Partners Rationale Objectives

The San Mateo Bridge "The one belief shared by all, is that bridging the digital divide will need to involve more than just distributing machines. Meaningful access to technology, adequate training and relevant content are instrumental steps to making the Internet fulfill its initial promise to be the great equalizer." - Ayala Tiago about the KQED Education Network seminar Digital Divide: Who's online, who's not? April 1, 2000. San Mateo Adult and Community Education is now laying the groundwork for the San Mateo Bridge, an Internet "portal" that will allow people with low literacy skills and whose first language is not English to use the Internet in meaningful and practical ways. Our project would give access to the myriad of information that those with economic and educational advantage have had for the past decade or so. "The San Mateo Bridge" will consist of web pages with audio and visual aids that introduce concepts and words commonly found on community resource pages. We are choosing resource pages based on needs identified by students. Matching online tutorials will further support, recognition, understanding, and application of content. The tutorials will be project-based and reflect real life situations that can easily be applied to the non-digital sphere. In order to serve sectors of our community with limited English proficiency, portions will become available in languages other than English. The purpose is not to recreate in another language, but to present information in a way that would slowly develop language skills necessary for "cyberindependence." Ongoing maintenance is a key component in the effectiveness and useful life of any service or product. Thus we will continue to monitor changes in community resources and adapt our pages and lessons accordingly. We will concurrently provide teacher training and share our success with other adult education institutions so that the project can be duplicated across the country. All of these resources will be readily available to the general public for free - from anywhere with Internet access. In the meantime, we will approach other institutions for support in obtaining laptop computers, technical assistance and Internet access for interested members of the San Mateo community. Members of our community will be able to borrow equipment for use at home. Our objective is to give traditionally excluded populations a tool and matching services by which they can become technologically literate and independent, thereby narrowing down the "digital divide" in our community.