1/14/2015 Casa Latina Workshop Sarah

Location:     Casa Latina                

Describe Context – Small classroom 303 (ESL room). Table is a bit crowded, room gets warm.

          

Date: 1/14/15

Name: Sarah White

List things that happened today:

Arrived @ 4:15, printed out a few handouts re: dropbox and a lesson plan (which I didn’t really use…), then got keys, snacks and laptops and set up the room.

The new student came a few minutes early and we chatted for a bit. Someone gave her an older laptop, and she told me she only knew how to turn it on. She also recently began using her Windows phone.

After everyone arrived, I asked them what they wanted to know about email.

The new student wanted to know how to check her email on her new phone.

Several were interested in organizing email in folders, while others were interested in attaching photos.

I asked Freddy to help the new student with her phone, and when he left I asked Brad.

While he was doing that I demonstrated creating folders, manually moving email into folders, and creating rules for putting email into folders. We practiced that for a bit. A student who always uses her phone was able to figure out how to translate the directions onto her phone. I offered to give her a laptop, but she preferred her phone.

I also demonstrated attaching photos. While doing that, I showed how to cc and bcc, which students were rather interested in. S.’s practiced that for a bit.

Another new student arrived when we were in the middle of the demonstration. I greeted him, and then asked Willa if she could sit next to him and see where he was at.

It got a bit noisy and disjointed, and the two new students were doing their own thing.

I suggested we practice typing for a bit, because it seemed like something everyone could work on together. But the new students were quite engaged with Brad and Willa in tasks that interested them, and didn’t want to type. I’m never one to force the issue.

Students typed for a bit. The student who usually uses her phone said she would continue to practice (I’m guessing the keyboard is a barrier to using a laptop for her). After a bit they got quite chatty, so I thought the activity had run its course. A couple people said they would practice at home. I wanted to think of something semi-independent that the “regular” students could work on, because I wanted some time to talk to the new students a bit. I felt like I had been ignoring them, and I wanted them to feel welcome for their first class. One student was also taking care of her baby and I thought a semi-independent task would create a more decentralized class that might make her more comfortable focusing on the baby's needs.

I showed students the gcfaprendelibre.org site. I showed them a few tutorials. One student was interested in the Math tutorials because her older daughter needs help with math, and she is confused by how her daughter’s teacher teaches it. I had planned to show another student the online excel course, so that she could share it with her daughter (who had previously expressed interest in Excel), but she didn’t attend. Anyway, I asked students to choose a tutorial to begin. They had 15-20 min. to work on it. Then I said in the last few minutes of class we’d share something we’d learned.

I then went to talk to the new students (a husband and wife). Brad needed me to explain the problem with checking email on her phone. Apparently it wasn’t something that could be fixed in today’s session. I wanted her to be able to walk away with one positive thing that she’d learned, though, so that she wouldn’t leave feeling like technology was frustrating. So I gave her instructions on how to check email on her laptop (I explained it, she did all the actions herself.) She hadn’t been able to read emails for some time, so she was engaged reading emails for the last 15 minutes of class.

There was a brief discussion about cost of wi-fi in the home. After that, everyone shared one thing they’d learned.

It was a fairly noisy and casual classroom – that turns some people off, so in the final feedback, I was trying to get a sense of how the participants felt about it. (While adults tend to be polite, sometimes they’ll couch complaints in the final feedback.) They seemed to enjoy the casual nature and had positive things to say. My guess is that they prefer to chat while working on tasks, and reserve things that require more quiet concentration for when they are home alone.  

List Action Items from workshop:

Since I find myself not using my lesson plans much, I trying to imagine the final “product” that documents our work and will be for handing off to future volunteers. Rather than a packet of lesson plans, perhaps it will be a manual on “how to plan without planning.” Perhaps I’ll try to give people a lesson plan template for planning on the fly along with a resource list.  

Things to look up, check out and explore:

Think about the next women's advisory meeting. 

I somehow didn’t let it enter into my conscious mind that I need to write a 10 to 15 page lit. review for Capstone planning in the next few weeks. Hopefully can touch base with Ivette on that – we can sync up our research/pedagogical vision.

Also thinking of adjusting the scope of Capstone so that it lines up more closely with grant’s timetable – hopefully can chat w/ Ivette about that as well.

Re: Ivette’s comment on need for driver – I don’t drive; long story.  Isn’t the librarian going to lead the session on 2-4? If it’s just a matter of introducing him/her, supporting, and wrapping the session up at the end, that’s no problem for me.

I wanted to share this to brighten up our short winter days: http://youtu.be/lH0p22JVK2o