broadband access, he can mitigate those differences with online courses," said John Watson, founder of the Durango-based Evergreen Education Group and co-author of a study for the Colorado Department of Education. "When you don't, it's difficult or impossible."

And as the state moves toward online assessment, such as some high-stakes testing slated for 2014, questions remain about whether the technological infrastructure will be able to handle it.

"Without an adequate pipeline, information may not reach teachers or students in a timely manner," said Dan Domagala, chief information officer for the Colorado Department of Education. "I think access is no longer the issue. It has shifted toward speed and bandwidth and usage and cost."

Those costs present a potentially daunting challenge.

A key 15-year-old federal program called E-Rate, which discounts Internet access for most Colorado school districts, finds itself fast approaching a financial crisis. That could cause more budget headaches for districts already scrambling to provide basic services.

Colorado has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to narrow the digital divide. But those efforts struggle to keep pace with classroom innovation.

Read more from the original source:
Education's digital divide more about bandwidth than computer hardware