Looking Back at 2008

So 2008 is not quite over. However, for inherIT, things are winding down as we approach Christmas and the summer holidays. I'd like to thank those who have been involved (directly or indirectly) and wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year. This year, we've embarked on a journey and though the steps we've taken are small, we're headed towards our goals with hope and enthusiasm.

inherIT, was established with the following aims:

• Increasing the participation of women as users and developers of technology
• Providing skills training for women in order to facilitate improved opportunities
• Leveraging technology to foster community development and social integration

We've made some important strides and we hope this post provides you with a brief overview of what we've achieved to date and where we're headed in the future.

Our efforts this year have been channeled towards the development and delivery of a basic computer skills course tailored for women. We've successfully delivered courses to a number of different groups and improved the course content to cater to people with varying literacy levels.

Here are some of the important milestones we passed as 2008 unfolded...

Jul 10 : inherIT was established with the aim of encouraging women to leverage technology to broaden their opportunities.
Jul 31 - Sep 19: We conducted our first computer skills course at the Sydwest Multicultural Services Inc.(SMSI) for a migrant group.
Oct 16 - Dec 4: As a result of continued interest and demand, we conducted our second course at the SMSI for a migrant group.
Oct 24 - Nov 21: We conducted our first outreach course in conjunction with SMSI for a Liberian women's group at Mount Druitt in western Sydney.
Oct 27 - Nov 18: For the first time, inherIT conducted its own 4 week course with 8 classes and 12 contact hours. This class catered exclusively to women and was well attended.
Nov 13: We initiated a course for the Darfuri women's group at SMSI.

And the numbers that go with them...

Courses Delivered: 5
Total Classes: 33
Contact Hours: 60.5
Total Students: 53
Regular Students (>66% attendance): 21

And how it's been facilitated...

Estimated* value of services provided in Australian Dollars
Investments & expenses (Laptops, printing, misc.): $1,941.99
SMSI** contribution (Space, computers, printing): $734.00
inherIT teaching services: $1,712.50
Total: $4388.49

* Refer to our Organisational Statistics page for detailed information
** Sydwest Multicultural Services Inc.

As we roll into the next year, here's our "to do list":

Operations & Service Delivery

• Set up a weekly centre to provide women with the opportunity to attend classes and practise regularly.
• Establish a system/process by which students can be trained to take on teaching responsibilities.
• Explore opportunities to deliver our classes in additional locations in western Sydney.

Organisational Development

• Research and develop industry and government contacts to explore avenues for future partnerships and funding opportunities.
• Establish a set of long term options and put together a strategic plan.
• Set up a non-profit structure and board.
  

Course & Content Development

• Improve our current course material to incorporate the use of visual tools.
• Encourage students to participate in community projects aimed at helping them use newly acquired skills.
  
  

And last but not least, a few acknowledgements...

Sydwest Multicultural Services Inc.: SMSI and the lovely staff who work there have been pivotal to our development, and we are immensely thankful for their continued support.
SAIL (Sudanese Australian Integrated Learning Program): SAIL has been instrumental in helping inherIT reach out to its target audience.
Saritha Manickam & Nirupama Ramachandran: For their support and contribution to course development.
Vivek Nityananda: For his logos and hard work.
James Haggerty: For his time and effort with technical questions and putting together a few neat things.

SMS 3.5

A day of heavy rain proved to lower the class size considerably. We had 2 students today. Gemeila and Amal learnt about the internet today. We opened internet explorer and learnt how to search for things - including jobs, Barack Obama, America and Sudan.

Class Hours: 2.0
Instructors: 1(Geetha)
Participants: 2( Amal,Gemeila)
Course Handouts: 2 pp
Computers Used: 2

Future Projects

While our primary focus at the current time is to refine and improve our delivery of basic computer classes, in the not too distant future, inherIT hopes to facilitate production projects conceived and executed primarily by the women who attend our classes.

We would like these projects to draw on their current knowledge and combine them with the new skills they have learnt, to produce something that will contribute to their development and benefit the community. Should you have feedback or additional ideas, feel free to email or leave a comment.

A brief outline of potential projects is provided below. Each project also lists some of the individual and community benefits that are anticipated on account of these projects.

Project Recipe Book

This project aims to compile a book of recipes contributed by women from different communities. The aim of the project is to encourage the women to contribute to the production effort by typing up their recipe and helping them put together the appropriate graphic/video material needed.

Individual Component:

* Making a Power Point/video/photo presentation of the recipe they wish to share
* Typing and integrating their recipe into a consolidated Word processor/publishing software
* Providing a list of updates for glossary/index/table of contents.

Community Component:

* Build a collection of shareable recipes
* Compile information to be distributed to the community
* Create a website with recipes and cooking tips

Learning Outcomes:

* Use Power Point, Excel and Word to type in and integrate contributions
* Use pictures/videos to illustrate recipes
* Learn about other cuisines

Project Language Guide

This project is intended to bring to light the wealth of language skills possessed by the migrant and refugee community. Women will be encouraged to put together a list of words/phrases/sentences in their languages/dialects. The language guide may be a valuable resource for other members of the community who would like to become familiar with different languages.

Individual Component:

* Making a powerpoint presentation describing some simple phrases and words in their language and their usage.
* Typing and integrating input with those from other languages.
* Compile a dictionary of commonly used words.

Community Component:

* Provide opportunities for cross learning.
* Compile information and produce a language guide for multiple languages.
* Create and maintain a database of simple phrases and words across multiple languages.

Learning Outcomes:

* Use Power Point, Excel and Word to type in and integrate contributions.
* Learn how to use native langauge script in these applications.
* Become familiar with other languages.

At a later stage, should the women develop skills to handle and use publishing and graphics software packages, a few more projects could become feasible:

* Producing a website (or book) of traditional stories illustrated and narrated by the women.
* Producing a website (or book) of proverbs/traditional sayings with translations.

SMS3.4

Our class with the women's group in SydWest Multicultural Services was as engaging as ever. I'm unsure what it is about this group - perhaps it is partly because I was told that many of them have minimal literacy and that it would be hard to teach them - but the classes have been really good until now and we have been using a range of resources to enhance their learning.

It is most definitely possible to teach women who have minimal literacy skills to do a number of different things on the computer. It is a matter of working around their skills and using appropriate tools. More importantly, they have the ability to teach you so much. Most of these women are exceptionally smart. Today, we did a simple typing and formatting excercise using the Bold, Italic and Underline functions. We also did some online quizzes, used the typing tutor application and used an application called checky to help them practise and improve their mouse handling.

There were two moments in this class which really made me sit back and realise just how intelligent these women really are. At one point, i was explaining the minimize button on the top of program windows. I asked them what it actually does. Fatma quickly responded with "Go Back". What she meant was that the window goes back to the task bar. This was a phrase that I had repeated many times when i taught them about the minimize button 2 weeks ago. It was such a delight to have her say those words back to me - and to say them in a way that was emphatic and clearly indicated she knew what it did.

The other interesting occurence during the class was when Gemeila clicked on a link on the online quiz we tried and found an entire list of quizzes - some of which were easier and better to use for the class. I had spent a good hour the previous evening looking for suitable quizzes and hadnt quite found what I wanted.

Class Hours: 2.0
Instructors: 2 (Geetha & Alice)
Participants: 7( Amal, Finda, Gemeila, Phoebe, Safia, Fatma, Almarina )
Course Handouts: 3 pp
Computers Used: 6

MRC2.8

Our last class at the MRC proved to be a quite subdued as only 2 students turned up for class. As a result, I restructured the class a little and went over a number of different activities including opening, editing and saving files as well as internet and email activities.

Overall, I tried to verbally run through various tasks and ask them to perform them based on my verbal cues. This was good to do as it enabled me to gauge what they had and hadn't learnt.

Class Hours: 2.0
Instructors: 1
Participants: 2 (Madelina Ary , Mary)
F:M : 2:0
Course Handouts: 4 pp
Computers Used: 2