Technology for Community Empowerment

Today we had another special guest, Dr. Gary Wills, joining us from the University of Southampton, UK. He spoke to us about wikis and shared his knowledge on how it is being used and where it fits in Web 2.0 technologies. The example of wikipedia was interesting for the Impact Team as now they’ve found [...]

Nils is really a pioneer in his field and we learnt so much through his 2 day workshop. We also had the opportunity to take our Swedish friends on a journey through the Cape Flats.
Nils did the basics of journalism and the importance of telling your story. For the guys on the program this was [...]

As a treat we have guests from Sweden Nils and Micke visiting the Impact Centre to teach the Impact Team more about journalism. This is fascinating because some of the guys are not to keen about reading and writing. Looking forward to see how this will develop.

This morning an ex-student of mine came to do a talk about Web 2.0 technologies and to give more insight with regard to twitter. For the first time having a special guest speaker was great for the guys as many of them enjoyed what they were hearing. I each time had to remind myself that [...]

Today was one of those days where I realised that a technology (MXit) that are being used in our communities are not utilised to empower these communities. Other than Dr. Math and iDrive no other social services are being offered using this Mobile Instant Messaging platform. The thought crossed my mind of using MXit as [...]

Today we played around with weblogs and how it could be used by the Impact Team (ex-drug addicts and ex-gang members). The blogging took longer to get use to than Facebook eventhough posting to each other’s wall was common. We created a blog titled www.thereconstructed.blogspot.com where the team will be posting their stories.
Interesting as for [...]

This morning the Impact Team were introduced to a social networking tool Facebook. Due to most of the team not having any computer or web literacy skills this day started off as a challenge to see how they will manage this technology.
Interestingly enough everyone were able to register on Facebook and by the time we [...]