I was told to expect five to ten people, but, to be on the safe side, I had decided to take fifteen copies of the list of important points that I had noted down the previous night.
The Photocopies were still warm when Usha, the lady owner of the Photostat shop, placed it on the counter and yelled out ‘fifteen rupees’.
Nine years back for the first year birthday celebrations of my daughter, I hardly had the guts to speak in public, let alone take a class. But today, I was all eager to inform and share whatever I knew. Probably the active roles that I played in my daughter’s school’s PTA and the local residents forum has helped, so also the sensitive introspective approach and attitude towards myself, and also a couple of self help books too, seems to have improved me a lot.
The venue was a local school and I was going to teach a group of government school teachers. The subject was, what ‘Blog’ was and I was to speak for half hour to an hour max, on the subject. The slot was allotted in the three day government sponsored training programme for teachers. My name was suggested by my friend Chandrashekar, (the husband-wife couple who are also post graduates in sanskrit and friends of ours and are both teachers at a local high school) who thinks of me as an expert on computers. Any amount of convincing did not steer him away from his decision. He would not accept the big ‘OH MY GOD, NO’ from me, and later, I was finally humbled to ask for the time and venue. This was an informal invitation and I would not get any remuneration nor even a certificate . My talk was at 3.00pm and the school was two minutes walk from my home.
The crisp, warm copies were getting soaked from the sweat from my palms as I was approaching the school gates on that hot Monday afternoon. The school building was set deep inside with lot of frontage. This was serving two important purposes. It was serving as parking space for the school buses to stop and pick/unload the children and also as a school ground for the children, the rest of the time. As I was approaching the building randomly, my eyes caught Chandrashekars wife, Pushpalatha going out of a door on the first floor of one particular section of one of the buildings. I went inside. Immediately, Chandrashekar came out hurriedly down the stairs and looking at his watch, remarked that I was two minutes early.
It was obviously tea break time as I approached the class and I was served, a hot cup of tea. I was all tensed up to find atleast sixty people in that room. When I asked Chandrashekar about this he said that for this session, teachers from other classrooms were gathering in. And not to worry, when I told him that I had made a small list of important points and that I had only fifteen copies of it. I looked around and there was a black board, a chalk and duster if needed. I was amused at the thought that things now had turned around, that the teachers were all seated and that I was in charge at the black board. Now, If in todays schools, kids were subjected to the same treatment that, I was subjected to by the then peers, those kids could be in serious trouble. As I stood there lost in those painful memories with moist eyes, I was suddenly jolted to the present moment by Chandrashekar’s introduction about me.
I did a survey half way through my talk when, I saw a blank look in most of the teachers.
The statistics. There were 62 teachers.
Only 7 of them were men.
Only 5 teachers in all had a computer at home.
Only two people had an internet connection at home.
On social sites, only one knew what Orkut was.
Undeterred by this initial survey of mine I went along and distributed the copies anyway, one copy a desk. A copy of which, I am including here.
BLOG
The term ‘blog’ is derived from the words ‘web log’.
Blog is like an online diary or online journal or like a public notice board and is free of any charge.
Anyone can start a blog and one such blog can be opened by visiting the site https://www.blogger.com/start. or https://support.google.com/blogger/?hl=en#topic=3339243
Blogs may be used to publish one’s personal views, comments or experiences and these may be accessed by anyone on the internet.
Readers can comment on the published articles and these can then be viewed by everyone.
Blogs are active and flexible which means they can be updated frequently.
Blogs also can support photos, video and songs apart from text.
One can learn more about a blog by visiting http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g
COMPARISON BETWEEN BLOG, WEBSITE AND TWITTER
BLOG
Absolutely free
Personal comments
Experience log
Information which can then be linked to take one to the actual website
Active and flexible
Conversational. Blog dialogues with people with active feedback
WEBSITE
Official address, formal official information
Static and rigid
Website monologues to people with or without feedback
Needs domain registration and is charged
Needs content developer and a web hoster and moreover all of this involves money.
TWITTER
Twitter is like a micro-blog and supports limited characters at a time, like a couple of sentences and because of this people can download ‘then and there experiences’ even from their mobiles to the net.
The teachers were seen busy taking down points as I went on explaining and elaborating, after which, I was given a warm send off and some nice words of appreciation and thanks.
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