Class 5

Classes are becoming more streamlined and participants are slowly but surely making progress.
Today, we worked on creating a simple Powerpoint presentation and saving the document. To add a touch of colour, we also played around with slide design. Some of them asked how to type in columns and I showed them how to do this as well.

As much as the class dislikes the lectures, I think I may get them to listen to one next week so that they can learn about the internet.


I had some great feedback from students today: David: "I really value the classes, thank you for your time"
Irma: "These classes are really useful. My children don't have the time or patience . This is perfect"
Genifer: "Today's class was better. I learnt a lot"

As I mentioned earlier, Class 3 had not gone too well. I was especially happy that Genifer had returned and enjoyed her class today.

Other News: Thinking of Laptops, Rooms and holiday classes. My helper arrived today and was indeed helpful. However, she was unhappy with the job conditions and said she would rather not.

Class Hours: 2.0
Instructors: 2
Participants: 8 (Angela, Irma, Genifer, David, Bing, Mary, Madelina, Nancy)
F:M : 7:1
Course Handouts: 2 pp (pages/person)
Computers Used: 6

Class 4.5

On 26th August, I had a practical session with Bing (Severino) and Madelina.
I spent an hour teaching bing about folders and how he could create/delete and put his files in folders. Madelina had something a little simpler to take care of. She worked on Paint and created a few circles and squares and coloured these in.

Overall, an uneventful and productive session for those involved.

Other News: I have a person coming in to help me on thursdays class which should be interesting.

Class 4

Class today started at 9.00 am and I had a single activity for the class to work on. The activity focussed on opening a file, typing and editing text, saving and reopening the file. For those who were more advanced, I demonstrated once and let them try it out. They did very well. For those who need more help, I had them sit through 2 or even 3 demos.

In terms of outcomes, the more advanced students really appreciated the change in the class today with the demonstration being more thorough. The others too benefited more (based on my own observation).

A few things I learnt: I should keep copies of all the material of classes leading upto the present class to distribute to new students (we had 3 walk in today).

I need to improve at deferring students and asking them to wait while I deal with whoever I am working with presently.

Additional Note: Despite the difficulty of having new students walk in, I think I can structure it so that they can join us and still learn something beneficial

Our participants today:

Madelina Ary, Bing (Severino), Angela, Irma, David Bagura, (New Students) Nancy, Mary, Esther

Class Hours: 2.5
Instructors: 1
Participants: 8
F:M : 6:2
Course Handouts: 2 pp (pages/person)
Laptops Used: 6

Week Ahead:
Laptops (I obtained 3 last week after some arm twisting). Course Content for Inet & Email.

Class 3.5+

On Tuesday, I took individual sessions for Madelina and Bing. I spent an hour with each. Madelina progressed slowly, struggling with her reading and comprehension of concepts. Bing on the other hand did well and we took a look at Excel files.

At the moment I am trying to aim my coursework in the middle so that the people who are more advanced have it fairly easy and I tend to verbally describe some activities to teach them new things. The ones who are struggling seem to need a lot more hand holding but hopefully they will soon progress.

Class 3

In todays class we covered the concept of files and programs. The class did some activities to learn how to open one and close a file. We encountered some technical difficulties and some of the students felt the activities were a little perplexing.

In the next class, we will slow things down and the class will do 1 activity to learn how to open, edit and save files, focusing on demonstrating the activity, and then asking them to do it in groups and then individually. I would like to see how effective this gradual introduction to individual work is. Today, they all had their own computer – which, it seems, may not always be a good thing with a group like this. They don't always seem happy with a dedicated resource they are still not comfortable with. Instead, I hope they will benefit more by being able to see the correct usage – even if they are in group. Or this is my theory. We will see how it holds up during the following week.

Our participants today:
Ann Sankoh, Murrallee Malar ,Genifer, Madelina Ary, Angela, Aggrey Ater, Bing, Irma

Class Hours: 2.5
Instructors: 1
Participants: 8
F:M : 6:2
Course Handouts: 4 pp (pages/person)
Computers/Laptops Used: 7

8 people and 6 women. Not a bad stat. Genifer felt it would be better to have additional help. I hope she will be back next week to see how things work. It sounds better in theory but we’ll see what happens.

Week Ahead:
Laptops. I asked for a quote from the Advocate for a 10 word classified ad and promptly got a $175.00 estimate. Ouch. Trying to get a group of 8-10 laptops from a source that will give me a receipt.

Class 2.5+

Ann Sankoh missed the last class, so I spent an hour today explaining the concepts covered and working through the activities. It was a delight working with her as she's extremely quick. I also covered some material I hope to cover in the next class and talking to her made me realise that I may have missed out on explaining some crucial things, so some rework of the slides for Thursday are in order.

In the regular class on Thursday, I plan to offer to do one on one practical sessions every tuesday. This is a fairly big commitment and I may choose to manage this by dealing with half the class on any given week.

I also found some interesting statistics today: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Those of us who use the internet and computers assume that penetration is high. However, only 1/5th of the world currently uses the internet. Perhaps computer usage is higher but this still means that the saturation point is far away - at least in Asia and Africa. The biggest contradiction is that Asia has one of the lowest penetration rates (in %) and yet the highest overall usage (in terms of headcount) . Many people feel that we NEED to teach people how to use computers - but I like to take the view that we need to teach them if there is a desire/need to learn. A subtle distinction that is often overlooked in our zealous attempts to get everyone on the digital highway.

What may be interesting is to check out the age split across users and a projected age split in 10 years (Yes, a line graph with # of people on y-axis and time on the x-axis and different lines for different age ranges. )

Week Ahead:
Looking into purchasing laptops

The nice stuff:
Nandu has agreed to look at doing a logo. I was thinking maybe he can write us a song too. How many organisations have songs?

Class 2

Our second class was held on August 7th from 9.30-11.30 am. The students were introduced to the basics of operating and navigating a computer. We covered the keyboard and special keys, mouse usage, menus, navigating menus and launching files and programs.

Our class was a bit larger today with some new participants. It is going to be an ongoing challenge to have more regular class attendance.

Our participants were:
Genifer from Sudan
Nancy from Sudan
David Bagura from Sierra Leone
Bing (Severino Provido) - from Phillipines
Angela from Afghanistan
Irma from Argentina
Aggrey Ater from Sudan
Madelina Ary from Sudan
Malar Murallee from Sri Lanka

Class Hours: 2
Instructors: 1
Participants: 9
F:M : 6:3
Course Handouts: 4 pp (pages/person)
Laptops Used: 6

Class 1

inherIT held the first of a series of 5 classes on July 31st, 2008 at the migrant resource centre in Blacktown, a suburb of Sydney. Our intention is to provide an introduction to computers for women.

Students introduced themselves and we discussed their understanding of what a computer is. Everyone typed in their personal details, thus reducing my diary work and helping me gauge what their current comfort level is.



The participants were:
Nagwa Lino from Sudan
Aggrey Ater from Sudan
Ann Sankoh from Sierra Leone
Madelina Ary fron Sudan
Angela from Afghanistan
Malar Murallee from Sri Lanka
Severino Provido from Phillipines

Class Hours: 2
Instructors: 1
Participants: 7
F:M : 5:2
Course Handouts: 4 pp (pages/person)
Laptops Used: 1