Participate, Learn and Continue...with this theme we "ICTs for Agriculture" project team organized 3 days Web 2.0 and Social Media Training. We have called for open participation and have received overwhelming number of applications to get participate but due to limited resources and to make the program more interactive and productive we have selected 35.

The objectives of the program was

• To promote use of ICTs in Agriculture.
• To develop practical IT skills in undergraduates.
• To utilize these skills in sustainability challenge by having knowledge, skill and attitude change.
• To prepare competent undergraduates influencing the global discussion.
• To provide reliable and timely information for the farmers about the cultural practice and early warning systems.
• To provide farmers with the market prices of the produce and link farmers directly to the market.
• To make participants know more on the Sustainable development goals and prepare them for post agenda 2015.

Event  Highlights

Event title: ICT4Ag Handprint challenge, Web 2.0 and Social Media Training

Organizer: SAYEN ICT4AG Handprint Challenge, Core Committee

Co-Organizer: YPARD Nepal

Collaborative and Supportive Partners:

a)      TU IAAS

b)      AgriYouthNepal

c)      NTYEN

d)      Sustainable Nepal

e)      Softwarica college of IT and Commerce, Kathmandu Nepal

f)       Online Partner, Broadlink Communications Pvt. Ltd

Program Date: 5-7 Nov 2014

Program Venue: IAAS Paklihawa Campus, Horticulture Laboratory

Events:

Day One

Resource person: Ms. Kabita Gautam

I)                   Inaugural Session: Hosted by Mr. Bijaya Sharma Subedi and Chaired by Bhargab Dhital, Directorate of Research and Publication, IAAS gave a vote of thanks to the organizers for the initiative and assured for support for such initiatives in future.

II)                 ICT4Ag HandprintChallenge core members describe is short about the aim and objective of the project, about the funding organization SAYEN and expresses the vote of thanks to funding organization, co-organizers, supporters, web and internet partner and welcomed all the enthusiast participants.

III)              Respected teachers and lecturers present their share their knowledge and experience how we could best use ICTs in agriculture and wishes all the participants all the best for their success in training programs and continuity.

Tea-Break

IV)              SDGs-Awareness and information session:

Moderated by Miss Kabita Gautam (Project Guide). Focused on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals directly from the website: http://goo.gl/8wGAXL and made the session participatory with refreshing games and the group photos. The session was focused to assist the participants of the Social Media Training (SMT) for creating the contents of the blogposts and create basis of advocacy on youth agendas in post 2015 agendas to be set soon.

V)                  Social Media?s Introductory Session

 Moderated and hosted by Miss Kabita Gautam. She briefly introduced the popular Social Media channels: Facebook, twitter, Google+. To add to this she gave a brief introduction to blogging and blogging with wordpress.

Day two:

Resource Persons: Miss Kabita Gautam, Mr Sazan Lamsal, Mr. Abiral Khanal and Mr, Aakash Giri 

I)                   Computer handling Session

Moderated By Mr. Aakash Giri discussed on how to take care of the personal computer, optimize its efficiency, and make the data stored in a personal computer secure. He further emphasized the interrelation of the information communication technologies and agriculture.

II)                 Blogging Session

Moderated by Mr. Sazan Lamsal made brief information of various blogging platforms and gave an idea of micro blogging with twitter. He elaborated the features of various blogging platforms so that the participants can choose a suitable one for them.

III)              Google Session

Moderated by Mr. Abiral Khanal explained the features of Google like Google search, Google mail, Google drive, Google word-processing, YouTube and Google+ and also briefed the participants on how to use them for our personal purpose with all the services present therein.

IV)              Blogging session

Moderated by Miss. Kabita Gautam. She made a interactive workshop type session involving all the participants. The topics covered were:

a)      Creating a wordpress account and verifying it.

b)      Selecting an appropriate theme for the blog site and customizing it.

c)      Creating a blog post, formatting it, inserting a picture in a blog post and publishing it.

Day Three

I)                   Bookmarking, and Web browsing Session:

Moderated by Mr. Aakash Giri. Made a workshop session where he elaborated the participants to use the online maps like Google map, bing map and here map. Pinning a location in a map, finding out a new location and visiting around with the help of the online and GIS Enabled maps were the topics covered. Besides maps he also explained about secure browsing from various common web browsers, managing the saved passwords and ensuring their security too, adding the bookmarks, classifying them and synchronizing them online were also explained and allowed the participants to practice.

II)                 Networking and File sharing session

Moderated by Mr. Sazan Lamsal. He conducted a workshop on file sharing among the shared network online and offline with the assistance of the various software.  Also he explained about sharing the files and making a remote desktop connection among the computers and share files along with seeking a friend?s assistance in fixing the computing issues.

III)              Word-processing session

Moderated by Mr. Abiral Khanal and facilitated by Mr. Bishwoyog Bhattarai. There they gave tricks and tips on word-processing. Managing the documents, PowerPoint presentations and excel sheets, formatting the documents easily, using the additional features of Microsoft office and many more.

IV)              Blogging Session and Online Word-processing Session

Moderated by Miss Kabita Gautam. She worked out among the participants on the additional customizing the blog appearance like adding widgets, changing themes, inserting the links and image galleries in the blog, linking the blog with the social media channels like facebook and twitter for instant sharing and many more. Beside this she too made an workshop on online word-processing using Google docs and Google sheets., adding multiple users on the same page and working along remotely.

 These are the basic things one need to know for computing and we believe knowledge about them will make one for easy dissemination of the knowledge they have acquired. During this period of course all of our participators created their blog and posted their article regarding agriculture and sustainable development.

To make them to get involved in the handprint challenge through the use of ICT and blogging  we have announced "Sustainability Blogging Challenge" competition with six different. We have received huge responses from the participants praising our efforts and thanking the funding organization to help them to get participate in the fruitful program.

We are now receiving blog post for the competition and it is a national level program. All interested bloggers could submit their blog which address the theme mentioned in the link before 22nd November 2014.