Newmedia training @ School of Social Work,Rajagiri College

1st July, 2008, Kalamassery.
 
The 35 students of the 3rd year BSW programme of Rajagiri School of Social Work got to check their skill level and were able to learn further with World Wide Web. The two-day training SPACE conducted at Rajagiri Campus mainly trained the students to build websites, besides exposing them to the possibilities of new media in the profession of social work.
 
In the filed of social work, communication structure and information dissemination play an important role. Replacing conventional methods, modern day communication practices need to be practiced here. For today, we live in a knowledge based society and ICT and development go hand in hand.
 
Social Work students are expected to work with society as they are studying and later in jobs. At the training conducted from 30th June to 1st July, first, students were given orientation to collaborative knowledge building initiative in the web. Sessions were also dealt with the effectiveness of photo-video hosting/sharing web services and its effectiveness in building campaigns on social issues in thematic way.
 
The focus of the training to introduce students to  ‘Wordpress’ a very popular free software content management system for building dynamic websites . The user friendliness of the this content management system was highlighted and then the students were led to try their hands on using this software. Before that, the students had been given assignments to how to organize content for their website.
 
As the training progressed, students explored out different features in the word press software and resource persons helped them with their questions and doubts. At the end of the second day of the training students were able to come out with four websites, though in its skeleton form.
 
 
With the training, the students have learned some of the advanced aspects of Modern day ICT practices. To point out, they have learned to build and manage a dynamic website for information dissemination. Still, a follow up session is planned to make sure students will update and reconceptualize the websites further to use  them effectively for networking and campaigning.