Project Overview
This proposal was inspired by Brazil's digital inclusion truck project which provided technology opportunities for students in inner cities to assist with the digital divide.
Brazil's Classroom-on-Wheels Project
"There are 16 million people in Brazil who are illiterate, and 22 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. In an attempt to change this, Digital Inclusion is a social program designed to give Brazilians every opportunity to survive in a digital world, by decreasing the digital divide. Digital inclusion focuses on helping those people who do not normally have access to IT&C (Information Technology and Communications) such as the poverty stricken and the people who live in the ghettos (known as "favelas" in Brazil). Through classes and training, low-income people across the country are learning the ins and outs of Internet and technology use (Scott, 2006, p. 1)."
Classroom-on-wheels affords children a place where they can learn how to use the Internet, or take other computer classes. It goes around the neighborhoods of the city where social vulnerabilities exist such as the slums and villages (Scott, 2006, p.1).
"The manager coordinates the schedule for vists to one of the eight regions of the city. There are three shifts of classes, two classrooms holding seven workstations, and six people to teach classes (two for each shift), many people are able to benefit from the mobile unit. According to Veloso, the Belo Horizonte area has an estimated population of 200 thousand, six thousands of whom have been trained in 'basic informatics' and 15,000 have learned how to access the Internet. The classroom-on-wheels has traveled to 12 different villages, slums and/or neighborhoods (Scott, 2006, p. 1-2)."
This project was a finalist in the Public Administration category of the 2006 Stockholm Challenge Award. Stockholm Challenge Award has been honoring social entrepreneurs in the field of ICT since 1994. Awards are issued for projects that use technology to improve people's social and economic conditions and their environment.
This proposal for a classroom-on-wheels project for Maryland will address the digital divide in rural areas on the Eastern Shore such as Dorchester and Somerset counties just as the Brazil mobile project reached out to students in their inner city to assist with the digital divide.
