Learning and Technology Mentoring for MAGMA s Newcomers - Daniela Gallardo Cohort 6 2021-22

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um all right hello everyone and thank you for attending today's presentation uh before we begin I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land from which Daniela is joining us is the traditional unseated territory of the lost acadic and mikma peoples this territory is covered by the treaties of priests peace and friendship which lost akiak and mcmah people's first sign of the British crown in 1725. the treaties did not deal with surrender of glands and resources but in fact recognized mikma and Wala stakiak um titles and establish the rules for what was to be an ongoing relationship between nations interesting my name is Michaela or sorry I'm joining from Montreal which is situated on the traditional territory of the Ghanaian gahaga a place which has long served as a site of meeting in exchange amongst many First Nations my name is Michaela and I'm a McGill grad currently completing my pathy Fellowship in Montreal I have the honor of introducing Daniella Gallardo for her final Fellowship presentation today and I've had the privilege of getting no to getting to know Daniella over the course of our fellowship year today's presentation will consist of a 25-minute presentation followed by a 25-minute q a period which I will moderate please note that this presentation is being recorded and live streamed on Facebook um Daniella is a University of Ottawa grad with the Bachelor's in linguistics and Life Sciences the university studies allowed her to get involved with best buddies psycholinguistics research as well as her on-campus work as a technology student mentor the community that she worked with this year was the newcomer community and her hometown of Moncton New Brunswick alongside her community partner magma the Multicultural Association of the greater Moncton area Daniella is passionate about social inclusion Community equity and connecting her personal interests into tangible work it was through her involvement with Magma over several years as a language class assistant and tutor that drove her to connect the skill sets she learned as a technology Mentor into her role as a fellow her Fellowship initiative has consisted of creating a technology literacy program for magma newcomers receiving English classes as an adjunct to their language training over the course of the community phase Danielle was able to work with the class of adult newcomers to provide weekly skill set-based workshops and allow for the inclusion and expansion of traditional language learning to blend into digital Avenues and spaces this also allowed newcomers to enhance their English learning and grow their confidence into accessing computer and Technology spaces to enhance their daily lives I first met Daniela one-on-one in a zoom breakout last June and even through screen her Charisma was infectious I don't think I'd had a belly laugh over video conferencing software until I met her I've had the pleasure of getting to bounce ideas off of Daniella over the course of community phase and can testify that aside from the joy she brings to conversation she's also a passionate and considerate the way that she informs her work in worldview through her experience and charitable observations of others is admirable which I'm sure you'll find in her presentation today just a quick reminder that throughout Danielle's presentation we encourage you to make comments and ask questions in the chat box or comment section of either Zoom or the Facebook live stream we'll be watching these feeds and call it in comments and questions and we'll moderate a q a period following the presentation if you are joining us on Zoom please consider turning off your microphone and cameras to limit background noise and help with connectivity should you have any technology concerns please feel free to let us know via the chat box and without further Ado I would like to pass the virtual microphone over to today's presenter Daniela thank you for that Michaela that actually makes me want to laugh right now so very fitting that you wrote that for me um thank you everybody for taking the time out of your day to join us I know that for some of you this is the third presentation today and for others I'm catching you at the end of your work day so I really appreciate you taking the time um to hear a little bit more about the work that I've been up to for the past year um like Michaela said my project took place in my hometown in Moncton New Brunswick on the East Coast um and the initiative in this project was named the learning and Technology mentoring program and it serviced exactly what it says the among the newcomer population so trying to capture what exactly I've been up to for the past 12 months is really it's really challenging it's incredibly hard um but I feel like the best way to try and like conceptualize um the work and like the path that this has taken over the past 12 months could be best um like described and visualized um through three main components um if this will change slides for me it is not changing slides for me oh wait here we go um into three main areas um the first one being my community so the groups the peoples and the experiences that helped shape and Define what the community was um and led to the conceptualization of what the program was of the learning and Technology mentoring program that leads into the second second phase of this year and the third one being just this overall experience being in the pathy Fellowship because it's a quite unique and rare experience unless if you're in it so I hope to do my best to try and bring you through like a timeline of this past year um and I hope you enjoy so to come and talk about the heart and the inspiration of this initiative I have to take you back about 39 years so 39 years ago my mom and dad came to Canada as refugees from El Salvador and they face the exact same barriers and very similar barriers to what a newcomer would have faced today so they were presented with a language barrier with a culture shock with having to access Resources with very little to no familiar support but as we all know humans are so resilient and my mom actually learned English from English classes that her local resettlement agency were giving out she eventually found a part-time job and even further down the road she graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in computer science and as I'm talking to you today I see kind of like the irony behind that and that she has a degree and a family connection to computer science but I was not facilitating coding or computer science skills at all that is not a skill that I learned during the pandemic but it would have been nice um and so really this project was a way to connect um like my home and as an homage to my family um but also as an appreciation to like the land itself so you know my parents original connection to this land has been through a journey of displacement but you know once we came in my me and my brother came into my into the picture um this is the land where we call home and this is where we're connected to um and so it was a bridge for this initiative to bring um like my family story but also like the story that we're making now in in my hometown and when I was thinking of the concept behind this initiative there were two probably key experiences that led me to um coming up with this idea and the first one was um in my work as a technology student Mentor at the University of Ottawa um and this was where I was giving one-on-one mentorship sessions to University students with disabilities um and I was helping them access uh like software assistive programs on computers to help them facilitate their university studies and help them Bridge their learning and this was really like the first kind of like front Frontline experience where I saw like just how much support um this community needed in order to like translate what they were learning in an academic setting into a way that like they could access and make sense to them um and this kind of really sparked like an interest in like making me just wanting to be more aware of like how this was also present in my hometown um and as Michaela said I was connected and have been connected with Magma since 2019 um they have been serving the community for over 20 years um they have the largest social media falling out of any other newcomer resettlement agencies in the whole Atlantic region and they just have a breadth of programs like to service this whole entire Journey for newcomers ranging from you know Finding housing employment initiatives the language training of course um and finding those Community connections around them and so um when I was a volunteer in one of these language classes at magma I saw this exact same experience um shown in this community where um newcomers are learning language they're developing their literacy and some teachers would bring these newcomers into the computer lab which was such a unique and like super such a blessing that they have they this room already set up with a bunch of monitors a bunch of Technology but I noticed that like for first for this instance the technology itself and the computers themselves were actually a barrier to learning the language um you know these newcomers would come in and the intention behind the activity was for them to learn through a game um but some of these newcomers had never touched a computer before and so when I approached uh magma for this initiative my amazing Community contacts Angela and Kim um we found that we could use what was already in the community and start this program start a workshop where for one one and a half to two hours every week um they could focus solely on like this digital literacy aspect and it could coincide at the same time with what they were learning so you know if the theme of the month was like health and safety we could tailor those activities on the computers um to reflect that learning in like a practical way um and the second key experience that influenced the planning in like a very unintentional and like not anticipated way um was the year of the pandemic so for those of you who don't know I was actually um part of the original cohort that was selected back in 2020 and then when the pandemic happened this year was postponed so I actually worked for a whole year um in my community but as a disability support person um I was working with adults who had an intellectual disability find resources um around them and this was where like I became introduced to these Concepts in the disability disability field um that really coincide with the teachings of the Cody Institute and the way that this whole initiative was structured actually so Concepts like person-centered planning asset-based approaches um and support network building um were things that I was using in my I work during my year off that actually influenced the entire delivery delivery of the initiative so in the first month um Angela and Kim introduced me to Anastasia and she was an ESL teacher who had a class of I don't know newcomers at a clb level for English level and this is kind of important because this level is actually the second last um level that newcomers need that need to pass before they can apply for citizenship and this is also a level two where um newcomers have like a basic and a good grasp and literacy and where they can actually start to take steps and show interest in finding employment very soon um and so when this when I was introduced to this class I came to them with nothing planned I came to them um with a curriculum that wasn't developed um the only elements that really were concrete at the time were the themes of the month that they were going to be receiving anyway for their English training um and so I approached them with this idea and luckily for me um they were a bit nervous at first and a little bit apprehensive because you know when you come in and say we're gonna learn about digital literacy that can mean so many things um but above all um they realized the the need and the excitement and like they saw at least the potential of what it could mean for them which is which is again like something that's highly personal and so um over the course of the community phase um starting in October we met with a small group of Anastasia students they ended up being about about six to eight like more or less but a consistent group of six to eight from October all the way to the end of May we met 23 times that's 23 workshops each Workshop range from like one and a half hours sometimes to three depending on the activity depending on the time of the year um and we learned we did many activities we they range from knowing where to find a walk-in clinic uh knowing how to find a family doctor knowing how to like find a replace stolen documentation and like what you need to show to like do that successfully um one one activity we did was on how to get a driver's license in the Pro in the province um we did activities on e-commerce and online shopping we actually even had an introduction to Amazon one day um we also had a workshops um how to book travel so how to book plane tickets um where you can go what options you have to do that uh we did other workshops um talking about um like financial literacy a little bit of that so how to how to browse the the bank institutions that are around you the different kinds of accounts what that means um and above all like the literacy that comes with learning technology there's a whole like World of vocabulary that is unique sometimes to using computers using cell phones in English and there's this whole other like World of etiquette um that that you wouldn't know unless if you have those conversations and have that space to talk about um the other really neat thing that happened in in March of the community phase was we were able to purchase laptops for the participants so this meant that like going forward every Workshop that came after that the newcomers had their own individual laptops to do this on and the other neat thing about this moment is that they could take these laptops home with them and that was so like transformative to the whole learning aspect of of the initiative because um when you take it home like the learning doesn't stop within that one hour to one and a half to three hour time frame and um and then and they could choose to use a laptops or what they wanted um and of course the second or the third um a super neat thing that ended up happening this morning actually I'm so very fitting that I get to share that with you today um we had like a celebration and a potluck for the first cohort of newcomers that completed this program and participated um so we gave out participation certificates the newcomers that had been meeting together since the start of the fellowship and we were able to celebrate that with them today um and so it's been a really full and fulfilling year and you know throughout the whole course of this we got I at least got to see like a really like valuable look at the progress that all the newcomers made from October all the way to May um originally what I thought I was gonna do was have like two groups of the program so run one group from September until December and then in the new year start a new group from January to May okay but what ended up happening because of like scheduling and covid restrictions it was actually the same group that stayed together um for the whole course of the fellowship which I think was a huge asset at the end of the day because it was such an extended period of time where you could really start to see like the progress that um that everybody was making and so when it comes to talking about like what what came out of this like I've given you the details of hard facts and all of that I knew going into the fellowship I again I Incorporated you know an asset of disability disability work that's really common and it's this path like visualization tool it's typically used to um for individuals who have disabilities to map out their dreams and their goals and it uses a backwards thinking approach to making steps um by their support network um on how they can get to that to that goal and um my Northern Star or the Ultimate Dream um is to create keep creating these confident empowered and inclusive communities but and even if you look into that a little bit more really like what this initiative is aiming for is to create these forms of social mobility and these forms of capital so you know for aside from the hard skills of it all of knowing what a screen is called in English or knowing what a keyboard is and knowing the right grammar to go along with it you know social Mobility takes place when a newcomer can look at learn how to find a family doctor near them learn how to find maybe Patient Advocates to come with them to these appointments it comes when you know a newcomer can know the steps to finding a driver's license and then getting that driver's license down the road that's a form of social mobility and and that it turns into Capital because if that car is the reason they can find a job if that they can provide for their families um that that's a form of capital and it's the whole goal is to create access to this access to these forms of capital to populations who are at a disadvantage or who maybe don't have the same access to it as other groups in the community and the other way that really impact took place is through is through stories it's through those relationships that were formed and how this and how these stories are so personal that they reflect um the relevance and like the resonance that these people took from the workshops to to enhance their their own their own lives and so here are some of the pictures of the community and the newcomers that um that I've been meeting with for the past eight months and they've all given me permission to share these pictures uh with you today and just some highlights that I wanted to share with you you know there were a couple of newcomers that um that that in this program that had never touched a computer before and one one individual in particular he had never he had never touched a computer much less in English and when I saw him this morning he was telling me that he was now accessing his online bank accounts by himself um a father of eight um again didn't have access to a computer didn't know anything now he was helping his eight children or one of the eight children at home with their online schooling um there was another another newcomer she was a mother of two she had a daughter in London and has a daughter in Lebanon um and after one of the workshops going over like email Basics and and all of that I found out sometime later that her daughter in Lebanon had actually sent her an entire album of photos from her wedding and she didn't know she had them she didn't know that she that they were sitting in her sitting in her email this whole time and it's like now she has those photos of her like now she's she has her daughter with her when they can't really be in person and there's others other stories um like that too you know there was another another newcomer she was a single mother of two um and again through the workshops getting comfortable um getting comfortable reading reading in another language especially when it's on like a virtual a virtual platform we were actually able to help her um find and drop off documents to the legal aid clinic and this morning I found out she has an appointment so um it just really visualizes like what what how you can take um like everybody was able to take something out of the workshops which is so nice and even aside like it goes deeper than like the hard skills as I was mentioning um because again there's a vocabulary to this to this like digital space so um so even if perhaps you already knew like what how an inbox works or like how sending an attachment Works you're learning about like the vocabulary learning about the grammar behind it you're learning about how this works in like Western Society so and this was something that we only really started to scratch the surface with now that I think about it like there were some times where we had these conversations about like what credit is you know and like and like what that means and so there's this whole like other like field that goes even beyond the technology of it all that is like made possible because of like this literacy um and here are some pictures from earlier today actually so we had a potluck to celebrate and this is um these are some of the newcomers not all of them were able to make it today um but this is um this is the group more or less that I've been with for the past eight months so it was really special to like give them like a validation and like accreditation for the hours they've put in and it's like these are things that they can use on their resumes these are this is something that they put in dedicated energy and time and effort towards um so it's not all so they get something out of it something to show it and of course along the way I learned many things I think perhaps the main challenge going into it and which I was anticipating um like was the facilitation of it all um I you know I've been a camp counselor before I knew how like groups worked right but I never this exact same kind of group so this was an adult group um I was younger than them and there was this um I guess I I didn't anticipate the extent that this would like show up but facilitating a group of like six to eight people was really really hard the first like month in community I felt like I was running around um and like trying to catch my breath half the time um it took me a while to get used to people's um Pace like their learning levels like what they already knew um especially the the language I had to really um change the way that I would explain things and like also slow down like what I said um because there was a language barrier um also there was a challenge to programming at times there was a a two and a half month period where this entire initiative had to be done virtually because of pandemic restrictions and that came with its own you know what's with its own set of good and bad things on one hand facilitation kind of became easier because you know it was a screen share and not me running around trying to make sure that everybody's computer was working right but on the other hand it kind of made like individual work individual handouts um to be not really feasible especially because a lot of these individuals were joining and tuning in from their phones so already they're like straining their eyes to see me on a small little screen it's not really it wasn't really realistic for me to um expect them to complete things independently um but at the on the other hand like it kind of made like a force it kind of forced them to get comfortable with like virtual platforms because they didn't really have a choice um and you know some of the other things I discovered too and I kind of touched on this already like a little bit but you know for the workshops like we would make like I would try and make handouts of activities and of things that I wanted them to be able to find um and something really really neat that started almost immediately that I didn't see coming was that the work the workshop handouts themselves um actually became like group reading exercises so there was this whole like component of just general like English literacy that was able to take place like um and and and I realized they really enjoyed doing it like people wanted to participate people wanted to be reading they wanted to be pronouncing these words and they wanted to know what they meant so that was really exciting and something that I didn't I didn't anticipate for um and the other thing that I didn't really anticipate for but I guess I should have was like this whole um like cultural cultural lens that I didn't see taking place and it took me a lot to like conceptualize that um and it can best be described by this so I learned that silence does not mean that there's a lack of something happening there were some days where I would facilitate workshops and I would leave thinking like I think they just spoke to myself the whole time and especially like it contradicted like the whole purpose of like participatory planning because on one hand you want the learning objectives you want the workshops to be reflections of what the newcomers and the community want to learn but on the but especially if they're not giving you feedback it just kind of makes it hard to gauge and hard to read and then I started to realize well you know maybe there's this whole maybe this clashes with the cultural um Norms that these people are coming from especially when you're in like a position of Authority or in a position of leadership um it's a sign of respect to stay to stay quiet um and so I I I learned from this that the best thing I could have done and the best thing that I hope I did um to my best ability was to show up like literally just to show up um every week as I said make my presence known um and I think this really was what made the relationship start to form and start to break down or like kind of mitigate um these things these behaviors that I was noticing um so towards the end you know um I think the newcomers were getting more comfortable in finding ownership in their voice and realizing that they had this platform to direct their own learning which perhaps for some people was the first time that they were in an environment like this um going forward I um I actually you know because of the presence that I was able to like maintain and establish word did start to spread um which was super encouraging to hear um I know sometimes some of the family members would be asking like hey where is this class that I can go where I get a computer and I know that some teachers were expressing interest in you know having something like this for their students and so um I'm really happy to say that in the summer I'll actually be running a second version of the project of the program with a new teacher and with a new set of newcomers so that's been really really exciting um and the other component that I wanted to make sure and like develop throughout this whole phase and like even Beyond was like a facilitation um manual or like a guide and it's basically just a big compilation of all the workshop handouts that were prepared throughout the year and it's also a compilation of like the themes that are you know already standard to what newcomers are learning for their English Level Training and like suggested activities that can be done for each of these larger themes and I think this will be super helpful because down the road if um even if there's like no designated facilitator for this you know at least there is like a guide for teachers that are already at magma who perhaps want to incorporate more like digital literacy activities but don't really know how or don't have time um and this this will be at their disposal so that's been really exciting um and the last like main key component has been the experience um as a fellow um it's quite rare to get an opportunity to spend a whole year being 100 autonomous and in control of what you're doing um and so that took some getting used to for a bit um but I realized like the importance of of finding your leadership through the relationships that you establish um both with you know both within your community and outside of it I I know for a fact that um if it hadn't been for Angela and Kim and Anastasia and the relationship we were able to create the support that came from it is what made this year like it was what made this year what it has been um and I like also learned like how how powerful it is to ask for what you want um and to get comfortable with that because if you if you ask for the things that you need the the leadership that you've made through those relationships is what is what will bring that support to you um and next stuff so as I mentioned before I will still be um continue on at magma over the summer and you know I still volunteer for them on other projects as well for other programs so um I I plan on maintaining that connection for many many years to come um but in the fall I'll no longer be the main facilitator I'll be completing my or starting my masters in global Health at McMaster University so I also really credit this year for giving us the flexibility and like the freedom to figure out how we want to like combine our passion projects with the careers and like with the life that you want to create for yourself and you know especially with this field of like healthcare this initiative tapped into just a small little facet of this much larger picture like when we had these workshops on finding walk-in clinics on finding family doctors on replacing Medicare cards like that is such one small little determinant of Health that is like shaped by the context of our communities and so I'm super excited to be able to study that in like a much broader broader way um and I can't um finish this um presentation without giving a huge huge huge thank you um to the pathy but a foundation I mean just in the Cody Institute without this funding without this program like this entire year wouldn't have been possible and a huge thank you to Adam Jess and Sarah for your support um and for the encouragement and for the belief in our cohort that we can do what do what we what we're meant to do um I thank you to the cohort I know we say amongst ourselves all the time that the Friendship we made was something we never knew we needed um thank you to Anastasia Angela and Kim from magma I mean if you hadn't welcomed me into the community the way you did um not all of this wouldn't have happened um so so incredibly thankful and of course thank you to the newcomers for taking a chance and for trusting this new grad to come in and ask share their mornings with them every week they took a leap of faith and so I'm so thankful that they did and that we were able to have and share the moments that we did um and before I pass it back over to all of you um I'd like to leave with a little story and it's very fitting that it actually happened two days ago and I think it just kind of like captures this whole for the whole process um my mom was actually at the airport two days ago and she saw a Hispanic looking woman at the airport trying to find her bag and so she came she came up to this lady and you know she asked her if she understood what the man was saying she said no and she said do you speak Spanish and she said yes she said she had just come from El Salvador as a refugee and there were people coming to pick her up and as my Mom is walking out the door out of the airport she notices that there's a magma van waiting to pick her up and so like that just kind of shows how like everything is coming full circle like this process is ongoing and ongoing and ongoing and I'm so privileged to have played even like a small little portion or a blip of that Journey for for the newcomer community in my hometown um and I think that's it for me I think I've been talking for too long but thank you I'll pass it over back if anyone has any questions thank you Daniella for that amazing presentation it's so nice to catch a glimpse of what you've been up to this year and that story at the end um so I invite everyone to um send in your questions um I also invite you if possible turn on your camera and we get uh we could have some faces instead of black boxes um but yeah while we while I wait for questions to roll in I actually had a question for you Daniela um I was wondering if you could speak to the experience of facilitating like intergenerational learning spaces um I'm I'm assuming that most of your students are actually older than you and I was just wondering if like you learned anything about kind of community building or leadership in in that dynamic yeah I think yeah so I I was a bit younger there was definitely an age Gap um with the group that that I was facilitating um you know I have to say for the most part I kind of came in a little bit apprehensive of that too um just because I always would think you know I wonder what these people must think you know they have lived entire lives up to this point and now there's this 20 year old coming in teaching them things um that that they're overwhelmed to begin learning about in the first place um but I actually think that was a problem that wasn't that wasn't a problem it didn't turn out being a problem in the end I am um I don't really know what I can credit that for but maybe just the just the general like um atmosphere of the community because people were so excited and they were so appreciative um that it didn't really matter that I was like you know maybe not from their Generation Um because they could connect it back to their children um so you know most of these individuals had families they have young children some of them had like you know older children um so I think maybe perhaps they could realize that if it wasn't necessarily me it would it could also come through their children in some way so maybe that helped maybe that helped a little bit but yeah right totally I mean it sounds like that learning space is probably super rewarding um you know subverting those usual roles of teacher student like older younger everyone's learning from each other um yeah that was super nice too and like eventually we got to a point where like sometimes we wouldn't be going that hard on the activity like we would be drinking coffee and like we would be talking um and just like talking about each other um and like even when we would have these like workshops on like you know for example that I think that one I mentioned about like bank accounts like this is where someone like chimed in and was like credit cards and like you know I couldn't relate it back to myself like this is this is what I have and you know this is what it means like this is what I do um and I don't know yeah like sometimes we it just went beyond like the content sometime which is which was super neat I mean that actually kind of leads into my next question and um I don't know it's kind of like a loser bag question but like how did because you brought up those stories and um my favorite one is like the woman who finally got to see her daughter's wedding pictures I was just wondering how like storytelling played into your pedagogy or how you kind of adapted to that environment or if you could just tell us more stories so I was super nervous to like come up with this whole like monitoring and like evaluation process because like in some ways like this project is kind of traditional in the sense that you're giving like these skill based workshops so you know you could you could present these handouts and people should be like expected to know like the terminology like behind the computer behind the hardware um but like I guess I I don't know I guess like after my first month I just kind of knew like that wasn't ever gonna be a way for me to like legitimize it and stories ended up being like literally what made like literally what influenced my entire way of measuring like the differences that came out of the community and like and above all like I have to say like generally like people were really like they were really happy they were confident that they were alerting these skills and they overall felt more confident in like opening up you know a browser whereas like from day one this was something that they had they didn't even know what it meant so I do have another story um so that same that same lady she's originally from Ukraine and the activity where we were like building like how to like learning how to book a plane ticket um like part of that activity was they could actually they could just like choose a trip like book a trip you know not actually book it but like um just to practice like navigating at all and this same individual she actually was wanting to do a trip like later this year to go see her mom um to go see her mom and then go see her family back home in Lebanon so she like actually planned out the exact days that she wanted to go in theory and she was able to do that you know of course like this was before everything went down like internationally but it's like at least she couldn't leave with the knowledge that she knows how to do this and knows how to like do that for herself when when the time was right and when she can't that's awesome I mean yeah it almost reminds me of like um I think Emily's presentation earlier this week when she's talked about how like in these environments sometimes it's hard to measure success um until I feel like storytelling is almost a good measure because like the level of trust are people people have with one another and like the environment it builds um but then I guess success can also be measured in buying a plane ticket um to Ukraine once you know everything is settled over there um so my next question uh also I encourage everyone to send you send your questions in the chat um but I have one more question and this is more on like the technical side is that I'm assuming people are coming in with different um skill sets and like levels already and I was just curious like where did you how did you know like where to start and like what content to start with did you do like a assessment or did you just kind of like gauge um based on talking I don't know yeah so I mean did we really know what what group was best to start with no we kind of started to face it off the fact that we didn't want it to be like a repeat kind of of what I had seen earlier where you know you're at a very very basic you know literacy level you're just learning the language perhaps shoving a computer in your face isn't it's gonna it's just gonna be a little overwhelming so I think the group we picked was I think the group we picked in the end was was really successful and it was and it was a good group um because they could already hold you know a conversation um and they also like were a class before I came into they kind of knew each other um like there was like there's more like cohesion in the group itself um and then like where to where to like start start doing you know skill set based work um when we first met we like we asked we had a conversation and said you know what do you what what do you already know how to do like what have you done before um and so we were able to I was able to get you know some like loose responses from people um but then when you actually like start to run a first Workshop then you really kind of get to know like okay what what do you already know how to do um and I think what helped like kind of mitigate this because everybody was at different levels and even and I even I know that like I was facilitating a group of six to eight people I know that I couldn't really meet every single person um with the same level of attention and and detail because that's just how like facilitation works but I think even despite that everybody was able to leave with something new because there was this whole like other like language component that I didn't anticipate for but was super glad that was there so even if like we had like I had some newcomers who literally worked online right so but in their native country so um so so they didn't necessarily need to relearn how to do everything like physically but but the language that it's not in their native language anymore so there's reading that needs to happen there is like translation that they sh that you know you're you're not wanting to translate you're wanting to like absorb this information in this new way so I think either way this kind of helped everybody like leave with something oh yeah that's so fascinating I forgot that the language component's part of it like translating you know computers and like digital literacy to a whole other language um cool um so we have a question from the chat from Emily um such amazing work this is a really hard question and kind of related to issues of assessing success but how do you define digital literacy yeah okay this is a good question um at first perhaps I thought it was more like of a like a set of hard skills like knowing how to type out a resume knowing like how to like search for things but I also think this is like other component of like autonomy that's at play because like pretty much everything we need to access like literally from finding an apartment to pay your rent to like you know even going to school like you need to know how to look for things how to find things and how to do that with like all the platforms that are out there and so I think like being literate in this and like in and almost like even if it almost kind of goes like outside of like technology in a way because it's like you're you're learning how to like to know what you want in a way so that you can use the technology or the computers as like a bridge and that's like a medium to do that still thinking about it even as I answered it um okay are there any other questions I'll give everyone a few moments if there's any questions comments um otherwise we'll wrap things up all right well congratulations Daniela on an amazing year it's so nice to see these pictures and hear these stories um after you know hearing about them through Facebook messenger and zoom calls um and congratulations on your coming steps in another cohort and your studies at McMaster um I look forward to meeting up with you in the sixth thank you thank you so much and thank you everyone for for tuning in today and um everyone who's tuning in either here or on the live stream I encourage you to check out our schedule I believe we have two presentations left tomorrow and then it's a wrap um yeah have a great Thursday everyone

2022-08-04

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