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become available, the differing uses and autonomously and social relatedness
effects of technology that characterize plays a major role in digital education.
the digital divide have become the focus
of inclusiveness. The steps to bridge the Mapping
digital divide are as follows:
The context and purpose of using
• Providing integrated and global ICT are many: for socialisation,
solutions through e-government entertainment, leisure time activities,
reaching out to all rural students. and learning. ICT skills for learning
are a major component of achieving
• Efforts to bridge the digital divide
through various means such as digital equity among the masses. Many
infrastructure development, setting students do not master ICT use; they
up e-governance, Community have only basic levels of competence in
Information Centre, e-libraries, information literacy, they do not have
partnership with academic problem-solving skills in technology-
institutions rich environments (OECD, 2013). The
variation of use by students in the extent
• Innovative projects to use of availability of ICT is due to variations
technology for rural development in pedagogical and technical support.
• CT infrastructure, creation, Technology-based learning facilitates
storage and retrieval of digital in organising & evaluating information,
resources, use of software, argumentation, and presentation of
technical support, networking using knowledge (Spektor-Levy and Granot-
telecommunication and satellite- Gilat, 2012). ICT knowledge and
based communication to enhance skills are understood as an essential
learning requirement of basic education. Using
ICT successfully to solve information-
Digital Inclusion in Education related tasks requires specific technical
Technology pervades digitalisation. knowledge as well as generic cognitive
Information is offered through the skills.
internet which increases the outcomes Students fail; causing digital exclusion:
of digitalisation. Therefore, students
need to update their ICT knowledge and • not able to evaluate and integrate
skills continuously. They need to strive digital information effectively (Tang
for their renewing of skills through & Chaw, 2016)
both formal and informal learning • not able to critically judge the
environments. In the education sector, suitability of a large amount of
students need to learn, unlearn, and re- information online (Ng, 2012)
learn to retune and upskill themselves
throughout their lifetime (Anthonysamy • not able to understand the ethical
et al., 2020). The diversity in using and social usage of information
ICT represents the socio-cognitive • not able to interpret the reference
motivations of students. Their interest in to a paper and journal
ICT, perceived ICT competence, working
• not able to search databases
Indian Journal of Educational Technology 285
Volume 3, Issue 2, July 2021