“Did you say a blog or block” asked a university student at the Kampala International University 
who until Friday last week didn’t know what a blog was. My visit was therefore timely. I had been invited by AEISEC to talk about new age communication especially using email and blogs.
Clifford told me; “I used to communicate with the AIESECERS through SMS but it proved costly. I resorted to email but the response is very poor. Please come and talk to us about the importance of email and internet especially for communication among university students.”
Well I thought that is no tall order. A big percentage of the students at KIU are from neighbouring Kenya. No wonder 70% of the AIESEC members are students. Being foreigners, most of them are already familiar with using the internet for communication.
Explaining the importance of email was easy. Actually all claimed to have email addresses – so they quickly came up with the advantages; its cheap, easy to use It’s cheap, Its instant, accessible, offers easy record keeping, not bulky and so on.
Enter blogs and only a handful of the 50 students attending had an idea let alone only two actually own blogs!
I used the Wikipedia definition of a blog and drew from personal examples to explain the importance. However, it is difficult to explain the internet with no practicals. IT sounds vague and confusing to many. The university doesn’t offer free internet access to students.
Way forward: Students promised to open up personal blogs. May be I will follow-up on this. It was nice to convert some young minds to make full use of the internet. It’s a long way to go but the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.
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