Reflections from the first training day

Participants have posted each day summaries of what we did during the training day, what they learned, what they liked and what they disliked. Here’s some of feedback from the first day.


Picture from the entrance of Summit Centre in Arusha. The
University Computing Centre is located on the fourth floor.

Elisha Mayallah, senior journalist at Arusha Times, says that he learned how to search for news items and data – a skill he says he was previously doing only half-way. Another new thing for him was bookmarking some of the visited websites into a file of favourites that he could easily come back to when needed. He is also glad to have learnt how to open a blog, something he was yearning for years in order to post his published print articles since 2003 into one single website.

Nehemiah Rubondo, head of media department at Habari Maalum College, mentions some of the simple search assignments we did on the first day. He wishes that during the training he will learn how to find material from the web in a proper way, by not resorting into plagiarism. In his opinion, a big problem of the Tanzanian media is that they often use to copy-paste their news stories directly from the international media websites without even editing those stories.

Clement Shari, news presenter and subeditor at the local radio station Sunrise FM, says that he enjoys the participatory approach of the training, including questions and answers and practical work by the computers. He also lists some of the search assignments, how to create a blog and how to use the Google Maps.

Musa Leitura, station manager at the Maasai community radio station Loliondo FM, is also listing some of the search assignments and search tips given to the participants. He says he liked especially the practical parts of the training. “The philosophy is learning by doing,” he writes. “Even though the theoretical part was considered, the practical one prevailed – or was central.”

Marko Gideon, communication officer at the World Wide Fund for Nature and trans-editor of the news agency Inter Press Service, has produced an amusingly detailed report of the proceedings during class on Monday, starting from his arrival at the venue in the morning. He is also listing all the search tips that were explained to the participants. These are some simple but useful advice when seeking information from the internet. I will also post the same search tips later to this blog.