Technology Gap in Training Too

In my job as a librarian and parent, Gary Chapman’s article [“Problem of Technology Gap Starts With Shortage of Skilled Teachers,” May 1] certainly hit the nail on the head.

I have spent my entire working life in schools, offices and libraries witnessing the technology industry and its many guilt-ridden relatives grant massive amounts of hardware to those of us near the bottom trying to grapple with technology that has, almost literally, been thrown at us.

School and library administrators eagerly accept hardware gotten through various generous grants, and then the stuff arrives with little or no help in learning how to use and teach from the software, let alone maintain and trouble-shoot the hardware.

In the library setting, I assist people every day who cannot even put a sentence together or spell a word well enough to search on a computer. Taking pictures of illiterate poor people standing next to their new public “learning centers” full of hardware is not going to teach anyone how to spell, think or write.

STEPHANIE SPIKA

Long Beach