Digital Divide

For the purpose of the Service Learning Assignment of CSC300, I have to mention about the digital divide.  As described in other posts, I have only been installing a Moodle learning server at a computer lab and while I have had steady contact with those that work there, I have not interacted at all with the community members that use the lab.

However, although I didn't have any interaction with those community members, I believe I have made tremendous amount of impact to reduce the gap of digital divide.
The digital divide is described to be the gap between people with effective access to digital and information technology and those with very limited or no access at all (from Wikipedia).

With no doubt, the Moodle learning server is an application that can help reduce the gap of digital divide, and up until now, St. Christopher House didn't have it. Brandon and I have provided them the access to this fabulous application and this for sure is going to help lots of community members in other side of digital divide to have access to digital and information technology.

Now I will talk about the reason of the gap of the digital divide. Since I have not had much interaction with those people on the other side of digital divide, I don't have much of information to talk about the reason of this gap. However, from the discussion with Judi and Songyu, and the Internet research, I can think of a few reasons of this gap. Financial difficulties, cultural difference created by age gap, and lack of education are the main reasons of the gap between digital divide. It may also be the case if they are located in place where it is geographically difficult to have access to digital and IT. However, since I helped community house that is located in the middle downtown Toronto, I won't consider geographical case. Anyways, If they have one of these difficulties or a gap, then there is high probability of them being on the other side of digital divide. All the people that I saw in the lab were either between middle aged to seniors or usually looked poor and uneducated. However, St. Christopher House helps those people to have access to computer and IT devices for free and educate them without any charges so that they can learn how to use those tools. I'm very proud that I was able to have opportunity to be a part of this community service.

Training

Brandon and I have to train Judi and Songyu how to use the Moodle learning server. Brandon contacted them via E-mail, and got response that the earliest date we can go is April 28th which is more than 20 days after the CSC300 service learning assignment due date.
I'm still willing to go and help since it was actually very fun, and was a great feeling to help the community with something I can do.

Install(2)

April 1st - at 248 Ossington St.

I went to the lab at 10AM in the morning. Brandon came 20-30min earlier and he finished formatting the Debian OS and was installing CentOS when I came to the lab. After finishing the installation, we discussed what to start first. Since we struggled a lot on the required packages for the Moodle, we checked the versions of the default packages installed on the system and compared with the required versions. Again the default version of the packages didn't meet the requirements. So we decided to install the Moodle 2010 version instead of 2011. Last year version had more tutorials on the Internet and we thought it should be more stable since it's been around for more than a year. 2011 Moodle was last updated on the day we went to install, so it's up to date but may have some minor bugs in it.
With that set, we found a great instruction from the Internet, and after a few hours of struggle we successfully installed the Moodle learning server. We tested whether it works fine or not, and after we were sure that it works perfectly we let Judi and Songyu know that we finished installation.

Our last job was to train Judi and Songyu how to use the Moodle. Judi had some previous experience of using this Moodle learning server, but since it's been a while she last used it and the version is different, we had to teach them again.

We couldn't do it on the day since it was almost time to open the lab for adult learning class, and we spent over 5 hours to finish the work. We tried to make next appointment, but they didn't have time before our project due date, the April 7th. So we concluded it to discuss it later via E-mail when they can confirm the exact date for us to come.

Anyways, we finished installing the Moodle after more than 10 hours of work, and it was a great feeling that I did something to help the community.

Install(1)

March 31st - at 248 Ossington St.

Songyu told us that the server computer has the CentOS installed, however, when we actually tried, it had Debian installed rather than CentOS.
Brandon and I were both new to this system. Although I had some AIX and Linux experience from school and my work experience, it didn't help us much.
We were not sure where to start. We had to download the Moodle package first from its website, but we didn't know how we can access the webpage without the Internet browser. So we played around with the system a bit since we thought we have to get familiar with the system first before we actually start to install the Moodle. After a few hours of try, we had no luck, so we asked Songyu if he knew anything. He introduced a man named Thomas, and he helped us for about an hour. With his help, we could successfully download the Moodle package, but there was a problem with the system requirement. Moodle required PHP 5.2.8 and mySQL 5.0.25, but the system had PHP 5.2.3.
We spent another hour to upgrade PHP version and successfully upgraded the PHP, however it complained about the dependencies between the packages, and we couldn't fix that.
After struggling about 5 hours, we had to give up. Since we couldn't figure out how to install on Debian, Songyu suggested formatting the Debian OS and installing CentOS instead. That would make our job start from very scratch, but it might be easier for us to do the work. Also, he originally thought this machine had CentOS and he preferred CentOS installed on the machine for him to use later on.
As a result, we promised to come next day morning with more preparation.

Moodle study at home

March 26th - March 31st

Since I didn't know much about the Moodle, I first researched about what it is, what it does, how it work to whom, and of course how to install and setup on Linux system.

It actually is very useful educational application that can help lots of educators to create effective online learning site. Here is some description about the Moodle from their website.

• Moodle is a software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites. It is a global development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education.

• Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU Public License). Basically this means Moodle is copyrighted, but that you have additional freedoms. You are allowed to copy, use and modify Moodle provided that you agree to: provide the source to others; not modify or remove the original license and copyrights, and apply this same license to any derivative work. 

• Moodle can be installed on any computer that can run PHP, and can support an SQL type database (for example MySQL). It can be run on Windows and Mac operating systems and many flavors of linux (for example Red Hat or Debian GNU).

• The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. It's also a verb that describes the process of lazily meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such it applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Anyone who uses Moodle is a Moodler. 

After these researches, I realized that it isn't as simple as I thought, and understood why Songyu and Judi asked us to install and set it up for them.
During the research, I saw someone said that it might take close to a week for the beginners to set it up, and 2-3 hours if you know what to do.

Second Meeting

March 25th - 12:30pm at 248 Ossington

On this day, I had meeting with Judi Snively (program coordinator), Songyu Ni (computer lab administrator), and Brandon Germaine (another student from CSC300). We discussed the details about the work that we will do to set up the Moodle server.

At first, we talked mainly about the current system, and OS that we will be working on which was CentOS, and Songyu explained about it to us. We also talked about the time and the efforts we can contribute as well as the remaining days until the project due date. Since we only had about two weeks and none of us were sure how long it might take to finish this work, we decided to do as much work and study as possible at home, and implement it whenever the lab is available for us to use.  This lab only had limited hours of availability for us since we could only use it when Songyu was there and off-hours of the program.

Brandon and I discussed later on, and we decided we will keep helping them after the project due date if we can't finish our job by then.

First Meeting

March 16th, 2011  -   5:30pm at 1033 King St. West

I had first meeting with Judi Snively, the coordinator from St. Christopher House at 5:30pm in 1033 King St. West. Surprisingly, there were 7 more of us that haven't yet started community service.

Basically, we gave Judi our information and discussed about what to do for our service learning project. She gave us a brief description of the projects, and we let her know our preferences and the areas of expertise along with our availabilities.

Possible service learning opportunities were as following:

• Set up a Moodle server
• Tutor a small computer group
• Develop a program that matches the tutor and tutee with the info in database
• Research and Develop online learning materials for a diverse population

 
I preferred more technical side of work, so I chose to set up a Moodle server.
Although I only had a vague idea of what a Moodle learning server was, it sounded interesting and I thought this was something that makes computer and networking technology more accessible to people on the other side of digital divide while I can maximize the use of my skills that I learned from school.