I have been volunteering at the Richmond senior center for about a month now. I volunteer on Friday mornings before my afternoon class. This past Friday, a very nice lady named Ms. Hermoso came into the lab. She said it was only her second time using the computer because she didn’t want to learn about it before. But now, she really wants to be able to email her relatives.
Ms. Hermoso already had an email set up from her previous session but she couldn’t remember her username and password. We quickly set up another email account. Then I had her send me an email so she could practice sending emails and also have a record of her username. I also had her write everything down in her notebook. After we sent an email to my email address, we quit out of the Internet browser and she practiced logging in a few more times.
What really touched me was that Ms. Hermoso was at the senior center on Friday because she is a caretaker. A wonderful lady, turning 71 this upcoming Sunday, she is helping take care of others! She told me that she really liked our session and next time she would bring her relatives’ email addresses.
Although I might not be able to work with her again, it made me really happy that Ms. Hermoso was so open to learn about, technology, something my generation truly takes for granted. I hope she is able to continue learning computer skills that can help her.
Michelle is a service learning student from the University of San Francisco and has been serving as a CTN volunteer for the Fall 2013 semester. CTN is a community partner with USF and provides service learning experiences for undergraduate students in our digital literacy work. To learn more about the service learning program, read this blog post: Service Learning Through Technology Training.
Comments are closed.