Graduate students and parents of elementary-school children are coming together to learn about technology as part of a new initiative at Kenwood Elementary School in Champaign, Illinois.
Martin Wolske, senior research scientist at the Center for Digital Inclusion at GSLIS, will lead the “Demystifying the Computer” workshop series to help bridge the home-school technology gap. Parents will reassemble a computer, learn about software, and ultimately take home a personal computer, LCD monitor, keyboard and mouse—all free of charge. The workshop series is scheduled from 9-11 a.m. from Monday, September 23 - Friday, September 27 and is open to all Kenwood Elementary parents and guardians. Recycled computers have been donated by Carle Foundation Hospital, Parkland College, and Millikin University.
Graduate students in Wolske’s Introduction to Networked Systems (LIS 451) and Community Informatics Studio (LIS490ST) classes will work on projects at Kenwood Elementary throughout the semester.
“Students in LIS 451 are expanding their understanding of newly-learned
skills by serving as mentors and personal instructors to parents and
guardians,” said Wolske. “Community Informatics Studio students have an
opportunity to see a popular technology workshop in action, practice
newly-developing community engagement skills, and build relationships and
gather insights that will inform their semester projects.”
Wolske also said his students are hoping to use this pilot project as a model for other similar workshops that they will lead individually at other community sites.
“The ‘Demystifying Computers’ workshop is just one program that Community Informatics students will be involved with at Kenwood this fall,” said Wolske. “In addition, some students are already exploring the eToys technology project, helping to develop video screencast instructions on its use, organizing by topic the available tutorials, and providing support for the use of this learning tool.”
Etoys is an educational program that allows children to use a paint program to create objects, and then to create scripts to animate those objects. As students learn about the properties of objects and how to manipulate those properties, they also begin to learn various subject-specific lessons related to math, science, and technology.
Wolske and his students are collaborating with faculty and staff from the Office for Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education, University of Illinois, who have been engaging with Kenwood to introduce the eToys educational authoring and scripting program.
Fostering relationships with school administrators and librarians has been essential to the project.
“We offered this program at the Urbana Free Library through the Illinois Department of Commerce's Eliminate the Digital Divide grant last spring and it was well-received,” Wolske said. “Since Kenwood administrators have adopted a new school mission for the year—Technology and Literacy for the Community—replicating the program for parents of elementary children seemed like a natural fit.”
To learn more about this project and Wolske’s community informatics classes, email Martin Wolske.