The Difference a Mouse Can Make

In the poverty-stricken classrooms of Zimbabwe, little contributions can make a big difference.

The students filed into the classroom in an orderly fashion. They were dressed in green uniforms and their shoes were covered in red dust. This wasn’t my usual classroom. In fact, I couldn’t have been much further from the Vancouver Film School. This was Siganda Secondary School in rural Zimbabwe.

The children took their seats, five or six in front of each of the four computers. Most of them live without electricity or running water, many walk over five kilometres to school each way. Their parents’ generation has been ravaged by AIDS and the majority of these students are orphans.

I was in Zimbabwe with the U.S. Africa Children’s Fellowshiphttp://www.childrensfellowship.org/. Founded by a former Brooklyn high school math teacher, Mark Grashow, USACF sends massive shipping containers full of supplies to schools in Africa and organizes annual trips to the region to support these schools.

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My assignment was to teach computers. When I arrived at the school the teacher designated to run the computer lab asked me what I had brought, what new computers I had for them. I shrugged my shoulders and replied, “I didn’t bring anything; I’m just here to help.” He looked at me quizzically. Neither of us seemed sure what I could do or how I could help. I was shown to the computer lab and cautioned not to expect much.

The first class didn’t go well. Within the first few minutes I realized that most of the students barely knew how to use a mouse. Most had never been on the internet and didn’t even know what it is. Two things were immediately clear: their needs are basic and small contributions can make a major impact. For example, another member of my group spends his time teaching people how to fix school furniture. Most of the chairs in the schools in the area are broken and unusable. In one school, they fixed over 1,000 pieces of furniture and the student pass rate went from 0 per cent to 32 per cent. Small things make a big difference.

As my students stared at me wondering what the heck I was doing there, I quickly scrapped my original lesson plan and took a desperate measure. I started playing solitaire with them. After all, the reason Microsoft included solitaire in early versions of Windows was to teach people how to use a bizarre, then-new technology: the mouse. The teachers were skeptical of the educational value. They told me they didn’t have time to play games with them. But the exercise paid off.

The next class the students were more comfortable with me. We continued to practice using the mouse, this time in MS Paint. They were confused and thrilled by the ability to change the colour of the lines, to use the spray can, even to save a document and come back to work on it later. We drew pictures by hand and then recreated them on the screen. Most students drew pictures of thatched roof huts and cows and soccer balls. Items reflective of their lives. In the second half of the class I got them to write passages by hand and then type them on screen.

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One boy wrote about the most memorable day of his life: he was walking with his cows when he happened upon an elephant. “I ran so fast until I got to the gates of my house and collapsed,” he wrote. These are the types of experiences that fill their days, herding cattle, fetching water, grinding maze. Not browsing Facebook or posting to Twitter or fighting email spam. By the last day they were drawing pictures, saving documents and embedding them in Word files. We all felt accomplished.

When I first arrived, I was weighed down by the grave reality in Zimbabwe. I was overcome by a sense of despair and my powerlessness to make a big-picture difference. But as the week went, on I realized that changing one child’s day, putting a smile on one child’s face, exposing one child to even a seemingly mundane new experience – these little gifts can make a major difference. The problems are big but the dreams are small.

It took me almost two days of nonstop travel to return home to Vancouver. I had a lot of time to think and spent most of it struggling with the value of my contribution. Others in my group were building furniture and assembling libraries - tangible, practical things. I was teaching them how to use expensive computers, computers that most will never have access to. Most don’t even have electricity at home. What was the point?

Obviously there was some practical value, but the smiles on the students’ faces led me to believe there was more to it. They live in a binary, high-stakes world. Do they have food or not, do they have parents or not, do they have money for school or not. There is little grey in their lives, little room for experimentation, for confronting the new or taking intellectual risks. Computers give them that opportunity. The power of “undo” means you can try something new, experiment. Computers present to these kids a space for play without consequence, a rare, liberating opportunity to make mistakes. For these students, the ability to experiment and explore and fail without consequence is the true value of digital literacy, even if it just puts a smile on their face for an afternoon.