TBC1.8

Today was our final class for this course. The classes at Toongabbie Community Centre were independently run by inherIT with all materials and resources being provided by the organisation. Our students did an activity of their choice today in order to consolidate their learning.

As Kumuthini said: Today, I was finally able to open the file on my own and start typing and then save it. I could not do any of this before.

To some of us, this may seem elementary, but the students - especially the ones who need more help, appreciate that a patient and considerate environment is provided for them to learn despite their difficulties. As some of them pointed out, this is not the case in many normal classes.

Since this will be my last post on this set of classes, i'd like to mention how we went about setting up this class. inherIT has rented a room in the Community Centre from Holroyd Council. Some publicity material was distributed through the SydWest MCS as well as at Blacktown library. We also did a few mailouts in the neighbourhoods surrounding the centre. Overall, I would say we did very little pulicity, however our class did fill up. Our aim was to take upto 8 students but certain classes ended up having upto 10 and some only 6. Every Monday and Tuesday, we have taken our own laptops and set these up. Towards the end, the students were able to set up and dismantle laptops on their own. Some of the teachers and participants were picked up and dropped. We did not print materials but provided folders with activities of varying levels that the students were free to use and they were given notebooks and encouraged to take notes. Some of the participants photocopied the notes for their own use.

Overall, this has been what I would consider a good first step and the students are extremely keen to have more classes and progress further. Most of those who attended today were looking forward to Jan/Feb when I have promised to kick off classes once again.

Now that I have made these promises, it is going to be a huge effort to revamp and restructure the material based on the experience with this group. I am especially skeptical about the usefuleness of the material for people who have trouble reading and need to think of how to help these people to progress a little better.

Class Hours: 1.5
Instructors: 2 (Genifer + Geetha)
Participants: 6 (Lynne, Kokhila, Rebecca, Kumuthini, Abuk , Madelina)
Course Handouts: None
Computers Used: 5 (+1, Lynne bought her own laptop)