Of Mice and Grownups
I’ve started volunteering at the Windsor St. Community Center, helping out in a class that teaches basic computer skills to adults. It’s being done through through The Community Learning Center and the Cambridge Housing Authority (most of the adults are Section 8 residents). Last night was the first class.
The students are mostly older (35+), mostly Ethiopian and Haitian immigrants. We passed out flyers with computer terminology in Spanish, Creole, and Amharic (the Ethiopian word for “icon” is mlkt; I have no idea how to pronounce that). The teacher is *great* — he’s got a real knack for explaining things to those unfamilar with the standard GUI metaphors. I doubt I could do it.
The big problem though is the range of students. Some have never touched a computer before, and are having a great deal of trouble simply typing their name. Others have a machine at home, and can at least play games and maybe even surf the web. We’re going to have a real problem keeping the latter interested as we help the former struggle through the course material. 
Anyway, it was exhausting but exciting. I was on my feet the entire time, running around trying to help students select text in a Word document. I have a newfound respect for basic mouse skills. Another thing I didn’t expect was that most of the students, even the experienced ones, were stumbling over the notion of scroll bars — everything seems to have a simple document-and-desktop metaphor, but then scroll bars ruin everything by breaking the cognitive model.
As the image implies, I was pretty nervous going into the class. But it turned out to be fun! Not sure yet if I can handle doing it twice a week, I guess we’ll see….