Ending the digital divide: Northampton County tackles cyberspace notch with free, refurbished sharp devices – Journal Global Online

EASTON, Pa. — Bridging the notch between those in Northampton County with and without admittance to the digital concern is attractive a colossus travel forward.

County Executive Lamont G. McClure has declared that the Northampton County Department of Community & Economic Developmentis primed to dispense updated county-owned computers and radiophone phones to organizations in requirement throughout the county.

“We are refurbishing county-owned devices in visit to donate to public-facing organizations in Northampton County, including aid systems, schools, municipalities and nonprofits,” McClure said in a programme release.

“Our neutral is to attain digital justness and secure that every county doc has competent admittance to the internet.”

Organizations fascinated in effort a refurbished figure crapper call the Northampton County Department of Community & Economic Development at 610-829-6306.

In New April, the division declared it was creating the liberated Access Device and Giveaway Program.

“Our content is a line to digital justness and ensuring every county doc has decent admittance to the internet,” McClure said in a evidence in April.

The digital divide

The digital cypher is the notch between those who hit admittance to technology, the internet and digital literacy training, and those who do not.

It’s a difficulty that crosses generational, cityfied and agricultural boundaries, as substantially as facet and industrialized ones.

The county in Apr partnered with the National Digital Inclusion Alliance for a two-day Digital Navigator upbringing provided at Northampton Community College.

Digital navigators are trusty guides who hold accord members with ongoing, personalised hold in accessing inexpensive and pertinent connectivity, devices and digital skills, including:

• How to encounter appropriate, local, liberated or low-cost devices
• Self-guided digital skill-building resources and how to ingest them to inform unaccompanied and diminutive groups
• How to amass accumulation and control clients
• How to refer internet options for low-income accord members.

NDIA members crapper tie “community calls” at 1 p.m. on the ordinal weekday of every period to deal domestic resources and on-the-ground strategies for providing digital body services.