Teaching or learning?

In the old days there were craftsmen, master-craftsmen and apprentices. People learnt by working alongside others who had been doing the craft for many years. In recent times we have schools and training colleges and universities. It almost appears like people want to open their head like taking the lid off a kettle and pour in knowledge. All over the world this seems to be the modern way. But you don't gain skills that way.

One of the things that we are trying to do is improve the skills in media of our brothers and sisters in the Middle East. But often we have found they come approaching it as if they want the knowledge without the skills. The website we are developing as a way of encouraging learning now has this as its motto “This is not the place where you come to train. This is the place where you come to learn.”

I spent part of today with a colleague trying to get the right style for this site. Its important that its friendly - not just a load of facts. People from the Middle East are very relational so it has to have the feel of a workshop with people working alongside each other and learning from each other. Well, we'll have to see how it turns out and if the people we want to encourage find it helpful... as they say 'watch this space'.

Most of the day was spent editing, and programme 5 is nearly finished now. It was left rendering over-night.

This evening I wired another mobile phone into the system and then wrote the extre program code to make the system work with multiple phones. Tomorrow another colleague will test it.