About the Workshops

With support funding from the Siganto Foundation in 2017 for a 5-year period, the Siganto Digital Literacy Workshop (SDLW) program aims to equip recently arrived communities with a personal computer, and the skills needed to use and maintain these.

The SDLWs are run using donated desktop computers. The hard drives have been wiped, with all data removed, but the computers are fully functional.

Because each brand and model of computer requires different methods and tools to take apart, we focus on the main components of all personal computers to provide a basic understanding of how they operate.

The best way to learn to troubleshoot and solve problems is by fixing unexpected failures, so expect to break your computer, over and over again. Also you can expect some sabotage by your facilitators. You will spend two to three hours in each workshop, with four workshops in total.

When you finish the workshops (and your computer is working) you can take it home! We have a 100% success rate with all of our participants taking home a working, useful computer 1) our secret is to have a couple of spares.. .

Workshop Outlines

The SDLW series can be run as individual workshops, or in a two day intensive. Workshops one and two will take up a whole day. You can use workshop three as homework, or complete workshops three, four and five on day two. There is also a resources section outlining how to upgrade your computer.

Workshop 01 - Pure Hardware

Identify your computer

Learn the external ports,sockets and buttons

Know the internal components

Take apart and re-assemble your computer

Workshop 02 - Operating Systems

How to troubleshoot and fix boot failure

Customising the BIOS

Installing an Operating System from a USB stick

Workshop 03 - Productivity and System Tools

Operating Systems compared

Why free and open source software?

Introducing Xubuntu

Social Media and Online Safety

Secure your devices, connection, browser and accounts

Identify risky situations

Understand online privacy

Language Translations

Thanks to the support of the Siganto Foundation, we have translated the main workshop session (#1) into 3 languages other than English, these are Somali, Tigrinya and Arabic. Due to the lack of equivalent terminology available in Tigrinya and Somali, since most of the translation would still use English wording, the other 3 workshops have just been translated to Arabic where possible.

Video Tutorial

If you would like to refresh your knowledge on the computer parts, check out our video guide below.

Ready to start?

It's time to choose your workshop. For this workshop series we will be using the HP8100/8200 desktop computers.

Siganto Digital Learning Workshops