This week in Summary
This week began well on 28th of March 2016. It was Easter Monday and participants were busy on the course despite the fact that it was on a holiday. KICTCFT platform and the group on the WhatsApp platform were very active with all of us trying to start Unit 10 with our best foot forward.
In the Forums
Sharu Doti was the first to comment on the topics of the first forum in this unit. The forum is entitled “Hearing the Parents Voice”. He did justice to it by listing several points through which parents’ voice can be heard. He also inserted photos to reinforce his points and I applaud him for this.
Abdallah Ahmed Barghash took the lead in commenting on the second forum. The topic of this forum is “Use of Social Media in the Community”. He began by telling us how important social media is and how it can be used to enhance community communication.
Mohammed Hassan decided he will not break the chain created by Sharu and Abdallah and to make sure the chain continues, he was the first to comment on the last forum whose topic is “Facebook Pages and Community Communication”. He listed some points in a bid to explain how a Facebook page can be used to make communication effective and more efficient.
I salute you guys for starting us off in the forums.
Portfolio Assignments
Mohammed Hassan and Abdallah Ahmed were among the first to submit portfolio assignment Item #10. They Submitted on 28th March, 2016. This is an encouragement to the rest of us to try and submit before Sunday 3 April, 2016 4.45 PM.
WhatsApp Group Posts for Cohort 2
This has remained active for the better part of this week including as late as midnight (00.41 am with Posts done by Susan Kanyiri) and as early as 3.36 AM (with Good morning greetings from Josephat Onyango).
Our consistent early birds have been:
- Josephat Onyango
- Paul Katila
- Kimalel G.
G. Kimalel has also been our spiritual leader in this online environment. He has been offering prayers online almost every morning and this is very encouraging. Keep it up Pastor. He combined the pastoring role on time with the role of a journalist where he kept us posted about the University Entry Points as set by KUCCPS. Thank you too for the link you provided.
Mary and Ali Akare have been our motivational speakers. They have been encouraging us to keep going and we owe something because of a duty they have diligently executed.
Ali Akare gave us a brief history of Fool’s Day then Thomas Kithuure did justice to the day by making some of us start sympathizing with him and cursing the devil for wrongs he had not done. He later debriefed members and indicated that he was just “making the day be like it”.
Ali Akare has been also very consistent in giving members news the latest being the 150 schools to be given laptops under the Proof of Concept phase of the DLP project. Aggrey Oduor is also another practicing journalist. He gave us news live from KICC as the Curriculum Reform process was being launched by the Deputy President H.E. Hon. William Ruto on 30th March 2016. These are talents which need to be nurtured.
Our diligent course administrator Ivy began this day of today (Sunday 3rd April) by congratulating everyone as we prepare to start a new topic.
By the time I was picking the last updates from the site, Aden had just given us some Swahili lessons which we might have missed and just to mention a few, we have “Mouse - Kiteuzi”, “Computer virus - Mtaliga” and “Scanner - Mdaki”.
Conclusion
In this Unit we have seen how important it is to enhance communication with parents and other school stakeholders especially in the new constitutional dispensation. All stakeholders nowadays need to be involved in every step of the decision making process and communication can play a key role in this. To ensure that communication among the key stakeholders is enhanced, as educators we can leverage on some tools made available by technology like Social media. Facebook pages, emails, Google hang-outs, twitter, WhatsApp can play a big role in ensuring that communication is done efficiently and effectively.
Thank you guys for your active participation in all activities in the two forums. Looking forward to seeing intense activity in Unit 11.
Analysis and Summary done by Joseph Wambua.