[MIAMI] – The Overtown Children & Youth Coalition (OCYC) presented 30 K-3 students from the Overtown Optimist Club, Urgent Inc., and Touching Miami With Love with Kano PC’s this past weekend at CIC Miami during their laptop distribution program event. They also provided the students with a workshop session on How Computers Work Challenge, Kano Code, and Make Art Challenge exercise.
The students were elated as they learned how to work their PC. According to the ACT Center for Equity in Learning, the digital divide in education is between those with sufficient knowledge of and access to technology and those without. There is a growing need for unserved communities to access computing resources, training, and connectivity. This narrative is at the forefront of Overtown Children & Youth Coalition’s laptop scholarship program.
Students who have multiple laptops in their home and have access to high-speed broadband likely will have better educational success than someone who has one computer to share with their entire family and only has dial-up internet access.
As teachers use more technology in their courses, this divide increases for underserved populations. OCYC’s program will proudly distribute over 5000 laptop devices over the next five years. It will bridge the gap between the youth in Overtown and access to the hardware and software solutions provided to other children and youth in South Florida communities outside of Overtown.
