Daily Archives: July 18, 2014

We have a significant number of students from African background at our school. Now that in itself is too broad a description as the students we have enrolled hail from over twenty nations and cultures across the African continent. Two of the more major groups include Somali and Kurundi families, and our Community Development Officer has been working with some of our parents in playgroups and parent group meetings on a weekly basis. The Kurundi group meets with her, along with one of our multilingual BSSO's (Bilingual School Support Officer) offering translation support, on a weekly basis to explore things of interest in the areas of health, support services, cooking and so on. Many of these mums have had little formal education prior to arriving in Australia, or had to make do with whatever was on offer in the refugee camps. Many are keen but lacking in confidence in being highly involved in their children's education, and one of the aspects they feel out of touch in is the area of ICT.

Through our Community Development Officer, I have been approached to help address this need with this group this term. Many of the parents have phones or cameras but don't know how to get the photos from the camera onto a computer or into printed form. They don't feel confident in navigating their way around a laptop so we have decided the way to cross the barriers between what their kids know and their own skills to via Family Photos. I suggested that we work on making Snapfish printed photo books with the parents where they take photos from their phones or cameras, and use the Snapfish interface to create something they will really treasure. They can learn how to use cables to download photos into folders, how to find and look through photo files, how to use the internet to look up images they might want to include (country flags, images from their homeland) and how to use web technologies that involve drag and drop, typing in text, making choices from menus, making changes to a template and a whole bunch of skills that don't necessarily need a strong command of English in order to be able to achieve. I'm looking forward to it- and hope that our hunch about the common connections that can be made through family photos can help these parents feel more empowered about the technology that is so commonplace in Australia and in our classrooms, and they can engage with their kids more easily. I'm looking forward to receiving my demo Snapfish booklet soon to help tune these adult learners in!