IT has the potential to offer universal access to information, regardless of distance, age, race, gender or other personal characteristics. However, the above characteristics, and cost, can also bar individuals or groups from access. For example, while telelearning brings previously unavailable opportunities to everyone’s doorstep, the cost of hardware, software or course fees might place the learning beyond the reach of an average person.

In The News

Text service provides more than a Band-Aid for rural health service
Josh Nesbit, a student of international health and bioethics at Stanford University is helping the tiny St. Gabriel's Hospital in Namitete better serve the quarter million people living in the surrounding 100-mile radius. Most of the population earns less than a dollar a day. Often they lack transportation and electricity or it is unreliable or unavailable,so many walk miles to the hospital in hopes of seeing one of the few physicians. Nesbit has given volunteer health workers cell phones and laptops so that the volunteers can report the patients condition. Now the people do not have to walk a long time and worry that they might not see a physician.