5/22/15

Today we had a technology workshop at Casa Latina. Unfortunately due to sickness and schedule conflicts, our group was missing Ivette, Klarissa, and Willa. We had to prepare ourselves to run a smooth workshop with only three people from the class (myself, Kaylah, and Sarah). Sylvia stepped up to help us out, especially for the first 30 minutes before Sarah arrived to begin the instruction. Kaylah was working with the kids, so I was the only non-fluent Spanish speaker in the whole room for nearly 45 minutes. This definitely challenged me, and I spoke more Spanish today than any other workshop day so far.
Due to my lack of confidence speaking Spanish, it can sometimes be intimidating sitting among the women while everyone converse in Spanish. I know that everyone is very patient with me, especially when I have to take time mid-sentence to remember the correct word I want to use. Immersion is the most effective way to pick up a language, however! I'm a little bit nervous about my presentation next Friday. I haven't had to speak for an extended period of time before, let alone teaching people about a subject in Spanish. I think it will be okay.

5/8/15 Workshop Casa Latina

Today's two hour segment was split up in an unusual way. For the first hour, we had the women participate in a technology workshop like normal, but the second hour was dedicated to a Mother's Day celebration that Casa put on. Therefore we only had half of the usual time slot to work with the women. Although brief, the workshop went fairly well. Unfortunately it seemed like the participants were looking forward to the fiesta, so the attention of the group was not as focused as it has been in the past.
As for the fiesta, it was heartwarming to see the children go up in the front of the room and share why they appreciate their mothers. Although some seemed nervous or bashful, their speeches were genuine. I was surprised to find myself in charge of carving up the roast chickens that they purchased for the meal. I would not consider myself a cook by any sense of the word, but I don't think I messed them up too badly. Food is food, right?
The meal gave us some good time to chat with one another, and I appreciated being able to talk with Sarah more than we usually get to.

4/29/15 Workshop Douglass-Truth Library Brad

Location: Douglass-Truth Library

Time: 5-7

Date: 4/29/2015

Today we made mothers’ day the focus of our workshop with the children. The first activity we did was a bingo-style game with the group as a whole (women and children together). I loved doing an activity with everyone together; it is refreshing to have both the families and the facilitators all playing the same game. I really felt like we were bridging the gap between our communities and enjoying a moment together. As an added bonus this game helped me learn some new Spanish vocabulary, which is always positive.

            Once several rounds of the game were played and people collected their prizes, the technology workshop for the women started and our group split like usual. With mothers’ day fast approaching, an obvious craft we could do was make cards for our moms. Some of the children got very creative with their cards, using a variety of colors and drawing techniques (I totally forgot about holding three crayons at once!). One child asked Willa how to memorize the colors of the rainbow- ROYGBIV!

            Making crafts for our moms made me miss my own mother. Sometimes it is difficult going to school so far away from home, but I never forget all of the awesome things my mom has done for me over the years. My parents continued support helps me every step of the way along this new journey at college.

4/8/15 Workshop Douglass-Truth Library Brad

Location: Douglass-Truth Library

Time: 5-7pm

Date: 4/8/2015

Today the children put on a puppet show using puppets made from paper lunch bags. We encouraged the kids to draw characters on the bags using the art supplies we provided. Some examples of characters included goldilocks, a puppy, and Mike from Monsters, Inc. The kids seemed very excited about putting on a show for us, and we were happy to see them enthusiastic about making up their own story.

            Once everyone had made at least one puppet, the whole group left our indoor space and set up the stage outdoors. I filmed with an iPad while the children discussed behind closed curtains how they wanted to put on the show. Unfortunately, one of the kids was very bossy about how she wanted the story to play out, shutting down the other kids’ ideas in favor of her own. It was obvious that the other kids were not happy about this, but they went along with it anyways.

            Regardless of the child who was bossing the other ones around, everyone had fun putting on the show and the story was definitely original. They even encouraged me to put down the camera and control a puppet of my own, which I did. This helped me remember how important imaginative play is with young children.  It’s unfortunate that we start to use less and less of our imaginations as we grow older; nobody says we have to grow up.

Where I'm from: Brad Holland

Brad Holland – Where I’m from

I am from soccer cleats,

                From Nalgene and UnderArmour

I am from the Trampoline in the back yard

                Bouncy, warm from the sun

It felt like we were flying

I am from the grass,

                The Oak tree

                A big friendly giant that is always there for you

I’m from the Christmas morning cinnamon rolls and vacations,

                From Laura and Dean

                And Devin

I’m from hard workers and generous friends

From “finish your milk!” and

“Clean up your Legos!”

I’m from the cross and

                Sunday morning mass

I’m from Naperville, Illinois,

                From deep dish pizza and Culver’s custard

From the dad who can turn water into wine

                The brother who can never eat without spilling

I am from a strong family of friends,

always willing to lend a hand,

 but often times not needing to

Final Course Reflection - Brad

Brad Holland

Final Reflection

            The rise of information technology must be accompanied by a push for ­­evaluation on its uses and accompanying societal consequences. As an educator and peer participating in the Community Technology Literacy & You project, I must regularly stop and reflect on community informatics topics including digital divides and identity within communities. Over the course of the last ten weeks, these are the two topics that I found myself reflecting upon most. Likewise, I was consciously aware of them during classroom discussion and community service learning.  

            In a society that is rapidly becoming more dependent on technology, there exists a digital divide between people with tech-prowess and those without. This division has an important role in determining the economic and social position of people in developed nations such as America, where most white-collar jobs require rudimentary computing skills. The digital divide is strikingly similar to the cycle of poverty. People who are digitally literate can use information technology as a tool to gain further knowledge, advancing themselves economically, intellectually, and technologically further ahead of the digitally illiterate. The digital divide is apparent to me during my daily life when I interact with people of different generations. Older generations that did not grow up using information technology have a much more difficult time understanding the potential of technologies such as the internet, mobile computing, and social networks. People like my parents often ask me questions that I simply Google to provide an answer. My first reaction when encountering a problem is to look it up online, whereas they usually ask their immediate peers for information. To take it one step further, my parents’ parents would most likely would have scoffed at the idea of an internet search, because their generation is even less digitally literate and cannot comprehend the scope of online information. I feel it is important for the digitally literate to help teach and encourage those who lack similar skills; digital literacy opens up a whole new world of information and opportunity.

            This course’s focus on identity made me think about how I perceive myself within the mix of thousands of individuals that I interact with on a daily basis. There exist countless forces in the world that try and sculpt or mold our characteristics using outward social pressures. It requires immense strength to be an individual and think freely. How we perceive ourselves affects how we interact with others. This became important during our workshop sessions, because we as volunteers were not present to simply instruct from a top-down hierarchy. The bi-directional learning goals of this course required us to perceive ourselves as community members on the same plane as the women in our workshops. This train of thought is radically different from my other university courses, and is especially liberating when I began to consider the inclusiveness of our efforts.

            Our workshop sessions were not the only inclusive community in this course. Thanks to a welcoming classroom environment, my classmates, instructor and I felt comfortable discussing personal matters as they relate to our cohesiveness as a group. I can confidently say that I am comfortable with my identity among these people, which allows for more wholesome and meaningful interaction. There are countless things we can learn from each other if we allow our individuality to flourish and use technology to support the communication process. This course is certainly a step in the right direction, but we have much more work to do.

A letter to my smartphone

Dear Smartphone,

              I understand and appreciate the limitless information you provide at my fingertips, but this capability comes with several drawbacks that modern society fails to recognize as problems. Because of your infinite sources of novelty and entertainment, people cannot spend a few minutes waiting in line without pulling you out from their pockets and checking to see if their cyber lives are any more interesting than their present ones. Gone are the days when people make small talk on the bus. People are so accustomed to your five-inch face that they are afraid of making real eye contact with strangers. Nobody is alone anymore. Sitting in pockets and purses, you maintain a constant connection with the rest of the world, reminding people how much they are missing every second of every day. It is this fear of missing out on new information, falling behind on game leaderboards, and becoming socially irrelevant that forces individuals to never let you go. People chain themselves to walls when you become tired, stopping everything they are doing to nourish you and make sure you stay alive just a few more hours.

              Smartphone, these problems are not your fault. People allow you to dictate their lives because they can’t imagine a world without you. Most folks used to consider you a useless nuisance (some brave ones still do), but every day more and more of your kind are adopted by consumers who want to plug into the digital realm. There are now more of you on this earth than there are people. Please, be nice to us.

Sincerely, 

Brad

2/18/15 Federal Way Branch Library Workshop Brad

Federal Way Branch Library
February 18th, 2015

This was my first time going with the group to help out at Federal Way Library. It made me sad that I had to miss the past two weeks due to class conflicts, but thankfully school winded down. I had no idea Federal Way was so far away from UW (I'm not familiar with the surrounding Seattle area just yet), but it gave the team plenty of time to talk, laugh and get to know each other during the car ride.

This workshop had a dis-proportionally large amount of children compared to adults, which was  a first for me. Fortunately I enjoy working with the children, so I appreciated this opportunity to just play educational games and laugh with the boys for a few hours.

We started playing iPad games with some of the boys, and they enjoyed the interactive word game we brought. I was impressed when they said they wanted to play on the setting with the most difficult words! I believe challenges like this are the best way to learn new things, even if they can be frustrating at times. Some of the words were difficult for even me!

I have to say this was by far my most enjoyable workshop to participate in. Playing with "Where's Waldo?" books and sitting in on (Spanish!) story time made me feel like a kid again, and the children's laughter was contagious the whole time. Here's to a productive last workshop with Federal Way!

Evaluating the Accessibility of our Online Presence

One goal of this project is to help expose more underrepresented groups to the world of information technology. If our online presence is not easily accessible by people with visual impairments, issues with motor functionality, and other attributes that require special methods to get information from the web, then we are failing these overarching goals of accessibility.

A common tool used for internet-accessibility is a screen reader. These programs scan the HTML and CSS of web pages and read their content aloud for the user to hear. One of the most important aspects of web accessibility is building pages that can essentially 'play well' with these accessibility tools.

Several online services have the ability to access a website's accessibility: The website accessibility evaluation tool (or WAVE for short), and AChecker. Freddy and I used these to evaluate the three main websites we use for this project. Their results and commentary are as follows:

LatinaTech.org

Our website has a few errors in terms of accessibility. For users that need screen readers, alt-text for elements is necessary to describe pictures. None of the images on our website have alt-text, however, this is a fairly easy fix and will not take long to remedy.

The other main issue with latinatech.org is the contrast ratio of some text elements on the background. The design language of this website (links are orange + underlined) does not follow the 1:4.5 ratio of background to text color on some elements (mostly external links). To fix this, we would need to pick a different color to make all of the links on our page. This will take a bit longer than fixing the image alt-texts, but  it will be beneficial for users that have poor eyesight.

Casa-Latina.org

Many of the issues that LatinaTech.org had hold true for this website as well. None of the images have alt-text, which makes understanding the content difficult for users that cannot view images (or understand their significance).

The administrators of casa-latina.org can remedy this by modifying the HTML markup that makes up the site. This is not difficult for any web-savvy person to accomplish as long as they have access to the source code (which we do not)html tab
.

LatinaTech.blogspot.com

I am actually impressed with how few accessibility errors our blog has. Freddy’s accessibility reports only pointed out two different kinds of errors: The HTML document language is not specified, and the alt-texts for the little ‘edit’ pencil icons are not written. For any non-administrative user, they will never encounter these icons, so we need not take action here. I can fiddle with the HTML backend of our blog and try to fix the language header soon. Hopefully this will help users with visual impairments and screen-readers.


Tools used:
http://wave.webaim.org/

http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php

1/21/2015 Casa Latina Workshop Brad Holland

Location: Casa Latina
Date: 1/21/2015
Time: 5:00 PM

Today the women in the adult digital literacy workshop worked on making personal business cards. There were not many attendees (I believe only 5) so Ivette, Sarah and I were able to offer more personal help when needed. Having one-on-one conversations with some of the women stretched my brain and seriously tested the limits of my knowledge of Spanish. Fortunately, they are all very considerate and understanding of the language barrier, and for that I am immensely grateful.

While I may not be the most competent person in Spanish communication, my tech support skills paid off today when one woman needed her computer to be cleaned up. She had some adware and pesky browser modifications that hindered web searching, which made her technology experience more challenging than it needed to be. Given about 15 minutes, I cleaned everything up so that she could move on and get back to learning the technology literacy skills.

I believe this is a prime example of how everybody has something to offer when volunteering is concerned. I enjoy being able to use my skills for the benefit of others, and in situations like this one I understand that I should not feel unhelpful to the project just because I do not speak Spanish very well. I feel that I am finally getting my feet wet as a member of this project, and I am excited to see where the next few weeks take me.

1/14/15 Brad reflections

Location:  Casa Latina     

               

Date: January 14^th, 2015  

Name: Brad Holland         

List things that happened today:

I rode with Ivette and the other students to casa, arriving at 5pm.

After quick introductions with Sarah and some of the women, Willa and I went to find the technology supplies in the other room.

Willa and I began to set up the tablets for the women to use; Willa was responsible for the iPads while I took on the Android tablets.

For the first 45 Minutes or so, I worked on setting up the eight android tablets for use. This involved changing the time zone, language settings, and applying software updates to the tablets.

Eventually, Sarah needed my help with assisting one woman figure out how to create new folders on her email application on her smartphone.

After this was finished, I resumed working on the tablets until I had to help Freddy figure out how to use a Gmail address on windows phone. This issue was tricky and took most of the remaining workshop time.

In the news:

N/A

List Action Items from workshop:

The woman who was having trouble figure out her Microsoft account needs to bring her old password from home so we can access the account settings.

Things to look up, check out and explore:

Review common technological terms in Spanish so I have a larger vocabulary.

Describe an important an evocative social interaction that happened today:

The first time I assisted one of the women with a technology question was a very heartwarming experience. She seemed genuinely appreciative of my help, and was understanding of the language barrier. It has been almost a year since I last participated in a volunteer project, and the familiar warm, fuzzy feeling of helping others came back all in a rush during this workshop.

Describe a success.

I completed setting up all 8 tablets and successfully updated their software. The next step is to figure out which 3^rd party apps they need to install.

Describe a failure.  What fell through the cracks?

At one point I needed to explain a complex concept to one of the women, but my Spanish was not developed enough to accurately communicate this across. I had to explain the situation to Sarah in English so that she could translate for me.

What surprised me the most?

How enthusiastic these women are in learning new technology literacy.

Reflections

The language barrier is going to continue being a challenge. However, I enjoy having to stretch myself and learn new things as I go along so this obstacle will only be a positive one in the end.