First Day of Teaching

Mar.4th, 2011

First Day of Teaching

Every day, there are new technologies being created. These new technologies have enabled people in the society to live better quality of life. Unfortunately, these advances are not available to all people throughout the community; there are certain people who are being left behind. The gap between people who has effective access to these technologies and those who are not is known as the "digital divide". An atmosphere at St. Christopher House clearly shows the world of digital divide.

The first world that I have discovered is the gap between the haves and not-haves: rich and poor.  The haves are people who have economical capabilities that can afford the new technologies such as computer, internet, Smartphone and others. On the other hands, the not-haves are the people who doesn't have any or very limited access to those technologies. Being located in Trinity-Bellwoods neighborhood where the probability of being in low-income is 47.3% among the individuals of age 15+(1), the most of visitors to St. Christopher House have no computer access at home or have no technical education background. May be the economical status caused people to be tense, the computer lab is always full with people who are eager to learn the new technologies.

The other side of digital divide that I have observed is the language barrier. Trinity-Bellwoods neighborhood is also a place where the % of non-official home language and the % of no knowledge of official languages are much higher than the other neighborhoods (2). The use of computer technologies have undoubtedly enhanced communication and provide greater flexibility in hours and locations, the computer lab is also always full with people who wants to use the computers as a tool to communicate with families and friends in their homelands.

My student, Liana, is a person who represents the both sides of digital divide: she came to Canada 4 years ago from a country in South America and is willing to learn HTML to create a website for a place where she works. She also have completed all the basic computing courses from St. Christopher House. Since it was the first day of class, I was focused to teach what HTML is and the XML tree structure. Although it was very difficult to teach a person without any knowledge on the programming, it was good to see that Liana is doing her best to learn it. I hope in someday, she achieve her dream of creating a website.

References:

1) City of Toronto Demographics, http://www.toronto.ca/demographics/cns_profiles/2006/pdf4/cpa81.pdf

2) City of Toronto Demographics, http://www.toronto.ca/demographics/cns_profiles/2006/pdf2/cpa81.pdf