Significance of the Digital Divide

Advances in the internet have changed the way America works,learns,and communicates. The internet has become an integral part of our social life. This has assisted us by communicating and research purposes.

Once a variety of sources is found, it is important to make sure that the sources are credible, accurate, and current before writing a research paper, it is very important for a student to think critically about the sources he/she choses to use because not every source that’s find or related to he/she research topic will be equally useful. In an academic setting, being able to critically evaluate information is important in order to conduct quality research. Each item you find must be evaluated to determine its quality and credibility in order to best support your research.

The term “digital divide” was coined to define this growing gap between the people who do not have access to modern technology (more specifically the poor, rural, elderly, and handicapped) and the people who do (wealthy, middle class, and those living in urban/suburban areas). In urban areas especially, a common assumption made is that everyone has access to this modern technology. People see technology all around them and assume it is integrated into everyone’s life. Because of the simplicity technology offers, it has become the engine behind economics, politics, and communication. In rural areas, most people know the potential of modern technology, but don’t have the resources to achieve it. “It has been observed that households earning incomes over $75,000 are 20 times more likely to have home internet access than those at lowest income levels and 10 times more likely to have a

The validity of the information on a website is indicated by the reliability of the information sources and developers, as well as the reliability and expertise of the information reviewers ("Evaluating internet health,”). Claims made by the information should be unbiased and based on fact, not opinion.

While advances in technology can be beneficial, the growing need to have answers at our fingertips has contributed to issues with the credibility of websites. The internet is bursting with information that can be obtained through search engines or databases. However, problems arise when it comes to determining the accuracy behind the content obtained because some of

With the requirement of research needed I had to choose from which sources to obtain information from on my occupation. I made a list about important facts, eliminating sources that were not beneficial. The internet is always a dependable source for finding valuable information. That being said, the internet was

Lindsay Safriet Mr. Blackburn English IV 20 Nov 2015 Victorian Era Sexism: Annotated Bibliography "Historical Analysis: Women as the "the Sex" During the Victorian Era. "Historical Analysis: Women as the "the Sex" During the Victorian Era. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.

For this reason, the scholarly databases are available only through a library which deals specifically with published information identified by reliable sources. Subsequently, articles, journals or books are organized and indexed with the extensive search ability including author, title or subject. Important to realize the fact that sites ".gov" and ".edu" may be trusted if the publisher is the educational institution (Finding and Evaluating Online Resources,2014).

64% of the 113 million internet users in America have searched for medical information. (as cited in Rankin et al., 2005). Many health professionals concern that the internet resources can be potentially negative by spreading misinformation (as cited in Rankin et al.,

The digital divide is related to the access that certain people have to the knowledge and the resources necessary to keep up with society or to better their lifestyle. Researches has indicated that people from different socio-economic groups have limited access to technologies like unlimited internet access, the latest smartphones, or IPads which limits their personal and professional development. These restrictions contribute to what is known as the digital divide. Simply put, the digital divide is the division of knowledge and resources between the haves and the have-nots. The digital divide does exist but this should not be an excuse for people not to learn. As learned in our Principles of Adult Education class, adult learning can take place anywhere and anytime. People can learn in a classroom, on the job, or at home but learning is a contact sport and people have to want to

This general knowledge that one can only achieve by reading everyday writing is also rising on the internet. According to Doug Gross, the author of source D, “researchers all over the world” can look into “topics ranging from the rise of citizen journalism to tracking vaccination rate to predicting stock market activity.” (Gross) With the help of international connection from the internet, more people can read everyday writings that are on widely known topics to specific topics like vaccination rates, leading them to solutions for world

The World Wide Web has taken over the basic foundation of research. In these times, people tend to want to do their research using the information they find on the web. I find this appalling, because libraries offer way more informational resources than the web does. In my findings, the web offers may un-credible sources you really need to know where to go and understand what a credible source is.

Laptops, smartphones, smartwatches and the Internet are all good examples that show how much human life has been relying on digital technologies in the past two decades. Nevertheless, digital divide, the phenomenon that not all people have access to digital technologies, still prevails in Australia. The recent Australia Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) report states that the increase in Internet coverage in the country has been little in the last three years, especially in South Australia and Tasmania, and the lower income group uses the Internet significantly less than the richer (Thomas, 2017). This certainly has much to do with the affordability of hardware and Internet services for people with low socioeconomic status, but such a divergence may also be explained by the absence of infrastructure, such as the broadband network service, in the remote regions (Park et al., 2015, p.3633).

The growth of technology in the past decades has made the human race closer than ever before no matter what part of the world you’re from. With the creation of the web, obtaining information for personal and business purposes became as easy as a click of your mouse. Although with the vast amount of information one could find on search engines such as Google, Ask, Yahoo, and Bing, there are also misleading and false information on the internet. This is where the main difference between scholarly resources and popular resources appears. Scholarly resources are written by professional scholars in a specific field while popular resources are journalist or bloggers that target the general public. “That is why it is so important, especially when

to us for this paper, that we were to review sound, balanced websites and to avoid ones that may