Microsoft Nigeria has concluded a two-day workshop for information technology journalists in Nigeria as part of its efforts to empower the media industry in Nigeria.
The training was a capacity-building programme designed to provide IT skills to the journalists using Microsoft technologies. The workshop included a session on Microsoft Windows Live Suite, software which provides a platform for building online communities, offers free online storage and sharing facilities and tools for blogging.
The second session was on Microsoft OneNote which is an effective tool for recording, collating and sharing notes. OneNote is particularly advantageous to journalists as it enables audio and video recording, which is useful for recording interviews. The tool also enables interview transcription and uses search tools.
Explaining the motivation for the programme, Dele Akinsade, Technology Lead for Microsoft Anglophone West Africa, said Microsoft believe IT capacity building contributes significantly to economic empowerment, growth and development, and will offer the appropriate skills to the media to use technology in innovative ways.
The highlight of the workshop was the session on social media tools aimed at enabling the journalists to leverage web-based technologies for their reporting. A course on “The Power of Blogging” was delivered by Shittu Sherrif, renowned blogger and chief executive officer for Web Trends Nigeria, while KarRox Technology instructors gave a course on “Creating a Personal Website”.
According to Sherrif, social media has become increasingly popular with the growth of social networking as a channel of communication, while the use of blog posts and social networking sites have become a major medium for sharing of information, videos and pictures.
By Okoro Chinedu
