Cultural Vehicles in Education - assisting the needs of vulnerable social groups

Life Together

Roma Cookbook IV

I A description of the activities undertaken during the unit, including comments on the reactions of the group/individual participants

a. Socializing with others of the same origin
b. Put traditional Roma recipes in writing

This session aimed to type the previously prepared recipes on the computer so the participants got introduced to the program Microsoft Word. At the beginning the participants had many difficulties with typing the text that was again split among all the attendees. Most of the participants hardly ever used the computer, for this reason this task required a great deal of patience and determination on their side. However, after few minutes each of them got more acquainted with the keyboard and learned even some of the features of program Microsoft Word. At the end of the workshop we had about 50 percent of the Roma Cookbook typed and saved in the computer.
The participants made a deal, that whenever anybody of them cooks Traditional Roma dish, they will inform one of the workers involved in the project and she would come, take the picture and add it to the Cookbook.

c. Another workshop was scheduled for the June 9th with the aim to continue with typing the recipes.

II Was the aim of the unit achieved (the implementation of practical skills and the pedagogical aim)?

Another session with Roma cookbook definitely helped the participants to even more increase awareness about their heritage and traditions... Another educational aim - computer skills is very important today to keep up with the technical progress and with the world and society around us in general. Since this was the first lesson with the computer it was more or less introductory, nevertheless, the lesson prompted interest of the participants in the computer technology and helped them get acquainted with the simple computer operations and typing. These skills are going to be more developed in the next unit.

III Other remarks (for example on the interaction between artistic and educational elements)

Since the participants are hard learners it was necessary to use practical and entertaining way to start developing their computer skills. Because everybody was very enthusiastic about creating a cookbook on their own, they put aside restraints and fear they would normally have if asked to work on the computer. Those people are afraid of new things, especially by means of technology, because they are convinced that they are not smart enough to be able to work on the computer. Accordingly, under normal circumstances they would be very nervous in front of the computer. However, due to the entertaining way we chose for developing this ability , everybody was relaxed, enjoyed the typing and even realized that anybody vould use the computer if practicing