Centers

[Lorraine Pozzi]

And a little closer to home than Newark or Palo Alto --
Miller Community Center has a computer lab largely un-
used because there is no funding for staff and a dearth
of volunteer tutors, Garfield ditto.  LP

On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Steve wrote:

> x-no-archive: yes
> 
> =====================
> 
> Local Centers Try to Span 'Digital Divide'
> 
> Pamela Mendels
> NY Times 7/24/99
> 
> 
> NEWARK -- In a tidy building in an otherwise run-down section of
> Newark, 18-year-old Andrew D. Bedward hunched intently over a laptop
> this week, trying to figure out the finer points of a software
> program for making slide-show-type presentations. 
> 
> He was happy with many features of a practice presentation he had
> made, one with simple text, a few colorful graphics and a splash or
> two of animation. He was not yet satisfied, however, with the
> background color. 
> 
> "Too light," he declared, working away at the keyboard to adjust the
> hues. 
> 
> For the summer, Bedward is a daily visitor to the Urban League of
> Essex County's Family Technology Center, one of a growing number of
> neighborhood centers that bring high technology to poor and isolated
> areas where home computer ownership is a rarity. 
> 
> Such centers are seeking to solve a problem that has arisen as high
> technology has become an essential tool for work, education and
> other important arenas of modern life: assuring that those who cannot
> afford computers can nonetheless master and have access to them. 
> 
> Support for the idea of such centers received a boost this month,
> when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
> (NAACP) announced that it would launch a new initiative, in
> partnership with AT&T, to set up centers in 20 cities across the
> United States. The group plans first to establish six pilot centers
> in Seattle, New York, Baltimore, Miami, Philadelphia and Dallas, and
> eventually add another 14, according to Sheila Douglas, an NAACP
> spokeswoman. "Recent studies have indicated that people of color,
> particularly African-Americans, are falling behind in terms of
> general access and learning how to use the technology," she said.
> "This project is a solution to address that problem." 
> 
> But the NAACP's plans are not the only sign of support for the idea.
> This year, for example, the federal Education Department kicked off
> a new program to distribute $10 million in grants to assist in the
> creation or expansion of community technology centers. The
> department has received about 750 applications for the money, and
> plans to finance between 40 and 60, according to Norris E. Dickard,
> director of the program. Grant recipients are to be announced in
> mid-September. 
> 
> Advocates of the centers say they are necessary to help bridge what
> policy-makers call the "digital divide," the disparity in access to
> technology between whites and minorities. A study published by the
> Commerce Department earlier this month found, for example, that
> while 47 percent of white households own computers, only 23 percent
> of black households and 25 percent of Hispanic households do. 
> 
> "It's important for this technology to be embedded in the life of
> communities," said Gary Chapman, director of The 21st Century
> Project at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the
> University of Texas at Austin. "For the most part, people in affluent
> communities have that technology access at home or in jobs where it
> is common. Poor people don't have it in either." 
> 
> Not everyone whole-heartedly embraces the idea of community
> technology centers. Steven J. Allen is a vice president of Progess &
> Freedom Foundation in Washington, a research group focusing on the
> digital revolution and favoring free market solutions to social
> problems. He believes programs encouraging home computer ownership
> are the wisest, and favors federal policy more pointedly aimed at
> telecommunications industry deregulation, which he believes could
> bring down the cost of Internet connections to make it more
> affordable to the poor. "The ultimate goal should be that people
> don't have to rely on community technology centers, that people will
> have Internet access at home," he said. 
> 
> Just how many community technology centers there are so far in the
> United States is difficult to say. The Community Technology Centers'
> Network, an organization for the centers, has about 300 members. But
> Stephen B. Ronan, network manager for the group, which is based in
> Waltham, Mass., says there are many more. Some are stand-alone
> centers, he said. Most are programs housed in churches, youth groups
> and other community organizations. The centers vary widely, too, in
> the type of programs they offer. 
> 
> For example, Plugged In, housed in three neighboring store-fronts,
> serves as a kind of all-purpose computer hub for East Palo Alto,
> Calif., a low-income enclave in what people usually think of as a
> uniformly affluent area, Silicon Valley. 
> 
> The organization's Technology Access Center is home to 16 computer
> terminals with Internet access and such machinery as printers and fax
> machines, all available for little or no charge. About 150 people
> visit the center weekly for things as diverse as resume writing, Web
> research on car buying and print-outs of invitations to a child's
> birthday party, said Magda A. Escobar, executive director of the
> group. 
> 
> Open seven days a week, the center also trains teen-agers in Web
> design, offers low-cost computer literacy classes and operates a
> number of other programs. 
> 
> Unlike Plugged In, the Family Technology Center in Newark, focuses on
> technology training for the workplace and school. 
> 
> One Internet-connected computer terminal is available for public use,
> and the pre-school students at the site's small child care center all
> spend about an hour or two a week at the computers getting their
> first taste of technology through colorful software for the very
> young. But the center's primary purpose is reflected in such
> activities as its 16-week program to train the unemployed in how to
> use word-processing and other software that could get them entry-level
> office jobs. Another program trains people to work on computer help
> desks. 
> 
> With 25 laptops, 31 personal computers connected to the Internet, an
> interactive television classroom and other high-tech gadgets, the
> center is part of a network of 65 centers operated in the United
> States by National Urban League affiliates, through a combination of
> corporate donations, federal grants and Urban League contributions. 
> 
> The League hopes to establish about 50 more by 2006 -- and upgrade the
> technology in all of them to be able to receive a new
> distance-learning curriculum in computer and job skills. 
> 
> The Urban League's interest in community technology training actually
> goes back decades, long before the Internet. Its current projects are
> the offspring of a technology center set up by the Urban League
> affiliate in Los Angeles in 1968, when participants were trained in
> such skills as data entry and maintenance of mainframe computers, said
> B. Keith Fulton, director of technology programs and policy at the
> National Urban League in New York. "The centers represent a gateway
> to careers in the next millennium," he said. 
> 
> Andrew Bedward is one of about 60 teen-agers taking part in the
> Family Technology Center's summer program to teach young people from
> Newark and surrounding areas such things as how to assemble and
> repair a personal computer, how to use various publishing software
> programs and how to use video production equipment. 
> 
> Bedward, who plans to enter college in fall, wanted to take part to
> learn computer skills that he believes will help him at the
> university and later in the workplace. Bedward said he does not have
> a computer at home and considers the keyboarding and basic
> word-processing he learned at school insufficient. "I feel college
> and life after college requires more than just word processing
> know-how," he said. "I have to be educated in every aspect of
> computer technology." 
> 
> Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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