Keeping up with changing technology is a learning process

As technology rapidly changes, children are tasked with the responsibility of showing their parents how to use the variety of electronic devices — computers, iPods and cell phones — used to function in today’s world, but access to technology, the time needed to learn and the language barrier are considered obstacles to daily use.

Genesis Zepeda, 14, a ninth grader at Lawrence High School, said she shows her parents, Wendy and Juan, how to open emails, print and download documents on the computer nearly every day. “I teach them basically everything on the computer,” she said. “It’s a lot of work and it takes patience.”

When asked if the technology gap between the younger generation and their elders is partly because of the language barrier in the Hispanic community, Zepeda is quick to say no. “Everybody needs help (with technology), regardless of whether they were born here or not,” she said. “My friends teach their parents, who were born here, how to use the computer. It’s important for me to teach (my parents) technology so they can learn on their own and do their own stuff.”

Zepeda’s father, Juan, an Inwood resident and Guatemala native, has been in the United States for 22 years and said some things are different in his home country. “In some schools (in Guatemala) students have their own computers, provided by the government,” he said.

Juan, who went to engineering and aviation school in this country, said the skills he learned there helped him to understand the technology. “Whatever is new here (in America) is new worldwide,” he said. “It just comes down to having access to it. And I believe as long as I’m working, I’m forced to keep up with the changing technology.”

In the Lawrence School District, parents must now sign-up for parent-teacher conferences online by creating an account on the English-only district website. “If you don’t have a computer, you can’t do anything,” Juan said. “And if you don’t speak English, you’re stuck.”

Access to computers is a major obstacle, according to Consuelo Lopez, a Cedarhurst resident and mother of Lawrence High School sophomore Henry Perez. “Some people don’t have the technology or right education to be computer savvy,” she said. “Especially immigrant parents who work all the time and have less time to keep up with technology.”

Perez, 15, came to the U.S. two years ago from Guatemala. “I didn’t have a home computer in Guatemala because you had to pay to use the computers there and technology was very expensive,” he said.

The technology gap between older and younger generations affects everyone, according to Perez, who explains how to use the Internet and Microsoft Office programs to his mother. “Some things she knows, some things she doesn’t,” he said of Lopez’s computer knowledge.

Danny Cornejo, an Inwood resident and Hispanic Association member, an organization focused on addressing issues facing the Hispanic community, based out of the Five Towns Community Center, said teaching a parent how to use a computer can be difficult. “It’s not the easiest thing in the world and most kids don’t even try,” he said. “Some parents don’t have computers because the Internet’s not cheap.”

Lopez, who originally learned how to use the computer at her high school in Guatemala, said she attended computer classes in Long Beach but didn’t like that people at different levels of computer knowledge were in one class together. “I would like to see a computer program in this area but have it split up by levels (introductory, intermediate and expert),” she said. “If you mix everyone together you don’t learn anything.”

Through the Hispanic Association, Cornejo brought introductory computer classes to the Community Center in Lawrence from March to June of this year. But attendance dwindled and the classes are no longer being taught. “The whole program started out strong but people eventually stopped coming,” he said. “It was definitely a good program and a good way for people to learn how to use a computer. We were only going to sign 10 people up at the most (the Center only has eight computers) and wound up with 23 so we broke the classes up into three semesters and I guess people didn’t like that we did that.”

It’s important for parents to learn technology for a variety of reasons, Cornejo said. “Most parents don’t even know what their children are doing on the computer,” he said. “There’s also lots of stuff [the parents] can do on the computer such as pay bills and track their banking account, which are services they pay for at check cashing businesses. They could do them online and not pay anything.”

In the future, Cornejo hopes to offer the computer classes again. “I was thinking of having a class where week to week, people just show up,” he said. “It would be open and available for everyone to come.”