A 'Feel-Good' Success Story

Here’s a feel-good story to end off the week. I’ve shared this story on Cognitive Edge but I just had to share it with everyone else because it is very inspiring!

There is a lady who I’ve been training who is legally blind. By that I mean she can still see somewhat, but her vision is getting worse every day. She came to me because she wanted to learn how to use email to keep in touch with her grandchildren. We met and I started explaining to her what an email address is and the components of one. By this point I could tell by the look on her face that she was entirely lost; she looked frightened by what I just explained to her. Further probing told me that the closest thing to a computer she has ever used was a typewriter. I realized then that we needed to back up and start from the bare basics. As she was a very proficient piano player when she was younger I explained to her that before we can learn a song, we need to learn where the notes are; a comparison I made between email and using the mouse and keyboard.

I proceeded to start with the basics when we ran out of time. I gave her a handout to take home that would cover all the basics we were going to learn in the future and she was so determined to learn how to use computers that she said she was going to study that handout at home and practice everyday in hopes that she would impress me next time. The next time we met she was indeed better at using computers. She even explained to me what a desktop was when we didn’t even go over it! I told her we would learn to use the keyboard and to my surprise she proceeded to read off every letter on the first line off the top of her head; apparently she used the typewriter a lot when she was in the workforce.

She still has a long way to go before we come back to email but her drive is very inspiring. She is losing her vision more and more everyday and has a very hard time seeing the screen and keys, but that does not hold her back one bit. She is currently in the process of having a computer installed in her home that will allow it to ‘speak’ to her. I was afraid she was going to cry from being overwhelmed the first time we met but by learning things one step at a time she is now much more confident in her abilities and this technology is not so abstract to her anymore.

"Reconnect:" A Local Documentary (HD) Preview

I noticed that the preview for new documentary featuring stories from C@P sites is now out.




Through stories from nine community access (C@P) sites in the Halifax region, this documentary explores digital divides and the value and ever-changing potential of community access to the Internet and information technology.

Director: ARIELLA PAHLKE Producers BARBARA ALLEN DAN ROBICHAUD ARIELLA PAHLKE Writers BARBARA ALLEN ARIELLA PAHLKE Editor ARIELLA PAHLKE Narration BARBARA ALLEN Post Production Facilities THE CENTER FOR ARTS TAPES Camera CHRISTOPHER J. MURPHY Additional Camera LOUIS BOUDREAU, ARIELLA PAHKLE Sound Recordist ARAM KOUYOUMDJIAN, LIS VAN BERKEL Sound Editor LUKAS PEARSE Online Editor LUCKAS CARDONA

Produced by the Halifax Regional C@P Association with the participation of NS Department of Economic Development and KAREN PARUSEL Director, Nova Scotia Community Access Program

Filmed on location in Nova Scotia in Halifax, Moser River, Terence Bay, Sheet Harbour, Jeddore, Tantallon, and Lake Echo. Featuring Halifax Podcamp 2010 Moser River C@P Site Resource Opportunities Centre Sheet Harbour C@P Site Tantallon Library Lake Echo C@P Site Saint Georges YouthNet Spencer House Nova Scotia Public Archives Veith House

© HALIFAX REGIONAL C@P ASSOCIATION 2010

Some things

So, I've got two things to talk about today, one is something I've been up to, the other is just a cool article that I find pretty interesting.

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So, first up, is something I've been helping two patrons with over the last couple days. Anyone wanna guess what? Well, its websites!

First up is the S.A.I.L. group, which I am helping develop their very first website, http://www.sailgrouphalifax.com, which although is still in its infancy (ie, lacking any content!) will be filling up shortly.

The second is with a lady named Selina who has been in the C@P Site before for classes, and has recently been complaining that her site is too hard to update. We decided that I will implement a Joomla system (if you haven't heard me talk about it before, it is my favourite thing!) in order for her to be able to update easily (http://www.joomla.org). Her original website can be seen here, and the new version can be seen here. They look the same, sure, but underneath is a system that she can edit, post to, etc. all by herself.

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Second topic is something that I think any cellphone user, techy or otherwise, can appreciate, what the heck is 3G/3G+/LTE/WiMax/4G/other funky acronyms. It can be found on Engadget here. I found it pretty darn interesting, I think (at least some of) you will agree!

Thats it for me!

Dartmouth-Cole Harbour Weekly

Our one-on-one computer training sessions have just started here at Woodlawn. I did one this morning helping a lady get audiobooks from the library onto her iPod. They're pretty popular so far - I have 7 sessions scheduled for next week. To generate some advertising for the sessions we have contacted the Dartmouth-Cole Harbour Weekly News and they're gonna come do a story on the training. I'm pretty sure it's the newspaper that comes with all the flyers so for those in the Dartmouth-Cole Harbour area, keep a look out for us in there!

In Sum

Here is a little Power Point I put together for NSCAP.

Thanks for a great Summer, y'all, and all the best this next year!

Success

Our biggest success this summer was with a girl who joined our camp, without any real knowledge of computers or technology. At the beginning of the summer, she was reluctant to do much of anything, because she didn't feel comfortable. Throughout the week, we were able to get her to start trying new things with the computers. By the end of the week, she was the most interested and excited one in the group. When she left, she was completely comfortable using the computer, and exploring new possibilities. We are excited to see her next year, and see how she has progressed throughout the year.

By Miles and Matt

Closing words from dartmouth north

My summer here at darmouth noth community center has been great ! The lab over here is very busy and lots to do ! My summer computer camps (http://campdncc.tripod.com) went very well. Attendance was a bit slow at first but picked up as the summer went on ! Those who took part in the camps really enjoyed them ! The best part was that they went and told their friends who came in and asked me to re-do camps because they heard how fun it was !

It was great to teach these people some things that they can use and even show other people ! Without this c@p site it's likely they would not have had an opportunity like this!

Rainy days were especially busy in here ! All of the school aged kids come in and play a game called "combat arms" which is a first person shooter similar to counter strike ! It's great to see them all playing together! The computer knowledge of some of these kids (who are about 8-10 years old) is amazing !

I hope everyone else has had a great summer !

3rd Round Of Summer Camps at The ROC

This week has been a busy one for me as it was my turn to lead one of our biweekly summer camps held here at the Resource Opportunities Centre. The following novel should give you a basic idea of what went on.

Camp Report
“Sports! At The ROC”
Duration: August 4-5, 2010 10:00am-3:00pm Daily
Submitted By: Brian Berry

Background Info

“Sports! At the ROC” is the third instalment of 4 biweekly summer camps held at the Resource Opportunities Centre in the summer of 2010. Advertising for this camp took place in the form of a brochure that was sent out to all the elementary schools in the area which the Resource Opportunities Centre serves. Accompanying this brochure we also advertised on our website www.prospectcommunities.com .

How It All Went Down

As the title suggests the camp was most obviously sports themed. The target audience was children ages 6-11. We were hoping for a group of six kids as we had set that number as our target number of kids. We had six kids sign up, but then two backed out at the last minute.

The First Day (Aug. 4)

The skies were angry that day and the weather was not in our favour for outdoor activities. It basically rained as hard as possible all day which kept us inside. We started off with colouring sports related pictures so the kids got to explore their artistic side. This was followed by a shoot out which went as well as could be expected. This was followed by lunch, which also went well. The rain continued to pour after lunch and we substituted the reality of outdoor sports for the fantasy world of Wii Sports Resort and Mario Kart. The kids enjoyed this. The day was ended with the sports related movie “Air Bud.”

The Second Day (Aug. 5)

The weather was better than the previous day, although it was overcast and foggy...at least it wasn’t raining. We braved the fog and went outside for some outdoor sports, consisting of Basketball and Soccer. This was followed by a spontaneous trip down to the SS Atlantic Heritage Centre. The kids enjoyed this trip and were eager to read each information podium along the boardwalk. We had lunch down at the Gazebo and then preceded leisurely back to the ROC. The kids then played a few sports tournaments on the Nintendo Wii. During this time while they were occupied we prepared the water balloons for the epic battle royal that would happen out in the baseball field across the street from the ROC. This would prove to be the climax of the day as the kids had a great time getting wet and throwing water balloons at each other and myself. (They mostly threw them at me...). We spent the last 20 minutes of the day playing a popular local game called “Grounders” in an attempt to dry off. All in all the camp was immensely enjoyed by all the participants.

Important Things to Note for Future Camps

• If you have a plan that you think will cover the entire day...it won’t. Plan twice as many activities as you think you will need because kids of that particular age group will go through your activities much faster than you yourself might.
• Movies work for a certain amount of time, but don’t assume the kids will sit through the whole thing.
• Water fights tend to work really well...but if you’re the only person of authority who is participating in the water fight then the kids will target you. (I got soaked!)
To sum up, if you can keep your campers busy with a good variety of activities then the camp should be a success.
The moral of the story...Keep them busy!

That’s all for now,


Brian Berry

Second Round of Summer Camps at the ROC

Hey Everyone,





The second round of summer camps was held at the Resource Opportunities Centre over the course of yesterday and today (July 21 to 22, 2010). The Theme this week was "Pirates" Yesterday the participants were treated to various pirate themed games and crafts. The day ended with a "Cannon Ball Fight," but since large amounts of legitimate cannon balls are hard to come by in the Terence Bay area, we decided to use a much more fun and less dangerous alternative...Water Balloons! The mayhem was enjoyed by all!

July 22 (Today) got off to a different start than we originally planned due to the weather. However that did not stop the fun. The day campers were treated to more pirate crafts and games for the morning, followed by a trip down the SS Atlantic Interpretation Centre to go on a scavenger hunt. After that the campers were treated to the feature film "The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" After that the sun came out and the day campers went outside to enjoy the nice weather.

I Bet You Were Expecting Ketchup

hey everyone,

this would normally be the place where you'd see my drawing of a ketchup bottle or something, but I have yet to fully figure out the awesomeness that is Google Sketchup. I played around with it a little bit throughout the week and figured out how to draw squares and circles and all that, but nothing cool came of it as of yet...just need to tinker around with it a bit more I guess and then I'll have it figured out.

So, instead of ketchup, I will give you an update as far as what has happened this week at the ROC.

We had many people come into the Resource Opportunities Centre to do several different things, but the highlight of the week was Movie Night.

Movie Night!

This week was an off week for the day camps at the ROC but that meant that Movie night was on! And it was quite the party for those who showed up last Thursday night. The two individuals who showed up to Movie Night at the ROC were treated to a showing of “Monsters vs. Aliens.” Pizza and juice was served and a good time was had by all.
Hopefully we’ll have more kids out to our next movie night which will happen on July 29, 2010 at 6pm. The Feature film will be “Kung-Fu Panda.” $5 gets you your movie, popcorn, juice and a slice of pizza! Yeah, it’s a sweet deal!

Looking Ahead to Next Week:

The second round of summer day camps will occur next week on July 21 and 22 from 10 am to 3 pm. The theme for this coming week is “Pirates at the ROC” (which should be great fun! Due to the popularity of the first set of day camps held on July 7 and 8, “Pirates at the ROC is FILLED TO CAPACITY!!! That’s always a good thing!
And that’s the kind of week it’s been here at the Resource Opportunities Centre.

The Cat Came Back

A brief success story for this week:

We have a fairly consistent group of kids that comes here, one of whom has been in BC since the end of last summer. He visited the CAP site this week and mentioned that he'd just gotten back the night before. And the first place he went at 9:00 the next morning was our CAP site? Feels good to have made an impression!

First Round of Summer Day Camps at the Resource Opportunities Centre...A Success! (Success Story 3)

Hey everyone,

The Resource Opportunities Centre put on its first round of summer day camps from July7-8 2010

The theme for this week's set of day camps was Animals and it was attended by 6 eager and enthusiastic participants between the ages of 6-12 who enjoyed various Animal themed activities, games, and crafts. They were also treated to an afternoon walk down to the SS Atlantic Heritage Park. All in all the camps were enjoyed by everyone involved. Several of those who participated this week have hopes of joining us again when we put on other summer day camps throughout the summer, the next one being held in two weeks time.

My Encounter with a GBC Shredmaster ("Success Story" #2)

Hello everyone,

It's sunny, and about 23 degrees in the Terence Bay on this Friday afternoon. So all of our normal patrons appear to be enjoying the nice weather as they should be. That being said, things could change as the afternoon progresses.

I will now get to the main point my entry for this week. The following account is of a somewhat funny (though not at the time) incident that happened to me this morning...If you're still interested at this point, continue reading.

It was 9:00 am this morning and I had just arrived at the Resource Opportunities Centre to begin my shift. After the typical *opening up* procedures were completed, I noticed a sheet of paper laying on one of the tables we have in here, it was for something that we had accomplished yesterday and there was no reason for it to be in the public eye cluttering up the place. I could have just put the piece of paper in the recycling bin, but I noticed our "GBC Shredmaster" (known to the rest of the world as your average paper shredder) sitting in a corner of the room.

I then decide to shred this piece of paper, with the help of the Shredmaster, because I thought that would be more fun. I insert said piece of paper into the top of the shredder as per normal and the Shred master does its job and shreds said piece of paper. Everything appears to be going normally until the shredder did NOT shut off after it had completed its shredding job (normally it's supposed to shut off after it's done). Slightly confused at these abnormal circumstances involving the shredder I then come up with a list of solutions with the hope of solving this interesting problem.

Solution 1: Find the "on/off" switch on the shredmaster.

Outcome: apparently the shredmaster did not come with such a switch, so after realizing this I quickly move on to solution 2

Solution 2: unplug the shredmaster

Outcome: the outlet which the shredder is plugged into runs parallel to the side of a bookcase which is placed quite close to the outlet. There is also a pillar that juts out in the opposite direction. All of this creates a narrow L shaped space one must reach around in order to unplug the shredder....It was too narrow for me to fit my arm through so I quickly moved onto solution 3.

Solution 3: Ask GOOGLE for help
Outcome: GOOGLE was not very helpful for this situation. So I moved onto solution 4

Solution 4: Call the boss on his cell and see what he would do.
Outcome: no answer.

At this point the time was approximately 9:30 so the shredder had been whining for 20 minutes straight (fortunately it was not overheating ...yet...).

Suddenly, the door opens...in steps the boss. He says something along the lines of "Hey Brian! What's happening?" I then update him on the shredmaster situation. He resorts to "solution 2" in the "list of solutions" as he is able to reach around the L shaped corner between the bookcase and the outlet and unplug the shredder. Chaos was stopped...and nothing overheated...which was good!

After that 20 minute episode, things have been quite normal around here. Although, with a little under 3 hours to go...that could all change...you never know...

The Shredmaster has since decided to cooperate ...which is pretty much awesome....


Hope you were able to enjoy that!

-Brian

Fundimentals are the building blocks of fun

This week has taught me how similar learning how to use a computer and learning how to read is. In both situations you start off slow, learning little things like what a letter is or how to turn a computer on. You slowly learn more and more until you can read an entire sentence or type up an email. The more you use these new skills the better you get even if you don't really notice your improvement.

These days almost every young person has used a computer and is fairly advanced in their level of computer literacy. Without even thinking about it we use hot-keys, scroll down pages, and google any thing we need to know about. Most of us can enroll in classes, pay our bills, book plane tickets and buy our text books in under ten minutes. This all seems pretty easy when you've been on a computer since your age was in the single digits but to someone who has just started using a computer while in their 60's it all seems down right scary.

What I consider to be my biggest success this week is helping a new computer user get more comfortable on the internet by showing her little things that make the experience more effective and efficient. I never realized the time a few clicks of the tab, control, and enter key really saves you and how much more someone can get done when they make the effort to come out and further their learning.

News from Veith House

Hola! This is Josh from the Veith House CAP site in the north end of Halifax. I was Veith House's CAP site monitor last summer and part time over this past school year. Fun times have been had, but, as I'm sure most CAP interns can attest, things are generally fairly slow going. We have a website here if you'd like to know more about our wee building in the north!

This week was pretty quiet, as will be the next couple in all likelihood, because school is not out for public schoolers, and most of my visitors are between 10 and 14... ish. I still managed to keep myself busy with a project to replace a junk router we bought from Staples with a Linux-based router I built from spare parts we had in the storage room — which is truly junk, time will tell! After hours of reading man(ual) pages and editing configuration files, we now have a machine that can keep up with the browsing habits of a full CAP site instead of slowing to a crawl under the weight of so few many simultaneous connections.

I recommend against purchasing a D-Link EBR-2310 wired ethernet router.

I'm now trying to share our printer from the router using Samba and the CUPS so the staff machine needn't be on as other staff occasionally allow users in when the CAP site is closed, and it would be convenient if they could print without powering on extra computers. Not having much luck making the printer visible to Windows clients yet, though. If any of our Comp-Sci interns have experiencing configuring (functional) Samba shares, I'd value your input immensely.

Other than that, there have been odd jobs to do like moving heavy things or reaching high places. After helping set up for today's preschool graduation, I was asked to photograph the proceedings with some not-so-terrible results, though Blogger's photo uploader does them no justice at all:

Regaling parents with songs of the Itsy Bitsy Spider.

A pre-student graduating.

Story time.

"Why yes, that is a lovely Dora the Explorer book!"

Graduation was a lot of fun for kids, parents, and staff alike, and I was able to help out some parents who'd been unable to bring a camera of their own, so I suppose that's my success story for the week. Story: successful!

Email, Google and Motorcycles?

When I started this job I would never have guessed that the first thing that I helped someone do on a computer was buy a motorcycle online. In a town where the majority of CAP users are seniors I was expecting questions about emailing or Microsoft office and was pleasantly surprised when the first person that walked in my door wanted to know how to use Kijiji. Having used Kijiji in the past I knew how to maneuver the site and while showing my visitor how to use the search options to narrow down his findings I asked what it was he was looking for. I figured he must be interested in purchasing some new furniture or maybe just wanted to see what the site was all about but was clearly mistaken since it turned out he wanted to buy a new Harley Davidson to ride around on during the summer.

I had other people in during the week but this particular visitor stood out from the rest. It was nice to help someone learn how to use the website but what made it memorable (aside from the fact that he was buying a motorcycle) was the fact that this was just some website my visitor had heard about in passing (he didn't really know the name at first just that it was "like eBay but different") and decided he wanted to learn more about it.

The fact that people can drop by and ask questions about absolutely anything to do with computers is really what makes the CAP program so great. Its nice that people who have little or no previous technological experience have somewhere close to learn more about whatever might interest them. I know my visitor was happy to learn more and I hope that I can help many more people accomplish their computer goals over the summer.

We have emerged from the Dark Ages!! FINALLY!

I have been working at the Lake Echo Community Centre for the past six summers. The previous five I worked as a counselor for the Day Camp put on by the Lake Echo Lions Club, but this year I am working at the CAP site located in the same building.
During my time at the Community Centre I have grown accustomed to the lack of an online presence for both the Centre and the CAP site. Typing the Centre into Google would result in several static and ancient pages that did not represent us properly.
This year when I interviewed for the Intern position I made a commitment to create a dynamic site that was easily updated by any of the staff and contained features that would make it easy for the community to meet online.
After a couple weeks of tinkering and a lot of technical difficulties the sites are finally up and running with most of the features that the client (Sharon Dykman, the boss) wanted implemented including a forum, online registration for the day camp, and an easy way to post news and informative articles for members of the community to view.



Check them out for yourself and see what's going on in Lake Echo!

Lake Echo Rec Centre

Lake Echo CAP

If you have any question about starting a similar site for you location let me know!

The Prospect Road Community Centre is Finally Here!