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?
About Me
- inherIT
inherIT is an organisation dedicated to helping women leverage technology.
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3 comments:
People will WANT to learn something only if they can see value in it - some benefit in terms of financially or development of skill set which could imply financial benefit/ improvement in livelihood/ quality of life in the future. Considering this education and making people realize the value of education is bigger than just education. People will learn and do well and be motivated to use their learning only when they understand the benefits, and hence they WANT to do well. For example a farmer in the countryside may not be able to grasp the capacity of the internet not be interested in learning to use of PCs. But when he hears about how a farmer elsewhere posts his produce details on some website and is able to attract buyers easily,he will want to learn and use technology himself. But how will he hear about this stuff? Through the internet right?
Are you looking at purchasing netbooks? Wait for the new Asus EEE PC...
Thanks for your comments. You are absolutely right. And i'll keep this in mind when pitching the benefits of these classes.
I do, however, wish to disagree that people want to learn only if they can see benefits in terms of financial or development of skill. Personally I learn because I love learning and I doubt that i will ever be skillful at many of the things I do - and I know I will gain no money from them.
I am looking for laptops and the EEE PC is cute but I don't think it would suit my needs at present.
Windows laptops with 14 inch screens is probably more in the ball park.
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