My name is Heylin Rivera; I am in charge of the computer lab classes at La Hilda School. I would like to share one week of activities inside my class and introduce the challenges that we are facing. These activities took place last month in August 2008.
Preschool level:
This group did not attend the computer lab during this year. They start to come back when I was hired. The average range of this group is 4 to 5 years old. Base on this fact, we start teaching them basic skills. In addition, we are planning to set up four sessions with this group per month at least. This month we focus on teaching how to operate basic stuff such as turning on and off computers as well as the mouse functionality based on simple software. This software has some additional features that allow us to introduce some basic concepts as well.
Cycle I (Grade 1,2 and 3)
The range age of this group is between 5 to 9 years old. Students of these grades used to come to the computer lab to play with computers without any further supervision or guidance. Computer knowledge and skills of students in Costa Rica usually are not so develop and this school in not the exception. We would like to see that our students are able to learn more about basic project concept. We also need to work more with software provided by the local branch of the Education Ministry called Micromundos. In addition, we are also working on teaching them how to work in windows environment.
Cycle II (Grades 4th, 5th and 6th )
The range age of this group is between 9 to 14 years old. Students at this level expressed some knowledge and skills within the software Micromundos, but they still need to work hard to improve them. They have been using the computer lab mostly for playing for lack of guidance for the past months. For this reason, we need to work on tackle down the lack of interest of these groups to promote more work with long term achievements. I would like to plan more long term projects with this group on specific topics supported with further Internet research. Each student must improve his/her skills on online search focus on specific topics.
Grade 6th
The range age of this specific group is between 11 to 14 years old. The goal with the oldest group at La Hilda School is to improve their knowledge and expertise on Windows environment but more specifically on Word office.
In conclusion, after this update we are more aware of the coming tasks. We need to support any effort to keep improving the education level on this small La Hilda School. We are please to keep providing not only the computer lab teacher salary but also try to look for more efficient ways to educate all these kids that live within this coffee state.