3/11/15
Casa Latina
Sarah White

Reflections on class:

I was reminded that the women at Casa Latina are a community that wants to get together, hear about each other's lives, visit, and take ownership of the classes and their success.

It made me wonder about the nature of programming in public libraries, which can be "one shot" lectures. I wondered if it doesn't make more sense for ongoing classes (even if they aren't always 100% focused) because so much of learning is about relationships. In an age where discrete facts are easy to get at, and you can learn how to do anything by googling it, classes become about creating relationships that sustain a person's motivation towards personal inquiry.

It also reminded me to build into lessons at Casa time for collaborative work.

Reflections on the project:

Looking forward to meeting with the public librarians and planning the schedule for April. I'm hoping we can make Douglass Truth welcoming!

Casa Latina 3/11/15 Sarah White

Casa Latina
3/4/15
Adult Digital literacy workshop

Since this was the first day back at Casa Latina (and the weather was good!) we only had a couple of attendees. We had a good discussion about the upcoming month at Douglass Truth. One of the attendees was interested in Skype, and was able to download it her her phone.

I began to wonder about students in the service learning class who assist. I seems as though there isn't a good role for them to fill that brings them into classroom interactions. I am wondering if -- for the Spring semester -- they wouldn't like to participate in a more formal way (as their language abilities allow). Perhaps they could research the class topic ahead of time and make a brief handout for the presenters and other assistants (i.e. a bulleted list-type overview of different tech related to the topic). Or perhaps they could design some slides with screenshots. There are a lot of possibilities, really just any way to participate in the planning/teaching in some way so they feel more engaged with the topic. Since we'll have a topic list ahead of time, they could sign up for the topics they want to research/present/help with at the beginning of class time.

2/18/15 Federal Way Branch Library Workshop Sarah

Federal Way Branch Library
February 18th, 2015
3:30 to 8:00pm

We had a group of about six kids and two adults. At the beginning, we were all kind of milling around. Since this sort of makes me nervous, I started suggesting to other volunteers that they take out this technology or that, or show this or that, which I hope wasn't too bossy. Sometimes it's hard to know what role to take in a project where there is a communal/decentralized structure.

I used the laptop from KCLS to work with an adult student on MS Word, while the other adult student was using tablets with the kids. After kids went to story time, the other adult came over. The lack of ability to download anything to the training laptop was difficult, but my laptop didn't recognize the mouse, which was more difficult. I'll be sure to bring a couple of laptops from Casa Latina next week, just in case they want to work on MS Word more. I'll also try to figure out how to change the language settings on MS Word.

I made a flyer with their input. Then I asked one of the women, who'd been working with me the longest, to make a flyer. She did it seamlessly. She took careful notes and was a quick study. Her daughter warned her that their version of Word at home was different, so hopefully she'll be able to translate the skills she learned to her computer at home.

Next week is our last week in Federal Way. These two women have been attending consistently. I will be interested to hear from them what worked for them and what didn't. It will be good feedback for our process at Douglass-Truth and Lake City.

DATE Casa Latina Workshop Sarah

So I facilitated two workshops this week, one that went very smoothly and one that went somewhat un-smoothly. I've been thinking about these few workshops as the dress rehearsals for the workshops that will start in earnest in January. I think that by reflecting on the un-smooth workshop, a lot can be learned from that experience that I can channel into future workshops.

I would say the main takeaways are this:

• Start out with a print agenda and discuss it with the students. Make changes to it based on group feedback. Formalize it a bit -- make it a real 'activity'
• Spend some time explaining the student-led nature of the workshops.
• Dealing with language issues: Make a glossary of tech words in Spanish (I'm really going to do this...); don't be afraid to ask people to repeat themselves or explain terms they've used; practice some of the classroom spiels ahead of time (I love practicing a foreign language, i.e. talking to myself, when I ride my bike! I get the weirdest looks!) 
• Create a "box of tricks" (i.e. alternative activities to do if the class is a lower level or a higher level than expected)
• Triple-check technology to make sure it works
• When working with true beginners, it's really great to have helpers
• Always eat (Hungry workshop facilitators are the worst)

I think the workshop on Wednesday went so well because we have a good level of group cohesion and we have a student-volunteer who helps facilitate. I think the intro to the philosophy and rationale of the classes led by Ivette a couple weeks before really put people in a active-participant mindset. We also had a happy surprise -- a new student who was both knowledgeable about cell phones as well as a great peer teacher of how to use cell phones. (I also ate two tacos at Rancho Bravo as well as half a chocolate bar before going to Casa Latina! My blood sugar was in a good place.)

After the workshop on Wednesday, Silvia was looking for someone to teach a workshop on Facebook on Friday. I thought, "why not?" and said I'd give it a shot.

The idea behind this workshop was that the adult students would be able to find Casa Latina and MSF and "like" them on Facebook. Veronique mentioned that most of them use Facebook on their phones. I actually didn't have hardly any time between Wed. night and Fri. night to think about a lesson plan. I tried to download the handouts from the Dropbox of previous workshops, but my computer told me the files were corrupted. I had a vague idea in my head that we would have a discussion about privacy -- I found a Spanish language comic strip featuring a young woman talking about how she was going to post and tag pictures of her and her friends at the nudist beach on Facebook -- it seemed funny at 11pm on Thursday night.  Then I would demonstrate on the overhead how to adjust your privacy settings on Facebook. Then we'd look up the different pages and people who wanted to could "like" them. I also copied and pasted the slides from Wednesday that had embedded hyperlinks to youtube videos about how to download apps in the GooglePlay store.

It turned out the students were much less familiar with technology that I had expected. (I wished I had a box of tricks!) I believe they were also from two different "groups," so there didn't seem to be a high level of group cohesion. I don't know that they all felt that Facebook was relevant to them, and I didn't want to encourage anyone to use Facebook who isn't that interested in it or who didn't have a lot of knowledge about how to protect their privacy online.  I myself have very mixed attitudes about Facebook. (There was also a young child and two elderly people in the room, so I suddenly had second thoughts about the comic strip about the nudist beach and had to skip it!) I also turned out that my embedded hyperlinks weren't working (triple-check technology!). This workshop also allowed students to receive "points." As was mentioned at the Women's Advisory Meeting, points are a double-edged sword because people may be more interested in the points than the topics.

I also believe that facilitators should not set up accounts or install things for adult students. Adult students need to make independent decisions about what does and doesn't go on their phones. This may mean the process of signing up for things doesn't happen right in the class, but I think that's okay. No one is going to suffer for lack of a Facebook page.

Anyway, enough dwelling on things that didn't work well. The workshop was okay (people got some nice chatting in and they got their points!). A few women seemed interested in attending the technology workshops, so hopefully we'll meet them again. I got my nice list of takeaways, or life's lessons learned.

DATE Casa Latina Workshop Sarah

Okay - I thought I would have more time to write this reflection, but when I opened up Canvas, I saw that the end-of-quarter Pipeline survey was due. I hope that was required, because it took up most of my homework time on my lunch break :)!

So I'm feeling some nervousness going into the workshop tomorrow. There is some positive nerves: the type that'll keep me alert and on my toes. The negative nerves: around not being super tech-savvy and around my Spanish skills being rusty.... I have to remind myself that it's okay to not come across as the infallible expert at the head of the class.

I am also trying to keep in mind that the objective of the class is for the participants to be comfortable and confident figuring out their phones during the session and in the future, not "depositing" bits of information about the phones into their heads. I'm sure Ivette will kick me under the table if I revert to the banking model of education :). 

DATE Reflection on the Intersection between class topics and tech devices Sarah

The discussion with the women at the workshop last night revealed the women have many diverse interests. We discussed the possibility of presenting information about navigating the directory on a hard drive -- in order to be able to save documents, photos, etc. and open them later. (This lesson, of course, wouldn't be possible or worthwhile with a tablet.) Excel and PowerPoint were also brought up. These were just a few of the interests that were brought up, for sure, but it has clarified that the "Tech research team" (I believe that's Tiffany!) and the Adult Digital Literacy Team (I believe that's me!) should discuss. The tech that we buy has a direct influence on what topics we will teach. We will not be able to plan our list of topics without knowing what tech we are using. I am, I am sorry to say, not up to speed on tablet specs, but I know Tiffany is.

Questions to consider:

Do we want MS Office? (In either app or full version) Do we want a product that comes with it, or do we have money to buy it separately?
Do we want a hard drive? (Internal or external). Or to purchase cloud storage? Or thumbdrives?

This is important, because if we don't want these things, there is no point to teach powerpoint, word, excel, and saving or retrieving from storage. We should just teach google docs, FaceBook album-ing and other forms of free, web-based storage.

Ports: Do we want to be able to demonstrate on the projector screen? We would need either an HDMI port on the device, or a USB port and then purchase an adapter. Perhaps a VGI adapter as well.

Do we want keyboards?

Do we want a windows operating system? Or android? Or iOS?

These last two questions start to get at the idea if we're looking at a more workplace-oriented computer literacy or a lifestyle-related computer literacy. I'm not sure if that distinction makes a ton of sense -- in my mind, I do a lot of typing and archiving-of-documents and using MS Office at work. Windows is, in my experience, the default OS for the workplace. If we don't have a full operating system, it's a matter of sharing cool apps and trying them out.

We should also think about planning time. I had never made business cards, and it took me an hour to go through the steps and feel like I could present them the clearest and quickest way (in Spanish!). If the person planning lessons has to go through a novel task and write out step for 2 or 3 OS, planning time doubles or triples.

We might want to think about what OS teachers are comfortable with too. If we're talking about navigating a Windows hard drive, I don't have to do any research -- I've done it a million times. If we're talking about saving and sharing in GoogleDrive or Mac OS, I'd have to research and practice. I know I'm not the only person who will be teaching, though, so it's not so much about what I'm comfortable with, but what the average person is comfortable with.

I know that the actually technology landscape is varied, so I don't want to oversimplify. But, in a beginning class, I don't want to overcomplicate either.

Do we want to save a little money in the budget to purchase apps?

If we are working in an app-based environment, and there is an awesome app for, say, keeping track of your agenda that costs .99, would we want to be able to purchase it for the class?

DATE Adult digital literacy lesson plans Sarah

For my "work" this week, I spent some time looking over the lesson plans that Casa Latina used for past computer classes, especially the ones that are related to the topics Ivette proposed and the topics brought up at the advisory meeting. Many lesson plans involved a what do you know/want to know/what have you learned format. They also stress peer to peer learning. "Problem posing" appeared through exploration questions and discussions. The Powerpoints are sort of horrendous yellow text-y things, but I kind of hate PowerPoints for this type of teaching anyway, which I think works best if it's discussion and activity-based.

I'm such a careful lesson planner that open ended "what do you want to know" lesson plans scare me a bit, especially when it's on a topic that I don't have much experience teaching with a group I don't know well. (If you've taught a lesson a bunch of times or you're comfortable with a class, it's definitely easier to have really open-ended lesson plans.) Walking into an unfamiliar situation, I'm a bit more comfortable with a "choose your own adventure" lesson plan, i.e. "I have 4 different activities we can do -- please rank them by what's most interesting/relevant to you -- we'll start out with your number 1 and get to as many of the others as time allows."

The *one* time I taught a digital literacy workshop, I worked around this by breaking the class into 2 sessions. At the first session, we spent a fair amount of time on the "what people use technology for/how do I want to use technology?/what do I want to learn?" piece. Then for the rest of the first class everyone was stuck with my lesson activities, which were mostly basic skills around being comfortable with the hardware/interface. But the SECOND session was based 100% on the topics they said they wanted/needed to learn.

BTW - the topics they chose for the second digital literacy workshop were COMPLETELY different from what I would have expected, and they used the tools in a completely different way than I would have expected. For background: A local church group had given some desktop computers to different refugee families (from Burma). They installed them in their home, and made sure they were connected to their apartment complex's wi-fi. Then the church group asked me if I would organize some type of workshop around digital literacy for the adult refugees. The adult learners wanted to learn about using something like GoogleMaps and using a weather website. When we practiced using Google Maps, students were fascinated with the street view. Their relatives and friends had been "resettled" all over the U.S. They were interested in seeing their friends/family's apartments in street view and in seeing how the weather was in their friends'/family's city. They were also interested in seeing and showing the places that they used to live and talking to the other people in the class about their overall resettlement journey. They also talked about how challenging the cold weather could be in different places in the U.S., and what a difficult adjustment this was. I never thought of using Google Maps and weather websites as a way to connect with people who are far away, or as a way to share your story and challenges with new acquaintances from your country!

2-11-15 Federal Way, KCLS, Sarah White

Federal Way Branch Library

February 11^th, 2015

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Overview:

We only had two participants in the library tour. One participant told me, though, (paraphrasing) that it was very informative and that she never knew the library had so much to offer. I think that even though only two people received the information firsthand, if they share it with their social networks the information will be spread to more people.

For the second hour, Ivette led a discussion of staying in touch on the computer, which four people participated in. There was a lively discussion that ranged from "how young is too young to give your child a cell phone?" to "making calls with wi-fi that don't use data." Participants gave and received advice, viewpoints and opinions. The group interaction was great to see. An hour is a short amount of time, so there wasn't time to get hands-on with the tech, but I think everyone thought about it critically. 

Ivette can relate to many of the worries the women have as mothers, and I think that created a feeling of unity. We spoke of the many ways that we are different in terms of ethnicity, gender, and other in-group/out-group affiliations. But as a woman who has chosen not to have children, I notice that I am alienated from many other women my age or older who identify first and foremost as mothers, and who may have a hard time understanding why someone would not choose that identity.

One student brought up that she wanted to learn more about Word. Perhaps we can give her time to practice it next time, and I'll also show her the GCF aprende libre tutorials. She was also concerned about what her children were looking up online. While adding web-filtering to certain user accounts on the computer seemed difficult, I did show her how to look at the browser's history.

2/4/15 Federal Way Library Sarah

Federal Way Public Library
Feb. 4th, 2015
5: 00 PM  - 7:00 PM

Overview:
The Federal Way branch library was a nice and busy building. Edna gave a very informative overview of library programs at the Federal Way branch. I thought it would be distracting to have an interpreter, but I think it went very well.

The women from Federal Way who attended were an interesting group. The three women in front who seemed like they were used to a formal educational environment - they had notebooks for notes, asked many questions, etc. A different woman seemed very interested in activities for her children, so I imagine that was a motivating factor for her participation.

I had planned some group discussion activities with the idea that the women from Casa and the women from Federal Way could get to talking with each other, but they were reticent to form groups with each other. (I even asked twice....) One woman from Casa was quite distracted by her teething baby, so I understand she wasn't able to fully concentrate on discussion! Another woman from Casa had a laptop with crashing Windows (blue screen; auto restart; blue screen; auto restart) so she was worried and distracted as well. Since my Windows crashed recently, I sympathize! I wanted to spend more time with her to help her troubleshoot, but the group was...well, not big, but big enough...that I couldn't get sucked into open-ended computer troubleshooting land.  Another participant wanted to use her laptop, but couldn't find a good place to plug it in. Since we only used the technology a very short time, I just suggested she use a tablet. I'll bring my power cable next time.

I was surprised that the discussion about finding info only brought up Google. I had thought participants would bring up finding jobs, or information about American institutions/agencies. The discussion evolved in a fairly interesting direction, though. Participants had good insights into the problem of credibility -- one women said, "our kids believe everything they read on the internet. What can we say?" So we discussed evaluating credibility: figuring out the author and their intent, whether they're presenting their opinion, or facts they've researched.

1/7/15 Workshop Casa Latina Sarah White

On 1/7, Esteban presented on antivirus software and file-sharing/backup software (Dropbox) to the adult literacy group. Freddy and I were available to offer help and support.

I also found out that our order of tablets arrived! I'm wondering if we will be able to use any of the tablets on 1-14? I'm also wondering if I could borrow one next week to play around with and get used to the interface?

Each student had their particular interests and challenges related to the topic. Making the second half of the class productive seemed to require 1-to-1 support or 1-to-2 support. The difficulty I had in the MSF lesson was also that students required a great deal of individualized support. When thinking about writing the lesson plans for Capstone to be used by future volunteers, I'm wondering about ways to write them such that one volunteer could work more easily with up to 10 students (this is sort of an arbitrary goal, but it seems reasonable). I'm still playing around with different ideas. I'm thinking of the possibility of a model that looks a bit like fearless cards - step-by-step instructions for different tasks that students could pull out and use with the help of a friend? And perhaps trying to "formalize" pair work a bit? This actually seems "weirder" in a small, friendly class. In a slightly larger class it doesn't feel awkward to assign pairs.

A lot is happening in other classes that is related. Next week I'll be working on an outline of my deliverables for Capstone. The first draft will be due the 18th, and the final due the 25th. At some point between the 18th and the 25th, it'd be good to run the document past Ivette. I admit that I kind of feel about Capstone documents the way that I used to feel about grant reporting: we run around like crazy to make it work in the real world, and then make it look on paper however it needs to look on paper to appease the Masters of Bureaucracy. That being said, I don't want to completely brush off the process because I would like a minimum of headaches come Spring.

I am also participating in a TASCHA research seminar for the Myanmar Information Laboratory. I've been tasked with a "Lit Review" of sorts: finding digital & info literacy curricula from similar contexts with a focus on smart phones and making a series of recommendations for librarian-training workshops. I think some of what I learn will inform the lesson plans I write up for my Capstone.

Comments on Tess and Ivette's Posts

I don't know if it's kosher to comment on other's posts, but I was thinking about Tess's comments on intersectionality as relating to what we talked about in the Mujeres Sin Fronteras meeting about moving outside of our comfort zone and widening our circle of comfort. Tess mentioned that working within two cultures can feel like going down a river with one foot in each of two canoes. But can the the "problem" be reframed? In one way, when you step into a new culture and begin to develop as a person in that culture you are blowing open your circle of comfort and becoming a more versatile, expansive person. The metaphor that comes into my head is the idea of a house. When I was younger and only knew how to operate in one culture (or even 1 subculture, if we think of, say, High School), it was like I was living in a house, but I never left my bedroom. Gradually, as I was exposed to different cultures and began to see how I changed as a person when I was immersed in that culture, and accepted that the way I acted in that culture, though different, was "me" too, my 'self' got a whole new room! Welcome to the den, sit down and stay a while! I think it's easier for me to think about it in this way, though, because these cultures were not necessarily in conflict with one another, so I never felt like I was betraying my loyalty to any group by immersing myself in another group and taking on their mores, styles, attitudes, etc.