We are all born equal, but are divided by race, cast, culture, religion and mostly by money. We are separated by our economic status and hence some get more opportunities while others are left without any exposure. Many children don’t have the opportunity to study and the ones who do, still have less chances to learn things like ICT, play different sports, learn different art forms and things like that. Hence, I did this CAS experience to help teach students, those children from Government schools who don’t have the opportunity to learn certain things. I took the responsibility along with my peers to teach these students about computers and IT. We provided them with chromebooks and taught them skills like typing, using the internet, playing online games, drawing tools and even coding(HTML and CSS) to higher grade students.

LO3(Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience)-

I, along with my peers, had to manage everything properly by dividing the children according to their age and skill level. We had done very little planning before the sessions and had to modify certain things according to what the children wanted to learn or already knew. Pre-planning here was a little important however we also needed to be ready for change and plans to not work, which we were.

LO5(Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively)-

I worked with my schoolmates, hence teamwork was very important for this. We divided our roles according to our knowledge and worked in sync without any major problems. It was not very difficult to work in a team with people because most of us had the same goal in mind that was to teach the children, however there were some hiccups in between when some people didn’t participate enough or help the students which was sorted out. This team work was important considering the number of students we had to handle.

LO6(Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance)-

This community service experience addressed a lot of global issues concerning the SDGs: No poverty; Quality education; Reduced inequalities. This is because we worked together to provide an opportunity to the ones in need, we helped provide them quality education and reduced the inequality between us and them by providing them with a similar IT skill set that we had received.

LO7(Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions)-

I tried my best to make ethical decisions while teaching them to maintain equity by teaching them what they needed. This issue had always been concerning to me and made me take actions to help solve it. I felt really good after the community service because I had helped these children by providing them smiles and an IT skill set required to survive in this 21st century.

During this experience, I had developed many learner profile attributes:

Thinker- Critical thinking for appropriate management and organizing of the students and the agenda to be taught. Creative thinking to make this learning fun by the inclusion of online games.

Knowledgeable- Spreading my knowledge with ones who need it and cannot access it in other ways.

Communicator- Communicating with the students in their preferred local language and teaching them through multimodal interactions through: presentation of the task on a common LCD, and one on one interactions.

Open-minded- Teaching the children with an open mind. Setting aside all differences and maintaining equity in the cultivation of tech skills amongst the children.

In a nutshell, this activity was very helpful for the children as they experienced new things and learnt a lot from it. In fact, a few grade 10 students even learnt how to properly write HTML and CSS code despite the lack of access to technology on a daily basis. This was the highlight of the experience. It motivated me that how we can achieve anything we want with the right determination and opportunities. It also provided me a sense of joy and accomplishment since I helped these students acquire a skill that they couldn’t otherwise have access to.