What Is Possible Online?

• Icebreakers & Introductions

  15 minuteshour

  Hellos! (5 minutes)

  Say hello to everyone, welcome your participants and make them feel comfortable. Talk with them about anything, instead of talking to your friends, make new friends as everyone is arriving :D

  When you are ready to start, address everyone and say:

  • The basic information people need; when is tea or lunch? Where are the bathrooms?
  • The overview of the agenda for this session
  • Ask if there are questions before we start.

  Concentration (10 minutes)

  Explain that today we’ll do 2 rounds of introductions.

  Round 1: Each person introduces him- or herself to the group by name and shares a safe, simple detail like a favorite app or food.

  Round 2: Each person has to introduce someone else in the group by sharing that person’s name and, if they can remember, whatever else the other person shared. The facilitator should pick someone to go first. Whoever gets introduced goes next and picks someone new to introduce. Once someone has been introduced, they can’t be introduced again. If someone gets stuck, the group can help them finish their introduction.

• How to Look for Information on the Internet

  60 minutes

  How to recognize different browsers (10 minutes)

  Learning: People should be able to know what browsers are, and how they differentiate than other apps, and how to use them to get information online.

  How to Identify a Browser Game

  Before the session, facilitators should create 5 pairs of large cards. In each pair

  • One card should have the logo or symbol of a popular web browser like Chrome, Edge/Explorer, Firefox, Opera Mini, the Internet icon, or Facebook (more on that in a moment).
  • One card should have the logo or symbol of a popular app like Skype, Truecaller, Youtube, Speed Motor, Temple Run, or Whatsapp, Candy Crush, Email?

  To play, facilitators should hold up one pair of cards at a time for participants to see. You can print cards like this or make your own. Then the participants should talk and work together to identify which logo or symbol is a browser and which is an app. They should explain to one another how they know which is which.

  The last pair of cards that the facilitator holds up should be Facebook and another app. Since so many people use Facebook to access articles, pictures, and webpages on the internet, it should be interesting for participants to discuss whether or not it is also a browser. The facilitator may need to guide this conversation a bit with questions like, “Which app is more like a browser,” or, “How is Facebook sometimes like a browser and sometimes not?”

  1:1 time: browser settings (15-20 minutes)

  Ask participants to revisit what they’ve learned so far from past interventions to customize the settings for the browser(s) on their phone. Pick a browser that is on most participants phones, like Opera Mini. Then help people set up their browser’s language, memory, and readability settings by customizing features like

  • Downloads
  • Language
  • Data settings
  • Image quality and loading (you can disable) (Focus on how larger, high quality images take up more time and bandwidth to download.)
  • Font size
  • Advanced: Privacy & Passwords

  Ask participants for suggestions about which features to review. Pick a few of the most popular features to go over together.

  You can also explain that browsers also record and remember your “history” on the web. They keep lists of which sites you visit and the things you search. Help learners find their history settings on their phones and show them how to enable and disable their browsing and search histories and how to clear the history (or “cache”) if a user wants.

  Help participants who get stuck and encourage them to help one another, as well.

  What you can discover online? collection game (30 minutes)

  Learning objective: how to get any information online using the browsers

  Before the session, facilitators should create some kind of checklist or bingo-card-like handout to share with participants. The checklist or bingo card should include items participants need to find online to complete the game. Each participant should get a copy. If prizes are available, there should be enough for everyone (even if they are still working to finish the game when time runs out) so that people never feel like there’s no point to searching for more information.

  The checklist or bingo-card should ask participants to find things like

  • An audio recording of a favorite song.
  • A video of a favorite song.
  • A local news article.
  • A world news article.
  • A local or national sports article.
  • A recipe for a favorite dish.
  • A website listing nearby jobs.
  • The homepage of a favorite app or game.
  • The homepage of a favorite celebrity.
  • A map of the local neighborhood.
  • A government site with important civil information (like the location of nearby hospitals)
  • A picture or map of a favorite place they go.
  • A picture of a map or a place they would love to visit.

  You can pick, say, 5 items and ask participants to find them or ask participants to find any 5 items from the whole list. Given how much time you have, ask for what seems right.

  Before the game begins, make sure that everyone can open a browser on their phones and that everyone knows how to use the search feature on their browser. Help learners who get stuck and invite people to help one another, too.

  Participants will use the search feature on their browsers to look for an example of each item on their checklist or bingo-card. The goal of the game is to finish with as many items found as possible. Participants can just cross-out or mark the items they find - they don’t need to write down web addresses or anything like that. This is a low-pressure game meant to introduce them to searching on the internet.

  After explaining the instructions, give participants 20-25 minutes to complete their collections.

  Once everyone has had the chance to finish, or when time runs out, gather everyone together for a short, reflective conversation using questions like these:

  • What did you find on the web that you didn’t expect to find there?
  • What else do you think you might search for in the future?
  • What questions do you have about the way search engines work?
  • What seemed easy to find? What seemed difficult to find?

• How to Know if You Can Trust Information Online

  30 minutes

  What do we believe? Game (30 minutes)

  Facilitators should frame this game using something like this:

  Everyone believes in different stories, but not everyone believes in all the same ones. However all sorts of stories can be written and shared with millions of people online. How do we know which of those stories we can trust? How do we know which of those stories we should definitely not trust?

  Let’s think about stories we know from our own lives before we think about stories on the web.

  What stories do you believe in?

  • If you see an owl that comes in the house and it comes around the area and the homestead, someone will die.
  • If you are a lady and you eat from a sufuria it will rain heavily on your wedding day.
  • Rainmakers are able to make predictions about rain.
  • A witch is close by, if you see a black cat.
  • If you sweep your house at night, you won’t receive a visitor anytime soon.
  • If you keep tripping or biting your lips, someone is talking about you somewhere.
  • If your palm itches you are going to get money.
  • If you get a text claiming you have won money, all you have to do is call back to claim your prize.
  • Common social media misleading links (“You won’t believe what this politician was caught doing”).
  • M-shwari is from Commercial Bank of Africa.
  • Times tower is currently the tallest building in Nairobi.

  What are some popular internet stories that you wonder about? Which stories on the web make you wonder if you should trust them or not?

  Guide participants towards stories like email scams promising money if they are quiet in response to this prompt. In fact, as a facilitator, before the session, you may want to make a list of 5-10 stories to investigate in case your learners get stuck here.

  Let participants come up with 5-10 stories to investigate. Make a list of those stories on a big sheet of paper or somewhere everyone can see them. Then have them break into teams of 2-3 people to investigate those stories. You can assign particular stories to particular groups if you want or let every group investigate all the stories or just the stories that interest them.

  Ask each team to come up with 3 reasons why they think a story is trustworthy or untrustworthy. Ask teams to think about questions like this:

  • Who wrote the story?
  • Who published the story?
  • Is the story news or an advertisement?
  • Is the story old and out-of-date?
  • Can they search for and find the author of the story online? Is the author an expert?
  • Can they search for and find the people mentioned or quoted in the story? Are they experts?

  After 10-15 of investigation, bring the whole group back together. Ask each team to share one investigation with the whole group and to explain why they think the story they investigated is trustworthy or not. What was the reasoning that you used to investigate?

  Use the last 5 minutes of this activity to run a short, reflective conversation using questions like:

  • What do trustworthy stories often have in common with one another?
  • What do untrustworthy stories often have in common with one another?
  • What are some of the ways authors of untrustworthy stories use to trick people?
  • Are all pictures and videos trustworthy?
  • What advice do they have for new internet users about staying away from untrustworthy stories and sites?

• How to Download and Use Apps

  50 minutes

  How to search for and download apps on the PlayStore (15-20 minutes)

  Learning objective: how to search for apps on the play store to solve a real life problem.

  Facilitators should explain this scenario to participants and then ask for help solving the problems presented in it.

  Use case: Using the phone to help in running a business

  One respondent sells jerrycans of water. She has a ledger that she would use to keep daily records of sales. However, she has heard that she can use an app to keep the ledger if she downloads it from the playstore. This would help ensures that her records are always available since the app backs up to the cloud where she can always get at her information.

  To help this business-owner problem-solve and find an app that works for her, ask participants to

  • Search for a ledger app on the play store (use the search bar and categories for discovery).
  • Check the description.
  • Check the comments and ratings to help in decision.
  • Check the app size.
  • Choose the app that they think is the best based on its description, features, ratings, and size.
  • Download the app.
  • Install the app.
  • Test the app with data that participants make up and put into the app.

  Be sure to help individuals and groups that have trouble downloading or using an app for this exercise.

  Before moving on, use the last 5-10 minutes of the activity to ask each participant or team of participants to share the following:

  • How did they choose their app?
  • Did it work the way they expected from its description and ratings, or was it better or worse than they expected?
  • Was the app difficult or easy to install and use?
  • Could the participants use an app like this in their own lives or work? If so, how would they use it?

  Playstore sharing game (20 minutes)

  Ask for ideas from your participants and pick a theme or type of app to learn about in this activity. For example, pick an idea “Image editing” or “How to make a collage.” Try to pick a theme that lets participants do or make something with the app. You can also write your participants’ suggestions for themes on pieces of paper, put them in a box or other container, and pick a theme randomly from the group’s ideas.

  Next, ask participants to search for a free app based on what we just taught them. Remind them to pay attention to descriptions, ratings, and reviews. Help anyone who needs assistance finding, downloading, or using an app.

  You can make this section more game-like by asking individuals, partners, or groups to look for things like

  • The best reviewed app in a theme.
  • The worst reviewed app in a theme.
  • The most reviewed app in a theme.
  • The most expensive app in a theme.
  • The least expensive app in a theme.

  Every person or group that finds an app in a theme that meets one of those criteria could get a point and everyone who gets a certain number of points could win a modest prize or title (like “App Champ.”

  After everyone has found an app and checked its reviews and pricing, ask them to make something with it like a new image, a playlist, a note, or anything else they can do.

  With the last 5-10 minutes, ask participants to walk around the room and to visit one another to show what they’ve made.

  Finally, ask a few volunteers to talk about their favorite things that other participants made. Ask them if they have any new ideas about which kinds of apps they want to download and use on their phones.

  1:1 time: how to handle updates for apps (10 minutes)

  Take another 10 minutes in this part of the intervention to help people find the settings on their phones that let them

  • Check for updates.
  • Disable automatic updates to avoid expenditure of data bundles. (Update over WIFI only)
  • Update apps.
  • Disable or uninstall seldom used apps.
  • Check if Playstore has errors (simulate some errors).
  • Reset the Playstore’s memory (clear cache).

  Help anyone who needs it and ask participants to help one another find and use the settings.

• Solving Real-World Problems with Apps

  20 minutes

  1:1 time: Solving participant’s real-world problems with apps (20 minutes)

  Ask what respondents would like to accomplish next on their phones and have them check if an app that can help them exists in the Playstore.

  • Help respondent choose an app. Remind them to check the description.
  • Check the ratings (check how many rated it).
  • Check the reviews.
  • Check the phone storage(check app size ).
  • Download and install app.
  • Check for existing updates.
  Next activity→How to Solve Problems with Your Phone