Computer Training

As part of our training we are required to assist in some sort of community project. Broken up into 6 groups, we are assigned to various organizations and allotted one day a week for five weeks to assess a need and implement a project for them. The organizations are schools, orphanages, centers for the disabled etc. As there are only 5 Kazakh speaking PCV’s in our group we made up one group. Our project is to teach the teachers at the school where we have our language class how to use computers. We assumed they would have just a few older computers but when we arrived there were like 40 brand new amazing computers, a projector, and an ACTIV board (you like write on with a special pen that projects that on to all the computer screens – real fancy). Our job was to set up all the computers - which still were wrapped in plastic. Apparently some company had come in and set the computers up without training any teachers how to use them. The problem was that the “lab technician” was just some random teacher and she signed a bunch of documents saying everything was in order but a few computers were broken and the she didn’t know the administrator computer login password that we needed to get onto to set up all the computers. Also, all the interface was in Russian which none of us understood. So when we couldn’t get anything done the principle came in and yelled at this poor lady who felt so terrible and she blamed one of the broken computers on us. We couldn’t explain why we couldn’t get anything done really and we ended up just sneaking onto email for a few minutes and leaving. After we left we immediately went to the bar and convinced ourselves that we were horrible people and didn’t belong there. The following week we decided to set our objectives a little lower – this time hoping to teach some teachers how to use basic word, excel, and powerpoint. Except for only one teacher showing up, and the fact that we weren’t allowed back into the room with the new computers, things went pretty well. The one teacher was very happy and we began the creation of a tutorial slideshow for each program that we hope to finish and leave for teachers to use on their own.