Participating in a Web 2.0 Workshop

I was informed, through an online group of which I am a member (GINKS D-Group), that  there was going to be a workshop on how to use Web 2.0 tools in facilitating development. Immediately I followed up and realized that the workshop was being held on the premises of the organization I was working with (CSIR-INSTI). I continued with the required online registration, and confirmation was sent to me in less than a week time. The Web 2.0 workshop was jointly organized by the UNFAO, CTA, and CSIR-INSTI, and was expected to introduce participants to Web 2.0 tools (social media) that can empower them to promote activities in their fields of work, which were mostly in development agenda.

The workshop started on Monday, 15th April, 2013, and together, we managed to go through the introductory phases, where we had the opportunity to take a group photograph with the Director of CSIR-INSTI, and the facilitator of the workshop, Justin Chisenger, and expert in the field from UNFAO.

We also started with the social networking tool, Twitter, and managed to do a great work on that. Participants were asked to create Twitter accounts, and those who already had accounts assisted their colleagues who did not have to create them. We were then introduced to the various tools in Twitter that can be used to manage the account effectively and some of the common terminologies, such as a tweet, retweet, and other techniques such as mentioning other account users in tweets; and the use of hash (#)  tags were introduced to participants. Most of us, managed to post our first tweets by the end of the day, using the techniques we had learnt on
the day.

On Tuesday, 16th April, 2013, we continued with Twitter, and learnt how to do other things such as linking twitter accounts to other information on the internet, including html and pdf files. I realized fro these experiences that twitter was such a useful tool in social networking, and immediately recalled its use in popular mobilization during the Arab spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Lybia. Later in the day, we started working on Blogger, and surely, all participants agree that the application is phenominal. I must confess that I already had a Twitter and Blogger account , but was not active in using them until this workshop. We created new blogs, and were introduced to some features of the Blogger application that could help us better manage and present the accounts. We also learnt how to link the Twitter and Blogger accounts, so that visiters of out blogs could also see what we were tweeting.
 
On Wednesday, 17th April, 2013, we continued with Blogger, and begun another social networking tool. But earlier in the session, were were given oppportunities to make another post on our newly created blogs, and this is what you are reading.

Thank you for reading through, and I believe that your have been inspired to participate in these kinds of workshops, especially those that are intended to enhance your productivity at work, and contributing positively to our generation and the generation yet to come.

Source: Spanishdict.com, 2013