Clubhouse profile: East Palo Alto is an economically disadvantaged community located 20 miles south of San Francisco, near Silicon Valley. The Moldaw-Zaffaroni Clubhouse serves Latino and African-American young people who are members of the Boys and Girls Club where the Clubhouse is located. In addition to the Intel Computer Clubhouse, the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula offers the neighborhood’s young people informal arts, sports, and recreation programs together with comparatively formal educational and technology-training opportunities through the Oracle Internet Academy and the ThinkQuest program. In addition, the site also offers its members an academic-skills development program modeled on the SCORE! learning centers using Pearson’s SuccessMaker software and curriculum. The majority of active Clubhouse members are middle schoolers between the ages of 9 and 15, several of whom are self-taught computer experts. The Clubhouse attracts a handful of older members as well, most of whom use the music studio.

Supporting Skills-Focused Workshops

Location: Moldaw-Zaffaroni Computer Clubhouse,
East Palo Alto, California

The Activity Guide Library created for the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network was designed as an easy-to-use resource for Clubhouse coordinators eager to support development of individual members’ software skills. In fact, members are introduced to key software functions and features each time they approach one of the Library’s activities. In many cases, this introduction is supported with screen shots of application window and dialog box functions.

For this reason, the Activity Guide Library is a good resource for coordinators who wish to provide their members with an introduction to key software features. Members can learn more about a particular Clubhouse application on their own, or coordinators can organize group activity for their members, employing individual Activity Guides for use in comparatively more formal skills-building workshops.

At the Moldaw-Zaffaroni Clubhouse in East Palo Alto, California, Coordinator Malcolm Hoover chose to make use of the Activity Guide Library in just this way. Malcolm first encouraged interested members to explore Activity Guides independently. Later, he announced a one-hour Photoshop-skills workshop that took advantage of the Create a Clubhouse Poster Activity Guide.

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