Apr. 5, 2011

It was my last day at the centre. 
There were several students who worked at this centre, so we had to divide the students into two groups who work on Monday and Wednesday, and Tuesday and Thursday.
I worked on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 3 weeks, but 4 times in total.
Totally, I worked for 10 hours at Canada Centre for Victims of Torture for service learning.

During this service learning program, I learned that it is not very hard to reduce the gap of digital division between destitute and neglected people and the techy people like us who are receiving the benefits of technology every day.
Currently, this digital division gap is huge when we look around. Even bigger when we think about other countries especially those in Africa.
It feels like there's nothing you can do about and it seems very hard to reduce the gap, but I noticed it is not too hard at all from this experience.

Reducing the digital division gaps within our community will reduce the gaps in entire Toronto, furthermore, in Ontario and Canada.
It was a really great experience and I realized that I have something that I can use to help people.

Mar. 31, 2011

I couldn't go to the centre on Tuesday due to illness.
Today, I saw the students receiving TTC tokens for being there and learn.
Also, they were providing some snacks, fruits and foods to the students.
The quality of the foods looked not very good to my standard.
I'd never buy such quality of foods like that in my life.
However, they were coming for foods and education.
They are that much desperate.
It seems very nice to have such a centre to providing education and foods at the same same rather than just giving out foods.
Then the people can learn English and Computer at the same time while receiving some benefits. This is even better for them than just providing supports.
They are actually preparing for jobs since there are not many jobs with no background knowledge of computer and English in Canada.
Learning MS word is also related to job preparation.
So their experience in this centre will help their future.

Mar. 24, 2011

It was my second day teaching for this class.

Same as last class, I continued helping a student learning icons and commands in MS word.

I helped a different student than the last class.

Nothing special happened.

Mar. 22, 2011

I was assigned to a computer class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:30 to 12:00.

We help the students one by one during the whole class. 

However, even though I wrote as student, they are all adults older than me.

The students are learning English and Computer at the same time, so it was little hard to explain to them. 

The main instructor explains about computer and softwares, mostly Microsoft word, to students and assigns tasks to do.

I explained more with details using simple words and helped them to finish the tasks assigned to them.

My student was from a small country, Eritrea, which is located right above Ethiopia.

I've never heard of this country, but he explained to me that it is a country divided from Ethiopia in 1993. He said it was beautiful country. But the country had so many conflicts with Ethiopia. It was a bit danger to stay there, so he left his country.

I feel so strange and it is hard to understand the feeling that still there are lots of people suffering from fear of war and live without digital devices.

I cannot live without a computer for even a day. It's really hard to imagine me without cellular phone, computer and internet.

I felt the digital divide between me and the students in the centre a lot today.

Mar. 18, 2011

The centre was on vacation during this week.
I sent several emails to check if there are any other works that I can participate, but there was no response.

Mar.11, 2011

First service learning partner meeting.
We didn't hear from anyone from our service learning partner "Canadian centre for victims of torture" until the week of Mar. 7th.
I sent several emails to ask when we can visit them for service learning hours, but I haven't received any email back.
Finally during the week of March 7, I received an email that we can visit the centre for our community service hour on Friday 11-12.
But a day after, I received another email from our team member saying that we have an information session on Friday at 9.
I usually have a physics lab on Fridays at 11, but I didn't have one on that specific date due to a test during that week.
So I went to the centre which is located near Dundas and Jarvis.
We didn't do much until the class at 11 O'clock. We introduced ourselves and met several people came to work voluntarily.
The class was for teach computer to immigrated adults who are learning English at the community centre.
Most of the people were from 3rd world countries like Somalia.
A lot of people didn't even know how to turn on a computer.
There were many volunteer workers came to help the adults, so most students received 1-to-1 lessons from volunteers.
I had to teach 2 students. I couldn't remember their names since it was too hard to memorize.
One person had a little bit of experience, but the other person had no knowledge about computer at all.
Even it was very little, the person with experience was a lot more easy to teach.
I helped her to set up an email account since she wanted one. Also I taught her how to send, read, and reply emails.
The other person didn't know anything even how to turn on a computer.
So, I taught really basic ones like moving mouse and creating a document using MS word. It was extremely hard since she didn't know any English. I had to use body language for everything to communicate with her.
I worked for 4 hours on that day. I was exhausted but I felt happiness when finally they understand something new.
They didn't have any chance to received education on computer back in their country.
It was so weird. Everyone in Canada and my home country, Korea, know how to use a computer.
They couldn't receive good education due to war and hunger.
I felt sorry about them.