Digital Inclusion
The EdLab Group (formerly the Puget Sound Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology (PSCTLT)) has recently created a new initiative focused on digital inclusion. Digital inclusion efforts empower people, organizations, and businesses to apply information technology in ways that result in greater participation in our growing knowledge-based society. The digital inclusion movement ensures that all individuals have access and skills to use the Internet and information technologies.
The EdLab Group has developed key partnerships with the Communities Connect Network (CCN) and LinkAmerica (LA) that will enable us to do more work in the critical area of increasing access to affordable technology, training, and broadband Internet for the underserved. Through this work, we will influence policies and implement programs to ensure digital inclusion in Washington State and beyond.
As part of this work, we will:
- Increase the capacity of community technology providers to deliver digital inclusion programs and services
- Focus on both sustainable broadband demand and adoption programs
- Identify and facilitate use of broadband technologies to improve social inclusion, workforce preparation, education, health, and economic stability
- Work to secure grants and funding for deployment, adoption, and use programs
- Identify where broadband service and digital inclusion programs currently exist and to identify where there are unserved or underserved areas
- Discover barriers to broadband adoption and use, and
- Expand collaboration between existing governmental, non-governmental, and business organizations to support digital inclusion.
Digital inclusion makes a difference…
• Today, 60% of jobs in the US require skills in technology, and those jobs pay well; people who use computers on the job earn 43% more than those who don’t. – Children’s Partnership, 2006/07
• 39% of online “health information seekers” ages 15-24 have changed their personal behavior because of health information obtained online. – Children’s Partnership, 2006/07
• 94% of youth ages 12-17 who have Internet access at home use the Internet for school research, while 78% believe the Internet helps them with schoolwork. – Children’s Partnership, 2006/07
• 45% of Internet users, or about 60 million Americans, say that the Internet helped them make big decisions or negotiate through major life episodes in the previous two years. – Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2006
For more information contact:
Karen Manuel
Director of Digital Inclusion Initiatives
EdLab Group
19020 33rd Ave W, Suite 210
Lynnwood, WA 98036
ph 425.977.4745
fax 425.977.4761
e-mail
