Computer Skills with Hougang Care Center – Reflection 2

LO2 and LO4: It was clear to me during the first few sessions that I didn’t have the experience or the know-how to teach people who have mental and physical disabilities. It was initially quite challenging as different clients learned at different speeds. However, by persevering I was able to converse and work with different clients to identify their individual needs. This gave me the skills necessary to teach them in an effective manner.

LO3: Being the leader of the group, I decided that we should plan at least 3-4 sessions in advanced. This effective planning would allow us to draw on new material if, for example, the clients we’re no getting a grasp of a specific topic. This planning is seen below in the table. We decided to allow the presenters to judge what material was suitable to teach the clients, this would allow us to do extension topics if needed.

Now we are at week 8 of the service and we have had 4 sessions with the clients of Hougang Care Center. Our trip to Hougang Care Center was extremely insightful and we learned a lot about the specific activities the members liked and other software programs they would like to learn. Some of the questions we asked the caretakers at Hougang Care Center were:

 

What are some of the social stigmas that exist related to disabled people?
For what particular purposes do the clients need to use their computer skills?
Do the clients have any prior knowledge on computers?
What types of skills would you want to learn?
What kind of jobs do the clients usually apply for?

 

After learning about this information we went to the drawing board to figure out what topics we wanted to cover. Some of the bigger ones we wanted to tackle early on were email, text editors (namely Google Docs), and excel. WE learned that the clients were familiar with using search engines; therefore, there was no need to teach them the basics, i.e. how to type, etc.

 

Being the leader of the service, I organized the group, the planning session and created a schedule for the first 5 sessions of service which is below. We also had a discussion with regards to the format of the lessons. We later decided on a format where we would have 2 presenters and the rest of us would assist clients.

 

Session # Date Topic People
1   25th October Using Email

Armaan

Suhas

2 1st November Docs

Victor

Misha

3 8th November Spreadsheet

Idan

Agasthya

4 15th November Spreadsheet

Aayush  

Isaac

5 22nd November Presentation Darsh, Keiron, Vanshaj

 

During the first 3 sessions with the clients, I was responsible to assist a single client during the presentation. I found this process quite challenging as I wasn’t accustomed to teaching computer skills to people with mental disabilities. That being said, I was quite experienced when it came to working with them. I was able to take this strength of mine and work on one of my weaknesses. One of the most important things I learned was that each client was unique and it was important to cater to their individual needs. One area where I need to grow is to identify their needs early on so as to provide them with the best education.

 

During my session, I taught the clients about spreadsheets. Here is the presentation. We build upon the previous session and taught them about functions and formatting skills. I am quite experienced in presenting and public speaking; therefore, I was quite comfortable with presenting to them.

 

Planning Session with Service Participants

Assisting Clients (right)

Presenting

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *