President Clinton has talked about the access gap while launching efforts to bring more jobs and investment to regions bypassed by the economic boom. Last month he traveled to a Navajo reservation in New Mexico and announced plans to help 300,000 Native Americans secure Internet access. Various businesses and nonprofit groups have joined in the campaign known in the high-tech community as the Digital War on Poverty. And with several studies having found that teachers at schools in poor communities are less likely to use computers creatively in their classrooms, Gateway Inc. has started a five-year program to train 75,000 teachers nationwide in computer technology. Those in areas with low-income students use it for drill and practice, and that exacerbates the digital divide.
Teacher training has to be a goal.
To combat this, Breedlove has set up a three-year NEA exhibit on proper uses of classroom technology. Many schools have the access. Cooper runs a technology resource center in Northeast Washington that has about 40 computers with Internet access and makes them available at no cost to adults and children learning computer skills. Malcolm often goes to the center and has learned to make fliers on a computer. He says the center's classes also have helped him catch up to his classmates in navigating the Internet.