Bridging Digital Divide in Philippines

The Philippine’s education system received a shock when its government closed all schools and
colleges nationwide in response to the COVID-19 outbreak which caused a pandemic on March 2020.

Approximately 27 million Filipino students were affected by the pandemic because the government
decided to put on hold the education of the children for their own safety.

Filipino learners were introduced to new normal and new modes of learning. One mode of learning
which I saw a problem and is connected to digital divide is the online learning.
 Small portion of the students that live in urban settings were able to access virtual classes, the
majority experienced significant challenges to continuing their education, predominantly due to poor
connectivity.

About 80% of the Filipino poor live in the rural areas of the country. These are towns located deep in
the mountains and the rice fields. Most of the students here have gadgets needed to learn through
online classes but the internet connection in rural areas is slow and close to zero. They have the
knowledge to use the gadgets and the internet but the problem is the accessibility to the internet.
Poor connection leaves rural student behind, slow internet connections or limited access from homes
in rural areas can contribute to students behind academically.

It is wrong to assume that since most have a smartphone, student can have sufficient access but
those who have only cellphone access perform as poorly as those who have no internet access at all.
 As we can see, in rural areas poor internet connection is the problem in online learning modality.
There are several ways to help solve it and make the rural areas livable and be competent as well.
The inaccessibility should be solved through the help, of course, by the government.
Government should have a partnership with telecommunications company in the Philippines to help
students in rural banks access the internet freely. Of course, the data mb that will be given is only
limited for google suites so that the free megabytes that the government issues will not be used to
browse social media apps like Facebook or TikTok.

Free load is in view and To make this solution possible, what we need now is the high speed internet
and to do this, we need to learn from other countries such as Kenya that partnered with GOOGLE
LOON to gain “Floating Cell Towers”
Through the use of balloons, it is estimated to give coverage up to 200 times the reach of the
average cell phone tower to increase the connectivity across the country, especially in rural areas.
 CONCLUSION

Students in rural area may have unequal access to the internet and may be deprived of their rights
to quality education but this will not stop us, students who aspire equality and the vision to bridge
and lessen the gap in digital divide to seek for solution and existing problems that this chaotic world
produces.

Poverty is just an illusion if all of us will unite and help each other to build the nation, it may be
through partnership with telecommunications to give the load assistance that the student use could
in their online classes.

Connect to the world to connect the world. That is the essence of this case study. To gain knowledge
from the others like the floating cell tower and make use of that knowledge to expand and create
bridges, hope, and a future for this generation which has been affected by the ongoing pandemic.
REFERENCES:

https://oup.foleon.com/report/digital-divide/case-
study-bridging-the-digital-divide-in-kenya/

FOR IMAGES:
pinterest.com.