At the end of the last session of my service learning this Thursday, I needed to reflect on how my understanding of the digital divide has changed thanks to my new experiences. It quickly became apparent that we, the computer literate (well, hopefully far more than just literate being students in computer science) are extremely privileged to have had the opportunity to work with these powerful tools on an everyday basis and to have the knowledge recognize the possibilities on how they can improve our lives. The digital divide is very real and someone without the opportunity – possibly because of economic or political reasons – to work on computers has to make a tremendous effort and have outside support to learn to become computer literate. There are a surprising number of these people among us and it is a great thing that organizations such as CCVT recognize the value of computer literacy and tries selflessly to help these people out.
Ending on related note, we are also hugely fortunate to be living in Canada. In the places that these students are from, troubled areas such as Somalia, Ethiopia or Burma, there are such tremendous hardships and injustices faced by the people that worrying about the problems of “digital divide” or “computer literacy” is a near non issue in comparison. These people faced unspeakable hardships to escape and live among us in Toronto, and the satisfaction of being able help them out in whatever way I could was more than enough reward for the time I spent there.
Thanks for reading!
Hao Cheng
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