Many school buildings collapsed during the 2015 earthquake and many computer labs were destroyed. We have launched a project to collect old laptops and bring them to different schools. Many people are supporting our idea and we will be able provide a new computer labs for several schools, entirely based on donations, by March 2017.
Now, we continue our efforts in order to ensure that students can make use of this opportunity. You as a volunteer can support us in this important task: the children have to learn and practice to use a computer at school because none of the families in this remote area have computers at home (the same also applies to their computer teachers). Computer lessons in Nepali schools are based on books containing step-by-step instructions of use by showing (often unreadable) pictures of screenshots. We have seen that this can only work, if the children are familiar with using a computer. You as a volunteer can work with the children, giving them the opportunity to use the computers in a supervised manner. You can engage in our efforts to teach the children how to work with computers, answering their questions, showing them which tasks can be solved using a computer and how. You can provide them with valuable insights into current technical developments and your specific experiences on the use of a computer in your daily life. There is no internet in the area, so your knowledge in this instance is extremely valuable to the children.
Volunteers giving computer lessons do not have to be computer experts or trained teachers. The computer teacher of the school will happily assist you and is keen on new insights into the use of computers. He assists our volunteers with teaching methods and helps to overcome communication barriers. You can either co-teach lessons or give full training lessons in the computer lab, for which the basic English skills of the children are not a problem as you can demonstrate most things. Furthermore, volunteers giving computer lessons create a great opportunity for the children to loose their fear of talking in English to a unknown person, practice real life conversations and learn the related professional vocabulary. Volunteers can also help our local computer teacher to create teaching resources and design lesson plans which offers a new opportunity of learning and exchanging ideas on educational practice. Furthermore, you as a volunteers play an important role in our effort to encourage and embed the professional use of computers in the teaching community. You can train and support the teachers of the school to use the computers to prepare teaching materials and help them develop ideas to include computers as a resource into diverse subjects like geography and science.
- Shree Mahendrodaya secondary school in the village Mulpani
- secondary school in Salang village