Teaching Homeless the Internet (A Lesson Plan)

Classes for Nashville’s Homeless are offered at Room In The Inn’s Campus for Human Development. Credit for attendance can be exchanged for things like bus passes at the campus.

I started teaching a weekly class on Internet education to Nashville homeless a year ago.

At the end of my first class I asked a man, “Will we see you next week?” He said, “Hopefully not.”

Exactly.

I was hooked

• Teach a man how to use satellite view on google maps, and he can show you where he fished as a boy and then where his home used to be.
  
  
• Teach a man how to search, and he can write down a number on scrap paper and hustle for a job.
  
  
• Teach a man how to create an email address, and can email his son or daughter how he has been.

There are specific challenges to teaching a class for homeless: (1) your students aren’t necessarily the same every week, (2) your students are at different skill levels, (3) your students often don’t have consistent rest at night; but, the rewards are great.

This is your reconnaissance briefing.

If you are inspired, use it as a launching point to teach a class in your neighborhood (or to join me in mine).

Read More

Lessons from 3 Nashville Homeless Advocates

Steady success for Click Homeless framework

Two things to report:

1. Clickhomeless.com is no longer a redirect to the ideablob campain. It now has relevent links. We hope to post more links to homeless bloggers soon with the hopes this space will one day be a useful hub for homeless bloggers and those seeking their voice.

2. It looks like Molly, Kevin and I will be meeting with The Campus for Human Development to maximize efforts this Thursday. CHD is considering a computer literacy program for the homeless. This matches our goal for giving tools to homeless that want to blog and we want help as a first step on a local level. And we hope to use their lab for the 2nd Click Homeless meeting. Here’s what the first meeting’s agenda looked like or click the photo for more. We’ll post information when details are available about this meeting, but it will be less about votes and more about building a network which is the ultimate goal!

Bonus Track:

We’re featured on the Nashtechnica Podcast about Nashville tech news. Good stuff.

Thanks for Clicking Homeless. Feel free to contact us directly.

Click Homeless Update (hopefully the last*)

*on this blog since we’ll move updates to a new site soon!

Hey guys, It’s encouraging to see the facebook group continue to expand even without us spamming your inbox daily =)

This is just a short note to let you know we are still around. The next step is putting together a meeting so we can work on next steps, such as possible grant writing, setting up a computer skills training course, website, etc, etc…

Be thinking how you want to contribute. Meeting details will be coming soon. We’re hoping to meet in a spot associated with a homeless organization in Nashville, but we will take detailed notes or find a way for everyone with Internet access to play a part.

I see our next step as digging deeper and connecting with people that work in issues of homelessness daily. This isn’t “our own thing” although we hope to utilize the power of the Internet in ways that haven’t been done yet.

Even so, the success of our efforts rely on connecting with people that have been sitting next to homelessness for years.

Thanks for clicking homeless. More detailed updates are posted here: http://twitter.com/clickhomeless

Nate

Click Homeless: Other lame good ideas got more votes ;)

We were in a race to become a finalist for $10,000 at ideablob. We did not make the cut—but the idea and our goals remain. Campaigning for clicks has put us in contact with more and more people who want to get involved.

Now we have the time to contact the people we really need to, like organizations on the ground that are looking at issues of homelessness daily. Being on a frenzy timeline for votes hasn’t allowed us to lay some of the ground work that will make this a success. So thoughtful clickers, I hope you stick around!

NEXT MEETING

Look for a planning meeting in Nashville to take place in November. We’ll figure out a way to connect people outside of Nashville.

By supporting homeless bloggers, we can offer a much need perspective on issues of homelessness and empower some people with some wicked computer literacy along the way.

THANK YOU

Much thanks for all the support so far! Namely Kevin B, Matt B, Molly P, Matt K, Cameron P, Paul C, Joseph L, Caleb H, and countless others that have been the oxygen to this blaze.

OH LOOK! IT’S GETTER BIGGER!

Kevin (http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com) gave Click Homeless a gift at the laptop rally. It was a book, “Footprints” by Margaret Powers.

I asked him to sign it for us. His note to Click Homeless:
“One step at a time my friends! Click once and for all.”

HOW TO FOLLOW US

Twitter | Facebook group | New site at http://clickhomeless.com coming soon

 

 

6-8 pm Monday night is Click Homeless rally time!

Facebook Event Information (Not on Facebook? We don’t care, still come or help support Click Homeless during this time!)

Our goal is to rally to first place and help ensure our spot as one of the eight finalists, which is decided on Tuesday at midnight.

Once we secure our spot, we will be in perfect position to continue with our momentum and campaign till to the end of the month, and have $10,000 to support homeless bloggers.

That’s why our rally from 6-8 pm tonight at Beaman student life center is so important. Some of the network will get to meet in person and encourage each other to find votes, AND it will allow us to prepare for the campaign till the end of the month. In two hours, I hope we’ll make a video, find 50 additional votes, create a press kit, and discover and act on new ideas that you guys bring to the table.

Please bring your laptop If you have one. Call if you need help with transportation.

If you are an out of town, join the effort! Start chatting and emailing your friends and become friends with Nathan Baker and Molly Pearson on facebook. Send us a chat message during this time to get plugged in. We’ll probably be organizing in smaller specialized groups.

Explaining the goal of our group is hard to do. We are focusing on educating the public on issues of homelessness by investing in a niche demographic—homeless bloggers. By focusing our energy together, we will have the greatest chance for creating opportunities for change!

Also, start following Kevin’s blog if you haven’t. You’ll get to meet him tonight if you haven’t already! http://thehomelessguy.blogspot.com

Please join our event and encourage others to as well

Why Click Homeless exists, in three acts

Why Click Homeless exists, in three acts

Skim online reading in 2 seconds? Print now ;)

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Act One

I WISHED I HADN’T HAVE GIVEN HIM MONEY

But why the experience helped me see the
need for knowing in what contexts I should.

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In high school, a man walked up to my car, while I waited in a McDonald’s drive-thru. This was the first time someone approached my car at any drive-thru and I was alone. I was jolted. He would ask for money. He tapped on my window and my heart pounded because I tried desperately to figure out what I believed—I didn’t know.

I rolled the window down. Yup, he wanted money. I came up with a thought. I decided I believed it was good for me to give to those less fortunate than me, of course. That was actionable; why not now? I hadn’t processed much about homelessness, so my action was based on these fleeting thoughts.

I nervously got some change and gave it to the man. The man didn’t go away. He asked for more, even while I drove to the next window. His aggressiveness unnerved me. I felt out of control. I rolled the window up and looked away. I drove away with my heart still pounding and my mind spinning, trying to connect random thoughts about what I believed and what I should have done.

If I could do it again, what would I do? I now think it wasn’t wise that I give to the man at the time. I didn’t spend time speaking with him to see what his needs may be. But that experience helped me realized I needed to be better educated, and that education led me to go further in other situations. This education has made me less afraid of eye contact with strangers.

I want to make it clear that Click Homeless is not about supporting homeless bloggers because it makes us feel better, or because it will help us all write the manual that will be some definitive truth. It’s not about blindly supporting all homeless advocacy programs, because that’s our thing—a bumper sticker we can slap on our laptop that shows we are changing the world.

I want “our thing” to be about learning about homelessness, and making sure we are reading the research that often gets pushed to the back of the shelf.

In the limited time I’ve spend learning about homelessness, the sources that have had the greatest impact on me, and the sources I trust most deeply come from homeless speakers and writers, the most accessible of which have been online.

I want Click Homeless to exist because these voices enrich our lives and help us all wrestle with what we believe. Our conclusions will not all be the same, but if we can decide a few things about what we believe, it sure does make us bolder in trying to alleviate some of the issues homelessness can produce.

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Act Two

THE TONE OF OUR SUPPORT

How grandma makes the Internet like home

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I want Click Homeless to support homeless bloggers in the way I try to support my grandmother’s use of the Internet.

My grandmother, who currently uses a slow dial-up Internet connection, says she plays solitaire between waiting for pages to load.

She has great patience and spends time online connecting with family and friends.

I’ve helped her experiment with blogging. It has been great to see her posts shots of her husband tending to goats, and to see posts on here history, Recently she accepted my request to join facebook. She is the best cook in the world, so when she asked when I was visiting next, we scheduled a visit.

Because I send so much time online with my profession and because grandma doesn’t live in the same city as me, the greater her presence online, the more connected I am am with her and the more I learn from her.

This is the online relationship I want to mimic. The more we can support homeless bloggers, the greater we all will be enriched. Through the building of relationships, we can better educate each other, and better move forward with seeking ways we can converge and create nuggets of change.

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Act Three

CLICK HOMELESS IS MADE UP OF PEOPLE

What you can do to help.

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I am not the only voice in this network. I hope to set the tone, but I know there will be disagreements about the best way this all will work. With or without funding from ideablob.com, I hope we will band together and support homeless bloggers in the ways we can.

We may not be web designers, or grant writers, or specialists in blogging, but we all can Click Homeless and make sure our education of homeless issues includes this key source.

We have slipped to number two in the sprint rankings. Please encourage others to vote and learn about our efforts. If we have enough votes by Tuesday at midnight, we will be a finalist and have the opportunity compete against a shortlist of ideas for $10,000 in funding to help support homeless bloggers.

http://clickhomeless.com

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