Digital divide in quantum education

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Hi Friends,

I did a talk recently on the first anniversary of Quantum universal education. This was held on 24th and 25th of July 2021. My presentation was on the topic "Digital divide in quantum education".

ABSTRACT

We live in a society where all the classes have gone from offline mode to online mode all of a sudden in a year. The digital divide, as we know is the inaccessibility to technology and gadgets. Nowadays education is just a privilege only for those who have access to technology. The same issue is there in the domain of quantum education. Quantum computing is relatively a new field and because of this, not everyone has prior exposure to it. To bridge the issue there are a lot of quantum education initiatives and many of them are free. The question is does everyone have access to quantum education in online mode. In Kerala, which is my state there is smartphone access is there for 90% of the students, but for quantum education, the smartphone is not enough. We need computer access for using quantum computing platforms or for coding. There are only 10-20 % of students who use computers for their education and this makes a huge gap in accessing the quantum world. My talk focuses on representing the issues in the first part. The second part address some of the possible solution in reducing the digital divide and how to be more inclusive in the quantum world. The solution discussed is regarding how learning materials can be made available offline, how local science communities and volunteers from quantum universal education can help in teaching quantum computing.

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