Hi! Welcome again!
This is week 5 of my Outreachy internship contributing to the Oppia project!
It has been an interesting journey so far, albeit challenging. I'm emphasizing challenging, because it's been pushing me out of my comfort zone, and helping me get better at work, and as a person.
If you haven't seen my previous blog posts on weeks 1-2 and weeks 3-4 about my internship program with Outreachy, then you should go see them.
In my first blog post I introduced Outreachy and Oppia, and well...I introduced myself too. ☺️
While in the second blog post, I talked about a tool that has been of incredible help to me. Check it out if you want to know what this tool is. 🤩
My project tasks
My project with Oppia is on: Creating effective and engaging online lessons on Basic Science and/or Digital Skills."
My tasks are basically to:
Create science lessons
Lead the lesson fixing team and,
Assist with the Pidgin English translation
In creating the science lessons team, I had to be conversant with the way previous lessons on Oppia are structured- being a member of the lesson fixing team proves to be of a great help because it's just like I've been granted deeper access into the structure of things at Oppia.
Presently, I'm working on a basic Biology lesson. I make use of different documents starting from the skill table to the story outline, and finally, the script which is almost a representation of what is played as lessons on the website.
For the lesson fixing team, I basically review lesson fixing documents contributors and volunteers have submitted during the contribution phase at Outreachy.
Sometimes, I cross review documents my other team mates have reviewed, and pass mine over to them for cross reviews too. This way, every document gets second thoughts on the suggestions provided by contributors.
One of my mentor-Sean Lip has been so instrumental in helping me get better, and almost master how to review these documents.
Why do we have lesson fixing documents? Maybe this question popped up in your mind. Don't worry, I gat you.
On the Oppia website, past volunteers have contributed to having the Maths lessons and other lessons ready to play. We review these lessons, and look out for roadblocks that may affect the users. In knowing exactly what these roadblocks may be, the best way to do this is to have one or two of the target audience (in this case, kids) try out the lesson, and study what roadblocks they encountered in the lessons.
Skills
In carrying out my task, these few skills come in very handy for me:
-My teaching skills
-Research skills
-A good grasp of the English language
-Ability to communicate virtually, and work as a team
-Ability to speak two indigenous Nigeria languages, namely: Yoruba and pidgin English
Communication
My team communicates mainly through emails, Google chats, live weekly meetings, where I sometimes share my screen to help everyone flow with my work progress.
For the lesson review team, we also have a WhatsApp group for the interns and volunteers.
I typically respond to my mails within 24 hours. Making sure to do this is important for virtual work. My mentors prefer the method of sending daily updates about your progress. I prefer this too. Helps me not to get stuck for too long, and encourages me to ask for help when needed.
That will be all for now.
Bye!