Perhaps it was a farce: we were there to talk about participatory media and we ended up it like a lecture forcing majority of our students to suggest ‘the class should be more participatory’. But nevertheless, the class was better than we have thought and the students, though very young at around 16-17, were much more interested than we were looking for.
‘Understanding Online Media as Alternative Media’ was the title of the guest presentation that we held at Kathmandu Don Bosco College. There were one-and-half dozen participants, mostly girls. It was something like a beta-testing for us as we wanted to learn reactions from the students so to develop a more effective course on the topics for presentation.
Broadly, we talked about online media, mainstream media v alternative media, citizen and participatory journalism, democracy, democratic media, blogs and blogging. I will be posting more on the issues in coming days.
Here are a few suggestions that we received from the students:
“I don’t think that in Nepal, blogs can be popular because the internet access is so low. But it’s a great way of sharing the feelings. So people who want to share their feeling will get a great opportunity.” – Suman
“I came to know about we media, how to be a contributor through blog journalism. I believe it will help me to sharpen my creativity since I now have a platform to express my opinion.” – Bhrikuti Rai
“Special discussion focused on other features of blog should be emphasised.” – Sabi Dongol
We reviewed our presentation as average because we touched too many issues and it was difficult for the students to grasp all of them in two-hour. We will review our course and compact it before going to other colleges for more presentations and probably encouraging more young people to jump into the blogosphere.
Our thanks to all the students, the college administration and teacher Bhuwaneshwor Sharma for giving us an opportunity.
PS: Here ‘we’ implies to me, Tilak Pathak and Bhuwan KC.
