A new SETDA report digs into how states across the country are implementing new programs to help school districts close the digital divide.
Rural students make up almost one in five K-12 students in the United States.
Kajeet is announcing improvements to its SmartBus offerings to create a fully connected bus for school districts. These enhancements include push to talk headsets, a camera offload function and intelligent sensors.
A bipartisan group of senators have introduced a bill to make it easier for students to get their homework done on buses through installing wireless internet connectivity.
A new report finds fewer than 10 percent of school districts report that all students have access to non-shared devices at home, while the number of schools offering broadband at school continues to rise.
Kajeet has launched its second-annual Homework Gap Grant program, which provides mobile hotspots to schools to distribute to students who may not have internet access at home.
Among those who view the internet as a "bad" thing for society, the most common issue that stood out (cited by 25 percent) was how it isolates people or pushes them to spend too much time on devices. Sixteen percent talked about the spread of fake news; 14 percent were concerned about its impact on children; and 13 percent suggested that it "encourages illegal activity."
The report comes on the heels of a Trump administration infrastructure plan that includes $50 billion set aside for rural projects, distributed to states in the form of block grants, and another $20 billion for unspecified "transformative projects"; both reference the possibility of increasing broadband facilities alongside road, bridge, rail, port and water initiatives.
Now that the rules that govern net neutrality have been peeled away, the reins to the internet have been handed back to service providers such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to manage access to websites and web-based services.
Funding continues to be the biggest barrier for districts in their efforts to increase connectivity, in particular monthly recurring costs.