# 6G to Take the Digital Divide by Storm: Key Technologies and Trends to Bridge the Gap
## 6 The 6G Services to \"Connect\" People
### Education  
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the crucial role played by ICT in the education sector, specifically in the support of remote learning. Recent studies like [6] revealed that during school closures, teachers faced challenges related to student engagement and students' lack of Internet access, and that the challenges were more prominent in  
Figure 3: The analyzed use cases where 6G can bridge the digital divide: caring and education @home in rural areas.  
high-poverty schools and rural areas. Approximately 43% of teachers reported concerns related to communication with students and student participation, while teachers in higher-poverty schools were more likely to indicate that their students did not have Internet access at home. It is not difficult to imagine how the technologies presented in Sections 3 and 4 could help bridge such gaps. In Figure 3, NTN solutions, such as GEO/LEO satellites or UAVs, may serve as space/aerial access points providing internet access to schools as well as to students' houses located in remote or critical areas. As a matter of fact, UAVs and other aerial appliances have always played the role of Internet carriers in poorly connected areas, such as for disaster recovery. However, many studies also consider them as a means for bridging the digital divide in education [41]. A pilot experiment was conducted by Google through its Project Loon [42], which aims to bring connectivity to millions of people that are offline in rural New Zealand, or Facebook Aquila ([[https://engineering.fb.com/2018/06/27/connectivity/high-altitude-connectivity-the-next-chapter/](https://engineering.fb.com/2018/06/27/connectivity/high-altitude-connectivity-the-next-chapter/)]([https://engineering.fb.com/2018/06/27/connectivity/high-altitude-connectivity-the-next-chapter/](https://engineering.fb.com/2018/06/27/connectivity/high-altitude-connectivity-the-next-chapter/)), accessed on 15 June 2022). Moreover, within each school building, smart antennas and intelligent surfaces can enable dynamic resource allocation policies, so that the bandwidth is allocated to different indoor locations/rooms in a fine-grained way based on the activities being performed. In the same way, service-fruition 6G technologies can result in increased effectiveness of remote/in-presence teaching, higher student engagement, and customized experiences based on the students' needs. Affective computing constitutes one of the most active research topics in education via the integration of visual and textual channels according to the survey in [31]. It can also help in detecting abnormal situations with the scholars at early stages, such as Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder [43] that otherwise would cause students to easily detach from the learning environment. Educational scenarios could also take advantage of XR. In particular, seminal XR-based solutions have been implied in education, mostly for medical purposes [44], with successful outcomes. However, it is in pedagogical use that XR technologies arguably unleash their most significant outcome: their ability to enhance active and experiential learning [45]. With such technology at hand, even scholars that are not physically collocated can share experiences and collaboration. This can transform the way educational content is delivered to students, encouraging creativity and bringing abstract concepts to life.  
Figure 4 shows a comparison of the two analyzed use cases in terms of importance level of the technologies discussed in Sections 3 and 4 for their realization.