Update on Project Activities
This week we were wrapping up all of our final data collection. On Sunday, we met with our community partners, Alex and Christina, to discuss the best ways to survey the areas less-represented in our online survey. We decided to go to the Teen and Senior Centers to interview the people there, as we hypothesized that older and lower-income individuals would have the lowest frequency of digital accessibility/ connectivity. On Tuesday, Kelli and Katherine visited the Senior Center about an hour before their most frequented weekly event: free lunch. While they remained there until the lunch began, most of the seniors were (a) not willing to answer their questions or (b) didn’t speak English. Neal and Kendall’s trip to the Teen Center yesterday (Thursday), however, was a bit more successful, as the teens and children were very willing to answer questions, though they often didn’t seem quite as knowledgeable about their family’s plans and internet accessibility. We talked to about 13 teens, from middle- to high-school aged. They answered questions about internet accessibility and speed, their family and friend’s usage patterns, and the devices in their household. Moreover, the staff of the Teen Center agreed to posting a link to the online survey on their instagram. In our meeting with Alex and Christina, we discussed the plan for after break. We have a meeting planned with the Community Services Agency (CSA), a non-profit organization based in Mountain View, where we intend to present the preliminary results from our findings. Additionally, Alex and Christina agreed to one final push on the online surveys via their social medias: Alex via the twitter for Mountain View’s economy and Christina via the same three social media channels as before: NextDoor, Twitter, and Facebook. What We Observed and Learned The difficulties we encountered at the senior center were particularly interesting, as they really helped to shed light upon some of the difficulties with surveying. While we weren’t able to collect concrete data, the presence of many monolingual non-English speakers could have been indicative of a lack of either digital accessibility or literacy. It would be interesting to brainstorm ways for future analysis of such an important target group. The visit to the teen center was also very enlightening. Most of the teens seemed to come from a similar background: relatively low-income, Hispanic families with a large number of residents. While only one of the 13 children interviewed didn’t have internet access at home, several of the children expressed the limits on time and speed of their wifi. Much as we learned during the Spanish Speaking Ambassador Meeting, the majority of individuals, regardless of their wifi connection, have numerous devices. In terms of usage, most of the kids said they mainly used the internet to play video games or watch youtube, with only a few indicating that they use it for homework. In regards to the latter, many of them explained that their schools often provided them with chromebooks to do their assignments in class or on the premises. In terms of digital literacy, a few of the kids told us that they often had to help their family navigate the internet or use their devices. While the kids all had their own phones, it was fairly rare that they had both 4G and at-home wifi access. Typically, it was only one or the other. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward Perhaps the most interesting idea that we gathered from our time at the teen center was the fact that most of the kids didn’t seem to use internet for what would be deemed valuable things. It was often unclear whether their wifi access was limited because of poor connectivity or because their parents tried to limit their video game/ TV/ and youtube usage. Nearly every child we talked to, regardless of their connectivity, had a nintendo switch, a PS4, or some other gaming device. It’s interesting to think about the moral implications of providing free or lower-cost wifi to children that don’t necessarily use it for educational purposes. A quick walk through the teen center showed most children playing Fortnite or Call of Duty on the TVs or playing some sort of game on their phone. While our project is incredibly important in so many regards, it’s also important to think about the drawbacks that can come with unlimited internet access. On a more positive note, we are hoping to finish up our data collection and begin analysis in the coming week. Christina is going to scan and email the paper results of the surveys that we distributed in the Spanish speaking Ambassadors meeting last week. They had agreed to try to distribute the surveys to their community members and friends. We will also aggregate the new data that we received from the teen center and hopefully begin to analyze all of it in R or Stata. Over the break, we’re also hoping to make some progress on our final deliverables. Kendall is going to work on creating an infographic and heat map, Kelli is going to work on qualitative analysis, and Neil and Katherine are going to begin work on the presentation. Comments are closed.
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