Digital Divide in Randpark Ridge Johannesburg
In this Ice Task I will be doing research on what digital divide actually means and how it affects some of the areas within Randpark Ridge. I will be comparing two neighbourhoods to another and I will be comparing two different schools to another and see how the digital divide compares them to another, the schools will be a government school and a private school. These schools also lie within a five kilometre radius of another.
According to Techopedia (2017) digital divide refers to the people who have easy access to the internet and those who don’t. A lack of access is believed to be a disadvantage to those on the disadvantage side of digital divide because of the huge knowledge base that can only be found online.
In Randpark Ridge there is a huge digital divide, with some of Northcliff’s houses bordering and entering Randpark Ridge through Fairland, you see massive houses with almost everything that is digitally automated, from garage doors to lights in the house. Some of these houses have Wifi and majority of them have televisions or an Ipad or a similar device. With Wifi and a compatible device a whole other level of information can be accessed and saved, this information has the ability to create new jobs and improve the standard of living. On the same road as these houses that I referred to is a location called Zandspruit. Unfortunately these people are on the disadvantage side of the digital divide, with most of them not having access to electricity, with a problem as such it affects them because they are not able to charge their phones or laptops if they so wish to have one. They now have less of a chance to find out about an available job because they don’t have access to electricity and Wifi. If they were able to access these online jobs and get the job, they could end up in a more digital friendly area and this could positively affect their family members.
Randpark High school is a government school that does not make use of digital equipment in the classroom except when the students attend Computer Application Technology (Randpark High School,2019). Curro Aurora make use of a tablet to download textbooks for the year andv students also do their classwork on the chosen tablet (Curro Aurora,2019). This just shows us the difference between a public school and a private school and how the digital divide works in each sector.
Reference List
Curro Aurora.2019.Tablet information for 2019.[Online]. Availiable at https://www.curro.co.za/gauteng/curro-serengeti/tablet-information/ [Accessed 6 August 2019].
Rand Park High School.2019.Academics.[Online]. Available at https://randparkhigh.co.za/academics/ [Accessed 6 August 2019].
Technopedia.2017.Digital Divide. 16 November 2017. [Online]. Available at: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/605/digital-divide [Accessed 6 August 2019].
19014136 DIGC 