December 1998 — Features
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The Cyber Sisters Club: Using the Internet to Bridge the Technology Gap with Inner City Girls
On day two the girls again sat down to computers ready to go from the Club homepage. This session they learned to bookmark sites, were shown a few samples of girls' personal Web pages, and then set off on their own to find sites via the homepage links and Yahooligans! searches. They began to bookmark their favorite links, which would later be added to their own personal pages. After a demonstration of an online chat room, several of the girls spent much of the meeting chatting. The girls enjoyed the chat room so much that they often sat typing messages to each other even when girls from other sites were not in the chat room. At the end of this session they learned how to shut down the computer.
After the second meeting, there was a two week break due to vacations and in-service days. During this time, the girls were asked to work on short autobiographical writings on a handout with writing prompts such as "If I were president, I would...", "Five words that describe me are...", "If I had a million dollars I would...". These writings would provide the body of each girl's personal page.
The Club was reconvened for a third meeting two weeks later, and the girls learned how to "shop" for graphics for their pages at clipart sites listed on the homepage. Although the staff anticipated that the students might experience some problems naming and saving the graphic files, after seeing a demonstration onscreen and receiving individual help with one or two saves, the girls were soon adept at grabbing animated gifs from the clipart sites. At this meeting, the Sisters also used the "favorites" page that had been added to the Club homepage to revisit links, and some new favorites were bookmarked.
Creating Personal Pages
Between the third and fourth week, a template for the girls' personal pages was developed and added to each disk with the girl's writing entered on the template. Fifteen backgrounds chosen from the clipart sites were also copied onto every disk. Shifting gears from surfing the Net to using a new program (Corel WordPerfect) to begin designing the personal Web pages was somewhat of a challenge. The girls, however, enjoyed seeing their name and writings on a Web page, and became engrossed in trying different backgrounds and changing text on their pages.
Only half of the girls attended the fifth session, due to an early dismissal from school. With one volunteer, a Penn State student who served as a teacher's assistant, and the teacher to help eight students, we had the luxury of giving each girl lots of one-on-one assistance. With the extra encouragement and technical help, two of the quieter girls really blossomed at this meeting. It was obvious that a higher ratio of staff to students in future sessions, perhaps including more Penn State students, would enhance the program.
The Instructional Design Specialist brought the digital camera to the sixth session, which was the highlight of the meeting. While the girls worked on their pages, printed graphics of celebrities and cartoon characters, corresponded in chat rooms or looked for new sites, the photos were taken and added to each disk. That day each girl took home a form asking for permission to add her photo to her Web page, with an explanation that no family names, addresses or phone numbers would accompany the pages. Despite these precautions, some parents would not allow a photo to be used.
