Observations - Rory Usher

I attended the Awarenet sessions held at C.M Vellem school on two occasions and interacted with a class of approximately 20 students between the ages of 14 and 15. Despite the numerous challenges that this community faces economically, like many others in this country, the main area of concern at the school was the lack of literacy and specifically that of technological literacy. My chief involvement in these Awarenet sessions at C.M Vellem, apart from my photographic duties, was to help the children in solidifying their grasp of using the Awarenet software as well as helping them in aspects such as spelling and grammar.

I found that the main issues that children faced with gaining traction with the technology was a combination of a lack of familiarity with the software coupled with grammatical issues. On both occasions the children were asked to write blog posts either based on a personal experience of theirs or from a picture of a specific person or topic given to them by the coordinator Terri-Lynn Penney. As a single coordinator it was evident that Terri-Lynn was at times overwhelmed by the number of requests regarding grammar and so it became starkly clear that some form of voluntary participation programme would be highly useful as it would allow more children to be helped more frequently.

The availability of internet access continues to plague many of the schools in which Awarenet projects have been installed and this was evident at C.M Vellem on my final day of observation as the internet was temporarily down and so Terri-Lynn was unable to connect the kids to the web in order to perform research. These are not technological aspects that are insurmountable but reflect a growing need to address technological innovation both in the educational sphere and on a more macro, national level.

The lack of internet activity on this day also nullified one of the main tenets of the Awarenet project which is a heightened level of social interaction. Due to the lack of internet access the children who had written blog posts were unable to post them to the web immediately and this severely limits the social potential of the use of Awarenet at C.M Vellem. This lack of connectivity highlights the gap that is widening at an extreme rate in this country between the privileged with access to the internet, for whom it is taken for granted, and those who are neglected due to lack of economic strength.

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Posted: October 16th 2013 03:50