1. “Empowering journalists with online tools: making a case for online training” Kwami Ahiabenu,II kwami@penplusbytes.net kwami@penplusbytes.net International Institute for ICT Journalism/ GINKS

2. INTRODUCTION Journalists and the media for a lot of good reasons need constant training in online tools in order to ride the tide with the information revolution. Issues such as cost, time, resources availability means capacity building process is not in tune with growing demand

3. OUR STORY The International Institute for ICT Journalism (PenPlusBytes) in partnership with GINKS(IICD) and other Institutions since 2006 run an annual three month online training course for working Journalists in a wide range of topics including Knowledge Management for the newsroom, ICT tools for journalism including some web 2.0.

4. OUR APPROACH Online tools offers free to low cost options for training Empowerment role of online tools including web 2.0 is crucial By using new online tools such as web 2.0, change elements are incorporated in a more practical way

5. WHO Reach out via websites, blogs and emails Requirement : working journalists with access to Internet especially email majority from African Countries This year we had 53 participants from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and North American. Course is free of charge – paid for by partners reliance on free online tools Time commitment is crucial

6. Online Learning Experience Online learning experience can be fun though difficult if you are not committed to it It allows working journalists to undertake a course without leaving their jobs “learning by doing” makes a difference in information and knowledge sharing experience; and skills transfer processes.

7. Online delivery We aim at using the most appropriate online tools with specific reference to learner’s environment while enabling the participants to connect with each other.

8. Online delivery We also hope by providing an online training opportunity for journalist while they are still sitting at work would empower them to better negotiate online space and demands of daily work in a more down to earth manner. We allow flexibility in terms of deadlines for submission of assignment, lecture notes and discussion but no compromise in the terms of completion of course.

9. OUR ONLINE CLASSROOM We start our week on Fridays by posting lectures Fridays was selected to enable participants make the best use of weekends Then on Monday, we post trigger questions to facilitate discussion of the weeks’ lecture notes Assignment and Task Special Guests Final project work

10. Our Content Quick read lecture notes Straight to the point and written in a narrative format with references and further readings Links to resources online Encourage participants to buy relevant text books

11. Web 2.0 ACCORDING TO OUR CLASS To me, web 2.0 means easy sharing of content. everyday users can access content from all over the web. this is done mostly through rss feeds. in addition, they can comment on web content in a variety of forms. blogging is an obvious choice, but also sites like del.icio.us, digg.com, flickr, youtube and myspace allow for people to comment on content of the web. the web we know today has a huge social aspect to it thanks to web 2.0. (Titly )del.icio.us digg.com

12. WEB 2.0 ACCORDING TO OUR CLASS Web 2 for me really means the growth of the practical applications which make the internet more RELEVANT to me as an end user and person. It does beg the question though of whether we are going to see Web 3 -- or whether older Web 2 applications will soon become part of the old and newer innovations slide into the Web 2 'space'. (Lisa)

13. TOOLS OF OUR TRADE The primary tool we used for the class is the good old email We run our first course on yahoo groups http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mediaictrain/ this was an open list with 43 participants http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mediaictrain/ This year : dgroups at http://www.dgroups.org/groups/Mediaictrain/index.cf m?op=dsp_info http://www.dgroups.org/groups/Mediaictrain/index.cf m?op=dsp_info The email group discussion provided the main means of interacting, networking and connecting tool for the class.

14. TOOLS OF OUR TRADE In additional to the primary group mailing list, we also created five sub groups on Google groups for sub group work and discussion – group leader, recorder and third party facilitator It was difficult for some participants to understand the divide between the main group list and sub groups

15. BLOGGING One of our weekly session was on blogging/User Content Generation Each participant was required to create his or her blog Blog were expected to be updated with learning experience The blog was used as the platform to integrate some web 2.0 tools We maintained a class blog as well

16. CLASS WIKI Using peanut butter –pb we created a class wiki at http://mediaictrain.pbwiki.com/http://mediaictrain.pbwiki.com/ Some participants made use of the wiki feature in google group as the platform as well Each participants worked on our main page by contributing their objectives for undertaking the course and other content

17. WIKI AS OUR NEWSROOM In order to show and tell how virtual newsroom works, we created five groups Each group went through the news production process online Using wiki, the sub group worked to produce stories virtually Google groups was used in content gathering and meetings whereas wiki was used in production and packaging

18. FLICKR /PODCASTING Difficult to interact online with a class geographically dispersed as ours To help in putting faces to names : via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/7967176@N08/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/7967176@N08/ Podcasting Session

19. Del.icio.us/Skpe We created http://del.icio.us/mediaictrainhttp://del.icio.us/mediaictrain To bookmark relevant links for the class We were not successful at using skype since some participating countries were not allowed to use skype

20. CHALLENGES Lack of access to affordable and reliable Internet Services Some of the web 2.0 are not built with low bandwidth in mind Time commitment issues Challenge of Change – online learning means a major change Online collaboration and communication difficulties “information overload” issues Appropriate learning materials are not readily available

21. OVERCOMING CHALLENGES Undertook the course using group email list as our primary course delivery tool Encouraged the participants to devote more time to the online learning experience Developing strategies about coping with change and developing “online” mindset Adapting the course to the learner’s environment via flexibility

22. LESSONS/ACHIEVEMENT Online learning provide the opportunity for participants to learn about new tools and use them in the process of learning Evolving a vibrant network of journalist working in the ICT space We are contributing to knowledge development in the area of ICT Journalism We are reinforcing the fact that with low cost to free online training is possible

23. CONLUSION Online learning is here to stay with us The increasingly availability of web 2.0 tools is making online learning experience more rewarding Some challenges exist by overcoming some of these challenges we can derive more benefits from using web 2.0 tools as information and knowledge exchange tool.

24. Thank you Kwami Ahiabenu,II kwami@penplusbytes.net www.penplusbytes.blogspot.com