English Week 2

Tuesday: Fun with technology…
Tuesday was Technology Day. The original plan was to use the computer lab (some NGO donated 17 computers recently) at the school for a session on the basics of Word or Excel. After school the idea was to continue the fun with a session at a local internet café to work on the basics of searching and research. The school does not have internet.
However, we decided to keep it simple and just do an in-school session. Speaking of keep it simple, I taught Vocab session kids K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid). In honor of my father, I thought every English student should know this phrase.
Ray had a handout that taught the basics of Word. We decided to first give them the basic information about computers and then go into Word. We weren’t sure what we were getting into but we didn’t really have a lot of material or time to create any. We worked with two sessions lasting about an hour and a half with the seniors studying English.
When we began the first class, I had to still make copies of the handouts. I knew I could make them at the school for free, which is good because that is not always the case. I think since I am a foreigner, not regularly working there, and doing work for a special activity, I was able to make the copies I needed. I had a five page handout and wanted ten copies so we would have one for every two students. I didn’t know that the copier was circa Paul Williams working at Xerox (read mid 80’s). Perhaps my father even worked on this particular model. Turns out that a nearly ancient copier is not as fast as these new fangled ones. Plus they had to feed each page in separately, which would often jam at the end due to overheating. So while I took forever to make the copies, Ray covered the basic of computers.
At one point we asked how many had computers used computers to type a paper, a few hands. How many had used computers for email, internet, or chatting? Fewer hands. How many had computers or laptops? Maybe two hands. How many had never touched a computer? Way too many hands. We definitely had a lot of ground to cover.
Oh, I would like to say a special thanks to my mother. Teaching her how to use Windows, Word, and the mouse prepped me for teaching these kids the same things. Do remember learning how to use a mouse? Oh, and these kids don’t know how to type. They do the hunt-and-peck method. OMG.
We spent most of the time teaching how them how to minimize/maximize/resize windows and how to use a mouse. I had forgotten how unintuitive double-clicking with the left mouse button can be. The only Word stuff we covered was opening a new document and saving documents. An hour and a half to get to that point.
Obviously there is a great need for more computer instruction. The students do not have any open periods so I am going to teach computer basics after school. They so badly want and need this skill. Now I just have to figure out when I can do it. I am already doing after-school sessions on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Friday is out because many of the students live in dorms and go home to their villages on the weekends. I guess that leaves Thursday but I need to split up the sessions by skill level. I guess I need another day in the week. Do you know where I can find one?

English Week 2007: Tuesday = Success!!!