Teaching Latha Basic Email Skills

This week, we took one of the Kodagali site managers, a sassy vibrant woman named Latha, to the neighboring city of Bannur, to teach her how to use email. To me, email is such a regular part of my life, I’m really not sure how functional I’d be without it. In teaching Latha the basics, I realized so many things I take for granted, in terms of computer skills and knowledge. Basic things- such as how to open an internet window, what a “username” or “password” is, or how to identify an email address by the “@” symbol and the .net/.com/.org. Another major thing I’ve taken for granted- having most of the internet in my own language. Plus any time I stumble upon a page that isn’t in English, google automatically translates it for me. Do you know how many webpages are in Kannada? Few and far between, relative to English.

In our first session, we helped Latha create an email account through gmail. Another thing I take for granted- knowing my date of birth. After making her account, and adding several contacts, we had her practice writing a few emails. We taught her how to write a message by clicking “compose,” entering the recipient address, and then writing the body itself. After each of these emails, which we had Latha send to our personal accounts, we opened our own inboxes to show her that they had been electronically sent to us. Next, we sent her emails from our accounts, and had her open and reply to them.

Early on, we faced some resistance. Initially, Latha wasn’t even comfortable with the idea. She frequently became flustered and merely stared at the screen, quickly giving up. However, with our encouragement, Latha persevered. She began to enjoy herself, enthusiastically composing emails and was pleasantly surprised when we showed her that we had received her emails.