Chapter 8: Vignette and Case Study

Vignette: Western Cape Striving to Eliminate the Digital Divide     

1. How important is access to ICT in children’s education?

          Broadly speaking, the difference is not necessarily determined by the access to the Internet, but by access to ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) and to Media that the different segments of society can use. With regards to the Internet, the access is only one aspect, other factors such as the quality of connection and related services should be considered. ICT is playing an increasing role in people's lives. ICT is also becoming an important aspect in the employment sector and a tool for enabling citizen participation and social inclusion as more services, products and information becomes accessible by electronic means. Access to ICT is very much important in children’s education it is because it the best possible way to make them get interested and determine to know. ICT provides the easy access to Internet in which in just one click and one enter it can help the children to understand and comprehend the things and ideas that might refused them. Schools are using ICT to enhance and add a new dimension to the learning process, and also to increase communication between the home and school. Some schools use their own web sites to make learning resources available on line. With the functionality and capability of ICT, some schools are also able to provide parents and pupils with data relating to attainment, attendance or other school/community-related information. Also, it is more easy and convenient for the children to use ICT regarding research, or making assignments by just typing the terms instead of scanning all the pages of a very thick book. The increasing relevance of ICT in education, and in wider aspects of social life, has lead to schools striving to ensure that all pupils become capable in its use and application in a number of situations.

2. What are the barriers that stand in the way of universal access to ICT for everyone who wants it?

Socio-economic and socio-personal factors

Barriers to the adoption and use of ICTs by socially excluded groups are usually correlated with socio-economic factors. Commonly identified barriers preventing the adoption and use of ICTs are lack of low-income, low levels of education, low skilled jobs, unemployment and lack of technological or computing skills. All of these factors are linked to, or are consequences of, socio-economic factors.

The percentage of households with home access to the Internet by gross income deciles group

Other factors hindering the adoption and use of ICTs are life characteristics such as age, gender, disability and ethnicity. Some of these are often related to socially excluded groups, but they are not necessarily socio-economic factors. All the factors mentioned above have been widely researched and are acknowledged as the core barriers to the adoption and use of ICT.

Socio-personal factors

Our analysis has shown that Socio-personal factors are also important barriers to the adoption of ICTs by socially excluded groups. Socio-personal barriers encompass attitudinal and behavioral factors.  These include issues such as levels of interest, awareness, understanding and acceptance of ICTs.

 Credits to: http://www.google.com.ph/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CGAQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.london.gov.uk%2Fgla%2Fpublications%2Fe-london%2Fdigital_divide.rtf&ei=XMOzT5n1C8iriAek4I32CA&usg=AFQjCNHMw90BhO1x9STsCqqOSZjEkqALbg&sig2=5Oq19TGmdYnGxmnCK-VFdA

Case Study # 3: Technological Advances Create Digital Divide in Health Care

1. Can you provide examples that either refute or confirm the idea that a gap exists between the kinds of healthcare services available to the wealthy and the poor in the United States?

          Inequality in economic resources is a natural but not altogether attractive feature of a free society. As health care becomes an ever larger share of the economy, we will have no choice but to struggle with the questions of how far we should allow such inequality to extend and what restrictions on our liberty we should endure in the name of fairness. At its root, the lack of health care for all in America is fundamentally a moral issue. The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not have some form of universal health care defined as a basic guarantee of health care to all of its citizens. While other countries have declared health care to be a basic right, the United States treats health care as a privilege, only available to those who can afford it... Americans purport to believe in equal opportunity. Yet, in the current situation, those who do not have health care are at risk for financial ruin and poorer health, both of which disadvantage them in society and thereby do not give them equal opportunity.

Credits to: http://www.weegy.com/?ConversationId=91CA1D2F

2. Should healthcare organizations make major investments in telemedicine to provide improved services that only the wealthy can afford?

          There is nothing wrong to invest in healthcare telemedicine advances, when it indeed helps patients or people to avail convenient and easy to use technologies to make their health stable and away from risks. But when it comes to discussion when it is only available to the wealthy people, it’s the time that I disagree with the said concern. Healthcare is not a privilege to the poor and a favored to the rich ones. Healthcare is not only for the people who can afford but also to those who can least afford. When technological advances accompany discriminations between poor and elite people, what’s the essence of bringing it to implementation? And what is the bottom line in the existence of the said technology, when first and foremost it was made to help people, but it is really to the people or to those who can only afford? I strongly agree that you or your country deserves to be called ahead in terms of technology advancement if and only if, no discrimination between poor and elite people present in the society.

3. What are the drawbacks of telemedicine? What situations might not lend themselves to telemedicine solutions? 

          The possible hindrance that might occur in telemedicine is that few people can only avail or afford it, because almost people are not that rich to avail the product or services. Possible drawbacks also can be the lack of knowledge to use such devices when it was once passed to the patient or individuals hands. The possible disadvantage of telemedicine is when come to the point of a breakdown in the relationship between health professional and patient; a breakdown in the relationship between health professionals; issues concerning the quality of health information; and organizational and bureaucratic difficulties.If telemedicine advance technology failed or guilty to have error, patients might not lend themselves to telemedicine solutions and maybe probably go back to what is usual way usage of healthcare.