Wireless hot spots: A pandemic fix yielding lackluster results for rural students

Many families in rural New Mexico still do not have high speed internet access at home. In Farmington, the public school district, a local college, and nonprofits are working to close the gap in the digital divide for students by addressing access to technology and the internet.

Chicago Connected is a $50 million four-year program that has already provided high-speed broadband to over 40,000 households in need, representing around 64,000 Chicago public school students, and plans to expand. On-the-ground community outreach in multiple languages was key to connecting residents to the program quickly, which was needed as school went virtual due to COVID-19. The public schools helped identify eligible low-income students whose parents were then contacted by outreach workers.

Digilearns is a learning intervention platform created to deliver learning materials to students across the country through the use of mobile phones and doesn’t require an internet connection, making education more accessible and affordable to students, particularly those from low-income families. Since launching in 2020, Digilearns has provided access to educational materials to more than 1,000 secondary school children.

Apps that track students’ online activity, door-to-door visits, and receiving input from families on how to reopen schools, are all ways school districts across the country are responding to absenteeism during the pandemic. In one San Antonio district, they were able to locate around 2,900 of the 3,000 students who weren’t showing up to classes.

A school district in Virginia has implemented a two-prong solution to provide internet access to rural students during the pandemic. The indoor solution allows students to make appointments to be inside the school to access the internet. The outside solution, equipping three schools in the district with equipment to boost their Wi-Fi signals, allowing students who can’t make indoor appointments a way to access the Wi-Fi. “We just took advantage of something that was already happening in the district."

For one school district in Texas, using personal relationships established before the pandemic, proved the best way to reach bilingual students in rural parts of the district who weren't showing up to remote classes. One librarian and a parent “went door-to-door there to track down students and find out how they could help families transition to virtual learning. They also had parents fill out note cards showing how many children lived in the home to make sure no child was left behind.” Other Texas districts are similarly relying on home visits to check on students. Data shows those methods work.

Far from its location in Boston, Southern New Hampshire University is offering refugees at the Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya a shot at getting an education. SNHU offers associate's and bachelor’s online degree programs in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Lebanon. A degree could be life changing, given that only 1 percent of refugees have access to higher education. The online program is “self-paced, offered in English, and costs less.” So far, 84 have enrolled and 24 have graduated.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, “almost half of schoolchildren, or a total of 121 million pupils, are unable to access remote learning,” according to a 2020 UNICEF report, an even bigger problem during a pandemic when students can’t access virtual classes. Eneza Education is using texts messages to deliver classes. Their bite-size lessons delivered via text and “Ask a Teacher” feature are providing education to millions of subscribers.

School districts and cities in California are looking to create their own local Wifi networks as a long-term solution to the digital divide, and an alternative to hotspots. Some are even becoming internet service providers themselves (ISP) — efforts, they say, that will make it easier to provide internet access to those who can’t afford it.

Arizona State University’s SolarSPELL project developed a waterproof device with a solar panel and other equipment that allows users to connect to “offline WiFi” networks and browse preloaded webpages. SD cards store open access educational content and national education ministries have the ability to add national textbooks and other culturally relevant content. About 25 users can connect without slowing browsing speeds and the ASU team provides training on how to use the device. While the device is primarily charged using the solar panel, it can also be charged using electricity during cloudy weather.