Service Learning: pt 4 - Final Thoughts

At the end of the last session of my service learning this Thursday, I needed to reflect on how my understanding of the digital divide has changed thanks to my new experiences. It quickly became apparent that we, the computer literate (well, hopefully far more than just literate being students in computer science) are extremely privileged to have had the opportunity to work with these powerful tools on an everyday basis and to have the knowledge recognize the possibilities on how they can improve our lives. The digital divide is very real and someone without the opportunity – possibly because of economic or political reasons – to work on computers has to make a tremendous effort and have outside support to learn to become computer literate. There are a surprising number of these people among us and it is a great thing that organizations such as CCVT recognize the value of computer literacy and tries selflessly to help these people out.

Ending on related note, we are also hugely fortunate to be living in Canada. In the places that these students are from, troubled areas such as Somalia, Ethiopia or Burma, there are such tremendous hardships and injustices faced by the people that worrying about the problems of “digital divide” or “computer literacy” is a near non issue in comparison. These people faced unspeakable hardships to escape and live among us in Toronto, and the satisfaction of being able help them out in whatever way I could was more than enough reward for the time I spent there.

Thanks for reading!

Hao Cheng

Service Learning: pt 3 - Project Change

So it turns out the original goal of getting the students to be basic computer and  Internet users was far overambitious for our group to do in the time we had, because of the previously stated issues. Personally, my lessons were more English lessons than computer classes and indeed several times I just helped them read passages they gave me from their and explain what certain words or phrases meant. The class was largely cancelled because the other, more experienced volunteers had stated to management that the students were not ready for computer classes and could use that time for more English practice, which I agree with – after all, much of the standard Windows computer interface essentially depends on the user knowing English. Nevertheless, the students were grateful that we took the time to try to teach them and I thought it made a difference in their lives in that it opened their eyes to what a computer was and what it could do.

However, there was another program that CCVT was running that was teaching basic Microsoft Office functionality to more advanced students, and Teresa – the organizer – told me to help the teacher out there instead. For the last week and a half of volunteering, I sat with a single student and pointed out slowly how to do certain tasks that the teacher said to do. For example, changing the margins or adding a table on a Word document. Here, because these students knew much more English and were far more familiar with computers (some students had a Facebook account), much more progress was made. The student that I was tutoring in just a week and a half had learned nearly everything needed to use Microsoft Word on an everyday level. This absolutely would make a difference in their lives as it gives these underprivileged people, all of whom could have never had a chance at training on computer use in their homeland, had a marketable and useful knowledge of a widely used tool which would be good to either help them get a job or just to know to use. They seemed extremely enthusiastic about having the opportunity to learn and it felt great that I was improving their lives in a noticeable way by helping teach a useful skill.

Service Learning: pt 2 - Early Lessons

After the first week of volunteering at the Canadian Centre For Victims of Torture, the scale of the project we were attempting became evident. The people volunteering with me at CCVT that were also in the course, Jini and John, were joined by a pair of very enthusiastic volunteers who were doing this on their own spare time. The way we divided up the work was each of us got one or two of the students and tutored them for the duration of the two-hour session. We soon learned that there was unforeseen difficulties in teaching this group.

Firstly was the significant English barrier - teaching a student a new subject is often difficult and teaching them that subject in a language that the students barely understand is far more so. I was teaching them the basics of computer input - how to use a mouse and keyboard. For example, they at could not hear the difference between “Backspace” and “Space” and would hit the same key for both. This is exacerbated by my instinctive use of language that, in my everyday life, is common language but to them is not. For example I would just say “undo that” when a mistake is made, but  I don’t immediately realize that they have no clue what “undo” even means, as it is a very abstract concept. This is by no means critical of the intelligence of the students. My regular students were two lovely middle aged women from Ethiopia who were clearly making an effort to be there learning something. If one figured out something that I was trying to say, they would teach the other in their native Tigrinya, which was greatly appreciated by me and sped up progress.

Second, on top of the language barrier, there was the task of teaching someone how to use a computer for the first time. There are many things that we, the computer literate, take for granted that we understand. Its only when we try to explain it to a complete beginner that we realize some things are not naturally intuitive. It took some time for them to realize the things they were putting on the screen was an abstract representation of concepts. They could write basic English sentences just fine on paper, but once I tell them to type it in the computer, they could not grasp just what that means to put text - an abstract representation of writing -  into a computer. They couldn’t grasp that you could open, minimize and close programs on the computer, as it has little relation to a real life concept as far as I could tell. Also, as it turns out, a standard keyboard is not a very intuitive piece of equipment - after all the keys were placed specifically to slow a typist down. So on top of the English language being an issue, there was also the abstraction represented by a computer interface.

Service Learning: pt 1 - Getting Started

I was anxious to get started working at the Canadian Centre For Victims of Torture - it was one of my top choices. As one can gather from the name, important things were being done for a very disadvantaged group of people at this organization, and I immediately felt like it would be nice to make a difference for them. I wanted more from this part of the course than just another mark. I wanted to do something that would give real benefits to real people I meet - and I believed CCVT would give me that opportunity.

I contacted Teresa, the head of organizing programs and volunteer work at CCVT, and was brought up to speed on Friday morning on what my work would entail. She wanted to set up a new program on Fridays for group of people new to Canada, primarily African refugees, for an absolute-beginners course on everyday computer use. I was then introduced to some of the reasons CCVT wanted to have this program. The reason for this group’s lack of knowledge of computers was obvious - their digital divide was because they faced persecution, abuse and poverty in the war-torn nation that they were from and would have never had opportunity to access a computer. They were to start with basic typing programs such as Typer Shark and Typing Tutor to teach them how to input into a computer. If there was progress and continued interest from the students (always a concern in these types of drop in programs, she says), hopefully in the long term they could get on the internet and do things such as Skype with their relatives or listen to music - basically to have the knowledge to exploit some the luxuries of modern computing that we take for granted and they never thought possible.

She warned me that these refugees, on top of English being a new language, had never used a computer before and I would probably need to start from teaching them how to turn a monitor on. She said it would be extremely basic material to be teaching, but it will be difficult to do so. I said, no problem - for this was exactly what I wanted to be doing.