Laptop ProgramLightspan, Inc. www.lightspan.comPlugged In www.pluggedin.orgNeighborhood Network www.hud.gov/nnwnnwindex.html6.Explore opportunities for corporate support. A good place to start is www.wested.org/tie/grant.html#corporate. This site has a list of corporate and foundation funding sources and other grant related resources.The model initiative I chose to investigate is NetDay. NetDay is a project connecting students and their teachers in under-served communities with the necessary resources to facilitate learning through education technology. From this site, NetDay Compass is accessible. NetDay Compass is a teachers guide to educational technology resources. There are sections on developing technology plans, technology infrastructure, grant and funding, classroom support, and model high tech schools. Here teachers will find the information they need to include technology in education and narrow the gap of the digital divide. In the three years I have been teaching in Louisiana, I have seen numerous incidents of digital divide. However, one particular incident stands out in my mind the most. Last year, I had a Financial Math class made up of mostly juniors and seniors. I had never really though about students not having access to the Internet or much less a computer. We had just finished a unit on hiring expenses, when I decide to have the students complete a mock job search. I gave them a list of web sites and asked them to go home and find a job add and bring it back the next day. To my surprise, most of the student brought adds from the newspaper, which was perfectly fine, but it peaked my curiosity. I started inquiring why they had clipped the articles instead of clicking for them. Come to find out, only about of the 26 student class had access to the Internet away from school. I was astonished. In addition, the students that had used the Internet to job hunt tended to bring in more professional type ...
