So the project flopped, we had completed the orientation(although I had missed two of the four meetings) and ended up doing nothing beyond creating a lesson plan.
Well, might as well sum up my experience so far.
So, at first I had thought the gap that needed filling was one of language barriers, in a more literal sense as the barrier itself was because the individuals were unable to read.
I then learned that I would be teaching a different group of people, with emphasis on technology rather the literacy.
And Finally I learned that the group I was supposed to be teaching was a group that had wanted to obtain technical skills and proficiency in simple WYSIWYG programs so that they would qualify for a position at George Brown.
This can to me as a mild shock as I've been using MS Office, for as long as I remember without any need for any training. When I had initially learned of the digital divide I had pictured an old generation that simply refused to use newer technologies. But when I start to compare people who can learn things by simply playing around with them and people who require lessons to learn from I think that the digital divide is a problem of learning ability rather then accessibility. Well for Toronto anyway.
In the case of illiterate people, they are most likely still exposed to a large variety of technologies out there. But because they either have a hard time learning or simply were unable to learn they ended up being on the other side of the digital divide.
In the case for literate people, the problem seems to be in the people's inability to search for answers. For example, search engines such as google allow users to learn a lot of things. If you want to know how to do a specific task with MS Word, just google it, if you want to know how to open your control panel, just google it, and if you want to know how to google.... well google it?
For literate people it shouldn't be too hard to find the basic functionalities of a search engine like google. And for those that are burdened with the problem of not know what google is... well you have my pity.
This ends my rantings, hope you enjoyed them.
PS, you probably wasted about 30 minutes of your life reading this if you started from the first post.
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Problems...
So, by now we should have gone through our first week of teaching. Unfortunately we were informed a little while ago that the start date will have to be pushed back to the 29th.
Upon seeing this update I had started to panic, the 29th is in the second last week of classes. This means that at most we would only be able to teach 2 classes each, this is barely enough time to assess our students' technical levels not to mention teaching them!
So my group and I sent out an email upon seeing the notification and found that there was more problems then simple a late start day, we also had miscommunication between the coordinator and our Prof. Apparently the original deal that was made was lost, as in the person who made this joint project happen seemed to have left the group. This meant that what we had gone through was not what we were supposed to do. Well, I still got some great ideas from it.
We finally got a reply, but the reply was less then ideal. It seemed that there was no way to start earlier and so we would have to start on the 29th.
Whats going to happen to this project?
Tune in next time on Pokem-n,
I mean, yeah well see what happens in a few days.
Upon seeing this update I had started to panic, the 29th is in the second last week of classes. This means that at most we would only be able to teach 2 classes each, this is barely enough time to assess our students' technical levels not to mention teaching them!
So my group and I sent out an email upon seeing the notification and found that there was more problems then simple a late start day, we also had miscommunication between the coordinator and our Prof. Apparently the original deal that was made was lost, as in the person who made this joint project happen seemed to have left the group. This meant that what we had gone through was not what we were supposed to do. Well, I still got some great ideas from it.
We finally got a reply, but the reply was less then ideal. It seemed that there was no way to start earlier and so we would have to start on the 29th.
Whats going to happen to this project?
Tune in next time on Pokem-n,
I mean, yeah well see what happens in a few days.
Monday, 14 March 2011
Planning Start!
So the planning process starts!
Using google docs, three other UofT Computer science students who were assigned to this group and I compiled our first ever lesson plan!
The idea was that for the first week we would focus on mingling with the students and assessing their technical skills through either games or simply by running through all the things we had planned to teach them.
First item on the list was to give the students a tour of MS office and XP, going through the standard features of MS office such as double spacing, page numbering, headers, footers, ect... and teaching them about some important things about the OS such as anti-virus' and finding the computer properties.
While planning these things out, we had discussions on what was "simple" to the students. "Simple" things to us may be something completely alien to our students so we had to be careful about the material we had planned to teach. MS office seemed like a good starting point because, according to the coordinator, the students had already been going through a crash course with MS. So we decided that this would be a good starting point in assessing just how much each student has learned. The anti-virus and computer properties section was thrown into the first day's lesson plan simply because we heard that there are people who do not own their own computer. This meant that if and when they do obtain a computer, they would be at a loss on what to do. So we decided that some basic knowledge on what everyone should have on a computer would be a good idea.
For the second day, we had planned to finish up the MS office assessment, and give the students the grand tour of the Internet. This included blogging sites, social networking sites, game sites, and most importantly search engines(GOOGLE!). We were not sure if the people in the program would already be well aware of these sites, but we deemed it better to just give them a tour and see what we could learn from it.
For the final day of the week we would assign homework(now we are really feeling like teachers!), and get them to work on a MS office assignment. The topic and the depth of technical knowledge needed to complete this task would vary depending on what we learn from the assessments made in the first two days.
Each day will end with a reflection period, in which the students will write down their opinions on our lesson, and the material covered. The could also suggest more of specific material if they wanted. We would get them to do this VIA email, so as to allow them to start learning how to conduct formal emails.
Over all the planning process was fun, and hard. We had to be very careful not to go overboard, and take into account the audience that we were teaching. The biggest problem was that we had yet to meet with the students, so we were unable to gauge their technical abilities.
Using google docs, three other UofT Computer science students who were assigned to this group and I compiled our first ever lesson plan!
The idea was that for the first week we would focus on mingling with the students and assessing their technical skills through either games or simply by running through all the things we had planned to teach them.
First item on the list was to give the students a tour of MS office and XP, going through the standard features of MS office such as double spacing, page numbering, headers, footers, ect... and teaching them about some important things about the OS such as anti-virus' and finding the computer properties.
While planning these things out, we had discussions on what was "simple" to the students. "Simple" things to us may be something completely alien to our students so we had to be careful about the material we had planned to teach. MS office seemed like a good starting point because, according to the coordinator, the students had already been going through a crash course with MS. So we decided that this would be a good starting point in assessing just how much each student has learned. The anti-virus and computer properties section was thrown into the first day's lesson plan simply because we heard that there are people who do not own their own computer. This meant that if and when they do obtain a computer, they would be at a loss on what to do. So we decided that some basic knowledge on what everyone should have on a computer would be a good idea.
For the second day, we had planned to finish up the MS office assessment, and give the students the grand tour of the Internet. This included blogging sites, social networking sites, game sites, and most importantly search engines(GOOGLE!). We were not sure if the people in the program would already be well aware of these sites, but we deemed it better to just give them a tour and see what we could learn from it.
For the final day of the week we would assign homework(now we are really feeling like teachers!), and get them to work on a MS office assignment. The topic and the depth of technical knowledge needed to complete this task would vary depending on what we learn from the assessments made in the first two days.
Each day will end with a reflection period, in which the students will write down their opinions on our lesson, and the material covered. The could also suggest more of specific material if they wanted. We would get them to do this VIA email, so as to allow them to start learning how to conduct formal emails.
Over all the planning process was fun, and hard. We had to be very careful not to go overboard, and take into account the audience that we were teaching. The biggest problem was that we had yet to meet with the students, so we were unable to gauge their technical abilities.
Friday, 11 March 2011
Orientation #5 - Final (Meet and Greet)
So, what happened to orientation #3 and #4? Well to put it bluntly, I missed them. Reasons aside, they were apparently orientated towards general teaching techniques and furtherer techniques aimed at training illiterate students how to read and write.
So its the final orientation, well not really the final orientation was the 4th meeting this is simply a meet and greet between the tutors and potential students. The meeting started with a game of human bingo, and transitioned into a couple of speeches from the coordinators. After this the group broke up, the tutors moved to meet the students while the UofT students and I finally met up with the coordinator.
Following the meeting, we finally figured out what we are here to do! Apparently there is an IT class focused on getting its students into George Brown College. How this program does this is teach the students various programs that George Brown requires of their students. Now heres the kicker, those programs are the basic MS Word, Excel, and other similar programs! Although understandably they require that you know most, if not all, functionality provided by these WYSIWYG editors.
Our purpose is to run lessons that focus on teaching these students various things, from how to type, to creating your own blog. Whatever the students want to know we should provide them with the information. Although, because this is in a group setting, we will only be teaching the things that gain a majority consensus in. After talking to the coordinator and finding out more specific information we had decided that we would have everyone come in for the first day to meet the new students. Then subsequent classes would be conducted on the following days:
Tuesday - Single UofT student (from 9:30am - 1:00pm)
Wednesday - another UofT student and I(from 9:30am - 1:00pm)
Thursday - Single UofT student(from 9:30am - 1:00pm)
Our students consist of people who are actively seeking help in the IT department(as they have of found this program and signed up for it) and do not have the technical expertise to learn what they want from online sources. Which means that some of these people do not own their own computer, nor do they have an Internet connection.
We start next Tuesday, meanwhile we have to create our own lesson plan. Making sure to carry over the lessons appropriately and assessing the students current technical levels.
can't wait!
So its the final orientation, well not really the final orientation was the 4th meeting this is simply a meet and greet between the tutors and potential students. The meeting started with a game of human bingo, and transitioned into a couple of speeches from the coordinators. After this the group broke up, the tutors moved to meet the students while the UofT students and I finally met up with the coordinator.
Following the meeting, we finally figured out what we are here to do! Apparently there is an IT class focused on getting its students into George Brown College. How this program does this is teach the students various programs that George Brown requires of their students. Now heres the kicker, those programs are the basic MS Word, Excel, and other similar programs! Although understandably they require that you know most, if not all, functionality provided by these WYSIWYG editors.
Our purpose is to run lessons that focus on teaching these students various things, from how to type, to creating your own blog. Whatever the students want to know we should provide them with the information. Although, because this is in a group setting, we will only be teaching the things that gain a majority consensus in. After talking to the coordinator and finding out more specific information we had decided that we would have everyone come in for the first day to meet the new students. Then subsequent classes would be conducted on the following days:
Tuesday - Single UofT student (from 9:30am - 1:00pm)
Wednesday - another UofT student and I(from 9:30am - 1:00pm)
Thursday - Single UofT student(from 9:30am - 1:00pm)
Our students consist of people who are actively seeking help in the IT department(as they have of found this program and signed up for it) and do not have the technical expertise to learn what they want from online sources. Which means that some of these people do not own their own computer, nor do they have an Internet connection.
We start next Tuesday, meanwhile we have to create our own lesson plan. Making sure to carry over the lessons appropriately and assessing the students current technical levels.
can't wait!
Saturday, 26 February 2011
Orientation #2 - POTLUCK!!
Two days after the first orientation, and we have a potluck! This time the orientation was 6 hours!
For this meeting we started off with a piece of paper with a question, quote, or phrase which we were supposed to comment on. The most interesting question, at least to me, to come up during this exercise was one about Muslim women and whether or not they were oppressed. Basically the argument centered around the upbringing of Muslim women and asked if they knew they were being treated unequally, the argument was that Muslim women were not oppressed because the did not know they were oppressed, and the counter was the opposite(as I know nothing of Muslim's in general I could only listen to these arguments).
While this was going on I was thinking about how this could apply to the digital divide(not the sexist part but the ignorance portion). The main question that got into my mind was "are there people who are unaware of the advancements of current technology". Of course the answer to this question is "yes" as "current" technology is ever changing is hard to keep up with the rapid releases of new products. So I re-worded this question to "are there people who are ignorant of current technological uses in the GTA?" Now this is a question that is much harder to handle, if the question was not limited to the GTA then the obvious answer would be "yes" as people from various areas around the would would easily fit into this category. However people in the GTA live in a much more technologically advanced world others who live in 3rd world countries. In the end I had concluded that the only people that this would be possible for in the GTA are those that have never stepped outside their houses and are devoid of technological devices at home. This basically means that this is not a problem for the digital divide, at least in areas with a heavy concentration of technology.
Following this exercise we then began another, this time we were given six stickers, three red, and three green and were asked to place red stickers under the type of writing we dislike and green under writing we like. Of course we were allowed to place more stickers on specific types of writing if we liked it just that much. What I found interesting about this exercise was that our group in particular seemed to dislike Facebook and Twitter. The main consensus for the reason we hated these two were mainly that it was awkward. The discussion centered around how the process of using Facebook and Twitter to allow either friends or total strangers to know what you are doing at the moment seemed like it was strange. Its like our privacy is being invaded when we do those things.
Other reasons included that the social networking sites have become too confusing to navigate, or even use due to the overload in plugins.
After this discussion we had a break, all i can say about this break is mmmm cheese.
Following this break the next couple of exercises were focused on teaching, us the tutors, how to effectively teach illiterate students and ended off with a speach from one of the founders of the group and an ex-student who accomplished some remarkable things.
This portion,I had felt, had nothing to do with the divide. So I started to get anxious about the reason why I was here in the first place.
After the meeting a fellow UofT student and I consulted with the organizers and found that, although we are doing the same training, our task in the end will be different from the others. This gave me some relief as I was not prepared to teach students how to read and write, heck in that area I'm in no position to be teaching students when I have my own grammar problems.
So the next question to follow was "what exactly am I going to be doing to bridge the digital divide?" The reply I got was in short teaching a different group, whose goals are more orientated towards learning technology. When I tried to inquire further, the response was that the coordinator for the literacy program and the technology program was different so I would have to speak with the coordinator for the technology program to get more specific answers.
For this meeting we started off with a piece of paper with a question, quote, or phrase which we were supposed to comment on. The most interesting question, at least to me, to come up during this exercise was one about Muslim women and whether or not they were oppressed. Basically the argument centered around the upbringing of Muslim women and asked if they knew they were being treated unequally, the argument was that Muslim women were not oppressed because the did not know they were oppressed, and the counter was the opposite(as I know nothing of Muslim's in general I could only listen to these arguments).
While this was going on I was thinking about how this could apply to the digital divide(not the sexist part but the ignorance portion). The main question that got into my mind was "are there people who are unaware of the advancements of current technology". Of course the answer to this question is "yes" as "current" technology is ever changing is hard to keep up with the rapid releases of new products. So I re-worded this question to "are there people who are ignorant of current technological uses in the GTA?" Now this is a question that is much harder to handle, if the question was not limited to the GTA then the obvious answer would be "yes" as people from various areas around the would would easily fit into this category. However people in the GTA live in a much more technologically advanced world others who live in 3rd world countries. In the end I had concluded that the only people that this would be possible for in the GTA are those that have never stepped outside their houses and are devoid of technological devices at home. This basically means that this is not a problem for the digital divide, at least in areas with a heavy concentration of technology.
Following this exercise we then began another, this time we were given six stickers, three red, and three green and were asked to place red stickers under the type of writing we dislike and green under writing we like. Of course we were allowed to place more stickers on specific types of writing if we liked it just that much. What I found interesting about this exercise was that our group in particular seemed to dislike Facebook and Twitter. The main consensus for the reason we hated these two were mainly that it was awkward. The discussion centered around how the process of using Facebook and Twitter to allow either friends or total strangers to know what you are doing at the moment seemed like it was strange. Its like our privacy is being invaded when we do those things.
Other reasons included that the social networking sites have become too confusing to navigate, or even use due to the overload in plugins.
After this discussion we had a break, all i can say about this break is mmmm cheese.
Following this break the next couple of exercises were focused on teaching, us the tutors, how to effectively teach illiterate students and ended off with a speach from one of the founders of the group and an ex-student who accomplished some remarkable things.
This portion,I had felt, had nothing to do with the divide. So I started to get anxious about the reason why I was here in the first place.
After the meeting a fellow UofT student and I consulted with the organizers and found that, although we are doing the same training, our task in the end will be different from the others. This gave me some relief as I was not prepared to teach students how to read and write, heck in that area I'm in no position to be teaching students when I have my own grammar problems.
So the next question to follow was "what exactly am I going to be doing to bridge the digital divide?" The reply I got was in short teaching a different group, whose goals are more orientated towards learning technology. When I tried to inquire further, the response was that the coordinator for the literacy program and the technology program was different so I would have to speak with the coordinator for the technology program to get more specific answers.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
Orientation #1 - Introduction
This blog will be talking about my experience's with the digital divide while I am a part of a service learning community, so for my first post I will start where every potential tutor starts off. Orientations!
Today was the first day of orientations for all tutors, and Being one of the three UofT students assigned to this community I was feeling incredibly intimidated. But after entering the room and mingling with some of the other UofT students the feeling had dissipated.
The session lasted a total of 3 hours and consisted of roughly 4 sections starting with an icebreaker and ending with a discussion on a video. The main topic throughout the orientation was teachers, teaching methods, and how to interact with students.
In particular the talks were centered around individuals who, for whatever reasons, were unable to learn to read during their childhood. This means that they are COMPLETELY illiterate, meaning they cannot event read or write in their first language.
At this point of the orientation I was thinking to myself "people like this exist?" Although rude, I had never actually thought that there would be people in Toronto that would be completely illiterate. This was naive thinking on my part as there can be a variety of reasons why residents would be illiterate. For example Canada has many immigrants from around the world. Hence its not strange for people in third world countries without schools and mandatory education to move into Toronto and immediately start work.
This is one source of the digital divide. People who are illiterate essentially cannot keep up with technology. This is mainly because of the complexity abundance of technology, old and new, that is currently already out or coming out in the world. People who are illiterate would need people to explain how to use every item explicitly, meaning that anything new that comes up would require help from another literate individual.
Documentation and user guides are rendered useless to illiterates. This means voice commands is the only form of human-technology interaction possible between illiterates and technology. Also, although there is support, voice commands are less reliable then plain text.
To bridge this divide, our task, to my understanding is to teach illiterate individuals to become literate.
Today was the first day of orientations for all tutors, and Being one of the three UofT students assigned to this community I was feeling incredibly intimidated. But after entering the room and mingling with some of the other UofT students the feeling had dissipated.
The session lasted a total of 3 hours and consisted of roughly 4 sections starting with an icebreaker and ending with a discussion on a video. The main topic throughout the orientation was teachers, teaching methods, and how to interact with students.
In particular the talks were centered around individuals who, for whatever reasons, were unable to learn to read during their childhood. This means that they are COMPLETELY illiterate, meaning they cannot event read or write in their first language.
At this point of the orientation I was thinking to myself "people like this exist?" Although rude, I had never actually thought that there would be people in Toronto that would be completely illiterate. This was naive thinking on my part as there can be a variety of reasons why residents would be illiterate. For example Canada has many immigrants from around the world. Hence its not strange for people in third world countries without schools and mandatory education to move into Toronto and immediately start work.
This is one source of the digital divide. People who are illiterate essentially cannot keep up with technology. This is mainly because of the complexity abundance of technology, old and new, that is currently already out or coming out in the world. People who are illiterate would need people to explain how to use every item explicitly, meaning that anything new that comes up would require help from another literate individual.
Documentation and user guides are rendered useless to illiterates. This means voice commands is the only form of human-technology interaction possible between illiterates and technology. Also, although there is support, voice commands are less reliable then plain text.
To bridge this divide, our task, to my understanding is to teach illiterate individuals to become literate.
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