Saturday, April 25, 2009

Facebooking at the Mindtriggerz Lab

After a full day at the Dunbar Memorial Garden I stopped in to see what was shaking at the Mindtriggerz Teaching Lab. There was Joyce, on a computer engaged in some kind of word puzzle and there was Jerome dashing around as he is well-known for doing.

An event by a local church was being held so most every young person in the lab was spill-over, much like the easter egg hunt weekend last time. While we would prefer the lab to be filled with applicants for the Mindtriggerz computers, we also knew that with the approach of warm weather the park would begin to be dominated by a variety of events and this simply affords us the chance to spread the word about what we are doing and why.

Joyce shared a hilarious story about how she was "manning" the lab while Jerome was out doing who knows what and a couple of teenagers ambled in and when she asked them what they were doing on the computers they said "We want to check our Facebook messages" and she responded with: "Oh no, these computers don't do that - there is no internet here" which of course sent them shuffling off.

Funny stuff - I'd previously told Jerome he should charge admission - lo and behold we found 16 cents that someone had left by a computer so I guess he did! The lab will most likely shut down a little earlier than the end of May as we'd planned and that's okay. As school begins to wind down for these youngsters, as the park begins to fill with other activities, I know Jerome and Joyce would prefer to be at the garden. It reminds me of a certain day in May when I said "Jesse, it's so beautiful outside you should get out in the sunshine and fresh air" then spied him a little later with his laptop - sitting on the deck, pounding away at the keyboard.
<3

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