For the final week of February, I spent several days helping provide basic computer training at a Methodist mission in rural Costa Rica, the town of Los Chiles, a community of about 8,000 people near the Nicaraguan border.
Over the course of two days, we trained as many as 75 people in one hour training sessions in groups of five or more. The students ranged in age and skill from teenagers to seniors and completely new to computers to more advanced. For some, the training was beyond basic. We provided instruction on the most basic concepts;
- how to use a mouse;
- how to open a program;
- how to enter text;
- how to erase text;
- how to copy and paste;
- how to save a document;
- how to find a file;
- how to delete a file;
- and how to recover a deleted file from the recycle bin.
We used five obsolete HP laptops donated from my employer with external USB mice.
Of all that we taught, the thing many of our students found most difficult to learn was how to hold and use the mouse. For some, the first instinct was to grab the mouse with the thumb and index finger, move the mouse, remove the hand and then click with the index finger, either right or left clicks. Holding it with the thumb and second to last finger and then hovering the index and the third to last finger hovering over the left and right buttons didn´t seem to work. It´s a bit of coordination that I do day in and day out that in their lives was as foreign as snow boots or an ice scrapper. For them, holding the mouse in such an awkward way was a kin to the average English speaking rolling his or her "r"s. It something you could do, but because you don´t do it every day, it´s difficult.
The experience taught me something. The students in Los Chiles, those who we trained, could very well understand what we taught them, but because they do not have a daily need to use the skills, even the most basic actions seem daunting.
As such, the digital divide between those who have access to modern electronic communications and those who don´t may widden.
