My AHA moment
Last weekend I had a big aha moment and here’s all about it.
After a fairly long gap, I’ve got some time(& internet connection) to put my ramblings across in a blogpost.
Pfft! How busy could you have possibly been?
Well, I was travelling around for the past couple of weeks and just got back to Bangalore after a much needed refreshing(read as no internet connection) break. But thankfully I’m not famous enough to be accountable to anyone for not putting up a blog every week while I was away. Lots of pictures and fun stuff but here’s a pretty unstable & shaky timelapse video in case you’re interested(watch 1080p if you don’t want your eyes to bleed). Kids, this is what happens if you don’t mount the camera and save stabilize for later.
Mozilla DinoTank Workshop
From November 18th to 20th, a group of Mozillians got together in Bangalore to work on a problem statement- Connecting Rural Women in India.
During these the two days, we did everything from researching, brainstorming, story boarding, learning how to provide/receive/ask for feedback to paper prototyping and user testing. I’m sure many of our brains had mini orgasms due to the amazing ideas that was shared in the room. I’m certain that there would be many detailed blog posts in the upcoming days about these ideas and more about the event.
I wanted to highlight something specific that was my biggest aha moment during the event. We were asked to go through the interviews of rural women and their experience with internet and share our feedback and use the HMW technique.
During the shareouts, Joshina and Nayantara of Internet Democracy raised an interesting point- Educating rural women in a non threatening way.
Why is this so surprising and why are you writing about this?
Although it seems kinda obvious and a no-brainer, I can tell you that it’s not! And I can’t seem to stress on how important that is.
As a part of the Mozilla Learning team, we’ve conducted several learning events in rural areas across the country. We’ve empowered a lot of people with Digital literacy skills and I’m extremely proud of that. From cab & auto drivers signing up to be a part of Uber & OlaCabs- the nation has come a long way in terms of getting people “online”.(Yes, I know this is debatable since they might be far from tapping the potential of the world wide web, but it’s surely a start).
A typical session would be over a couple of hours starting from the basics of computers, internet and the web. This might then go on to exploring topics like privacy & security. However, after hearinng Joshina & Nayantara, I just realized that -
I’m guilty of not being sensitive to learners.
To keep in mind that these are people who are already sceptical & have their doubts and concerns about the internet. You dump them with ‘information’ while the ‘concepts’ of privacy and security might just be jargons to them.
To all the educators and teachers out there
Although you meant well, to some learners, it might not come off as you’d intended. This can do more harm than good. Try to be sensitive and show empathy to your learners. Get them to share their story with you & share yours with them. This helps in building a connection with the learners.
Takeaways
My biggest takeaway from the event have got to be the following:
- Learning how to provide/receive feedback
- Paper prototyping & identifying the challenges in ideas
- Design thinking
- A reassurance on working collaboratively & producing great results
- Above all, empathy
I felt privileged to be a part of this team and would like to thank everyone who contributed to this event. Special shoutout to Rina Jensen, Rosana Ardila, Michael Henretty & Stacy Martin for coming down to India to work the community on this.
Onward
