Abstract

This paper presents a particular aspect of ‘being online’: the embodied, lived experience of interacting with digital devices and computer screens, involving seeking and giving help to learn and teach skills and abilities that are often taken for granted in our “wired world”. The article includes analysis and reflection on a phenomenological study involving international students who arrived at their Canadian post-secondary institutions with limited or no background using computers and the Internet. This exploration leads to an enriched perspective on technology support and training. Meaningful, hands-on, task-oriented support is revealed as an ethical inter-subjective lived relation, experienced as reciprocity in an intercultural community of student life