ByEmeka Aginam

While the shift to new media intensifies daily worldwide, Microsoft Nigeria in partnership with KarRox Technologies recently in Lagos trained journalists on IT skills using Microsoft technologies to master the challenge of multimedia journalism.

About 20 Nigerian journalists drawn from major media houses benefited from the training focussed on IT and social media.

Technology Lead, Microsoft Anglophone West Africa, Dele Akinsade, while explaining the motivation for the programme, said that “As a technology enabler, we 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”.

For Pritesh Zaveri, Business Development Manager, KarRox Technologies, journalists need to be well equipped with IT skills and knowledge to face the 21st century knowledge economy.

“We are pleased to partner with Microsoft on this training project with the Nigerian media. The benefits of IT education cannot be underestimated and we feel this is good way to positively impact their contributions to society” he said.

Participating journalists commended the efforts of Microsoft and KarRox at encouraging technology penetration.

‘I thank Microsoft for this opportunity. It has been a very enlightening experience. We now have a better understanding of Microsoft software packages and the opportunities that exist in online and social media as an effective communication channel.

IT skills are certainly a prerequisite for future achievement”, Lucas Ajanaku of the Nigeria Compass said

The workshop course content included a session on Microsoft Windows Live Suite, a 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 a 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.

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 CEO of Web Trends Nigeria, whilst KarRox Technology trainers gave a course on “Creating a Personal Website”. Social media has become increasingly popular with the growth of social networking as a channel of communications; the use of blog posts and social networking sites have become a major medium for sharing of information, videos and pictures. There are over two million Nigerians on Facebook and several uploads from Nigerians on YouTube.

Guest facilitator Prince Osita Ike, a veteran photographer took the journalists through an interactive session on Photojournalism. Participants came from various media houses including Vanguard, Punch, Guardian, Daily Independent, Champion newspapers, BusinessDay Newspapers, ThisDay, and The Sun, among others