Service Learning Collaborating with CDAC

The service project took place in Zoom on 10 July, working with CDAC, me and my class welcomed 20 participants. The programme started with the introduction of phone storage issues which was presented by my classmates Celest and Arun. Afterwards we proceed on to different breakout rooms where my team was assigned with 2 elderlies to give 1 to 1 teaching on how to use google photos on android phone. My teammate, Celest was the main presenter while me and Esther was the helper to answer any question the elderly had.

Throughout the entire lesson, the elderlies were very open, enthusiastic, curious. They ask a lot of questions such as what is google photos, why do we need it, what are these functions? and we would slowly solved one by one. I remembered one particular interaction which was surprising for me. When we taught them how to edit photos in Google Photos through the slides for them to listen first and understand before driving head into it. After listening to the lesson, one of the elderlies could catch on pretty fast with a bit of leading by us, she managed to edit some of the very basic photos on her own. I could not see her face because she did not switch on her camera but hearing from her voice, she was very calm and collected. This made me surprised because I always thought that elderlies are a bit slow in learning and would require us to repeat multiple times before they could fully understand, but it did not, which changed my perspective of the elderlies.

Break Out Rooms Session:

My Learning

Changed Perspective

Previously, my stereotypes and presumptions about seniors is that they have slow and low learning capacity. But after this experience, I know that I am wrong. Some elderlies are still very bright and smart and most important of all is they are willing to learn which I think is something we can all learn from. They demonstrated their curiosity and asked a lot of question regards to out Google Photos which displayed their eagerness to learn more. I think I can learn from them to be more passionate in my studies and ask question if I did not understand something and always be curious to know more because that is when I can gain more insights and knowledge.

Values Learned

Through this experience, I also learnt to display gratitude for someone. Every chance the elderlies got they always thank us very sincerely for teaching them. While personally, I thought it was nothing big, we just did what we felt was necessarily. However, the elderlies taught me to be thankful and show appreciation for someone who is willing to be patient and teach you. Using this value, I have learnt, I feel I should thank everyone who was kind to me and helped me out of the own will and not out of obligation such as my teammates, my teachers, my friends and many more

Experience Learned

During the session, one of the elderlies also shared that she liked dancing a lot while waiting for her files to back up to Google Photos. While sharing it, she said it was important to do what you want before you become too old to do it. After hearing it, I totally agree with what she says, as there is only one life and we do not know how short our life span would be, so it is important to do what you want to do and like to do before we can not do it anymore. I think this also applies to when we are finding jobs, it is important to do something you enjoy instead of finding jobs just to earn money.

Conclusion

In light of this learning, in the future I will continue to spread the value of gratitude to people who had taught me, helped me, lead me, and I hope that this act of gratefulness can be learned by the others as well. Thus, the world will become a city that respects and return gratitude to one and another. In addition, based on what I learned from the elderlies to demonstrate the passion of learning as well as following your passion to do what you like. I will put them into practice as well by finding my passion and open up my curiosity to learn even more.