Service Project
This week, I spent about 4.5 hours refurbishing and testing computers as usual. To date, I've completed about 20 hours on site, and this upcoming week I have some offsite work planned by revising and marking up a copy of the standard test procedure. However, I did learn more about the demographic that Computers 2 SD Kids mainly serves, and the types of people that donate computers.
Over the course of a couple of hours, I saw people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds ages, and genders stop by the warehouse to donate computers or equipment. Additionally, the amount of equipment donated ranged from one computer to a truck full of desktops, monitors, and other assorted hardware such as CD players and old cables (these are often sorted out from usable computer hardware and recycled with the rest of the e-waste collected). It was interesting as I had never seen as many people before compared to the last few weekends most likely due to the fact it has been raining a lot lately around here. A couple of customers also came in looking to claim their free desktop computer or to buy a laptop or desktop from the current stock available.
Most of the people who came into the warehouse for a computer were families with children, often multiple. Some families did not seem to speak much English, and it coincided with my experiences working with attendees from the library computer skills class who were mostly recent immigrants to the United States. However, what I found most interesting was the majority of the customers that came in did not look like as if they were sterotypically "poor", "in rags", or "almost homeless" - it was difficult to tell, even at all, just from what they wore or how they looked that they were from low income/disadvantaged backgrounds. Although I have never been one to judge a person's background based solely on their appearance, I guess it only highlighted how social status, demographics, and members of a community are classified based on much more than appearance, and how appearance means little in the overall dynamics of a society.
Black Girls Code
This week's video gave insight into underrepresented ethnic groups in engineering and computer science, efforts to diversify the discipline, and how people in the field can gauge students' interest in the field and get them to pursue careers in computer science. I thought Kimberly Bryant's story and efforts were quite exceptional, and I'm glad to see the efforts and outreach that she has done have impacted the African-American community in a positive way. I do believe that making creators out of consumers is a valiant effort, but to be realistic not every consumer has the desire to make said content themselves - I know plenty of people who love playing video games, yet have no interest in programming or understanding how game logic works. However, giving students the opportunity to delve into computer science is something that I think is more important than ever, and I hope to see more organizations similar to Black Girls Code appear in the near future.
This week, I spent about 4.5 hours refurbishing and testing computers as usual. To date, I've completed about 20 hours on site, and this upcoming week I have some offsite work planned by revising and marking up a copy of the standard test procedure. However, I did learn more about the demographic that Computers 2 SD Kids mainly serves, and the types of people that donate computers.
Over the course of a couple of hours, I saw people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds ages, and genders stop by the warehouse to donate computers or equipment. Additionally, the amount of equipment donated ranged from one computer to a truck full of desktops, monitors, and other assorted hardware such as CD players and old cables (these are often sorted out from usable computer hardware and recycled with the rest of the e-waste collected). It was interesting as I had never seen as many people before compared to the last few weekends most likely due to the fact it has been raining a lot lately around here. A couple of customers also came in looking to claim their free desktop computer or to buy a laptop or desktop from the current stock available.
Most of the people who came into the warehouse for a computer were families with children, often multiple. Some families did not seem to speak much English, and it coincided with my experiences working with attendees from the library computer skills class who were mostly recent immigrants to the United States. However, what I found most interesting was the majority of the customers that came in did not look like as if they were sterotypically "poor", "in rags", or "almost homeless" - it was difficult to tell, even at all, just from what they wore or how they looked that they were from low income/disadvantaged backgrounds. Although I have never been one to judge a person's background based solely on their appearance, I guess it only highlighted how social status, demographics, and members of a community are classified based on much more than appearance, and how appearance means little in the overall dynamics of a society.
Black Girls Code
This week's video gave insight into underrepresented ethnic groups in engineering and computer science, efforts to diversify the discipline, and how people in the field can gauge students' interest in the field and get them to pursue careers in computer science. I thought Kimberly Bryant's story and efforts were quite exceptional, and I'm glad to see the efforts and outreach that she has done have impacted the African-American community in a positive way. I do believe that making creators out of consumers is a valiant effort, but to be realistic not every consumer has the desire to make said content themselves - I know plenty of people who love playing video games, yet have no interest in programming or understanding how game logic works. However, giving students the opportunity to delve into computer science is something that I think is more important than ever, and I hope to see more organizations similar to Black Girls Code appear in the near future.
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