Last year, Great School Voices leader Dirk Tillotson urged the nation on his Citizen Ed show Access Denied to pursue an #InternetForAll agenda to get all kids connected to the internet regardless of their families’ ability to pay for internet service provider bills. In times of lockdown, after all, how else are students supposed to…
Great School Voices
The Emergency Broadband Benefit and How to Make Sure It Reaches Families Who Need It
What is the FCC’s Emergency Broadband Benefit program? On May 12, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program to help families pay for broadband internet access for their education and work-from-home needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many families don’t even know this program exists. So Great School Voices has joined…
A Digital Inclusion Expert Shares How Those in Education Can Get Internet Into Families’ Hands
In the fourth episode of “Access Denied” host Dirk Tillotson has on Angela Siefer, Executive Director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance to chat about how education folks can build on digital inclusion advocates’s work to solve the digital divide, together. Have you been following “Access Denied” so far? It’s the story of how 15…
As Schools Reopen, 16.9 Million Children Still Lack Internet Access, With Students of Color Hit the Hardest
We’ve been sounding the alarm about how dire students’ internet access problems are in this country throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and we wish we had better news to share with you today on that front. Unfortunately, according to a new report, fully 16.9 million children in the U.S. lack proper internet access to get online…
Access Denied Ep. 3: Racism, Redlining and the Digital Divide in Oakland
When 15 million students in this country can’t even get online to access their distance learning materials, something needs to change. Welcome to “Access Denied,” where host Dirk Tillotson covers the movement to provide internet access to all students regardless of family income. In episode 3, Dirk welcomed Oakland school board member Jumoke Hinton Hodge…