Today after 12:30 Spanish language mass at Queen of Angels Parish (2-4 PM), I led a class for basic computer skills– operating system, word processing, internet searching, to Spanish speakers. Some upshots:
- Over 20 people attended
- 5 biluingual speakers who served as proctors/ translators/ helpers for others
- All attendees succeeded in obtaining Yahoo! Mail acocunts
- People immediately got to work– emailing relatives in Mexico, emailing the 12:30 Mass Lector schedule, etc.
The cool thing was that there was a matrix of language and computer skills— great english speaker/ bilingual/ great english speaker; no email account/ mid-level internet browser person/ tech geek— that it became something of a salon. Everyone taught everyone else. It wasn’t a classic stand-up teacher/ listen-up students type-thing. People got VERY passionate and it sparked alot of action.
Here are some great resources we used:
- Colorado State Library: “Outreach to Spanish-Speakers: Gates Training Grant Program. A huge amount of resources
- Normative Communication Styles & Values For Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Great chart that helps “identify arenas of difference between ethnic groups that can destroy trust and respect when the differences are unknown to one or both parties in a communication”. For instance, “concern with clock time” is very little for Hispanics and very high for Anglos. This site has a ton of other useful materials dealing with cross-cultural collaboration myths, and the six Stages of Intercultural Sensitivity.
- We had all levels of computer skills– from complete beginners to people with their own websites
- We all helped each other
- More to come!