Digital Divide Movie Review

The movie that we watched in class last Tuesday was very enlightening to me. I went to a high school that was very big and also very poor, but I never noticed that anyone was technology-deficient. Most of the people that I knew had computers, if not at home, then at some point in the classroom. I am not sure that the difference between the movie and my high school was just about the time difference (computers are so much more accessible than they were even 5 years ago) or about the digital divide, but from my own experiences, it did not seem very relevant. 

Another thing that was very interesting to me was the ending of the movie. Even though these kids had great opportunities with being introduced to technology, they still had problems when coming to the real world after and at the end of their schooling. One kid learned the lesson of procrastination: even though he had learned so much with computers, this simple life lesson should have been learned long before this senior project was due. This could have been a direct influence of the school he was at. I get the feeling that the school was very project/group project based and maybe if the school had been more well-rounded, he would have learned more. Another example of this was the girl who dropped out of a gang once she was introduced to computers. She did overcome a lot and computers really did change her life, but she still did not get the job that she wanted because she still was not proficient enough. It was sad that she had to continue to work at her fry-cook job even though she had learned so much from computers. 

The differences that the four stories had were really interesting. The girl that had grown up with technology vs. the girl who dropped out of a gang when introduced to technology in high school was amazing. Technology definitely had an impact on both lives: one girl graduated high school to go on to brown and another graduated high school without being in a gang. Both are major accomplishments. The digital divide was bridged in both these instances and if we can keep stories like these in our minds, maybe the digital divide will be totally broken one day. All it will take is for technology to spread throughout the country and for people to teach the uneducated masses about how to use it.