7iber is working with JumpStart to work with a group of young people with blogs, social media, and basic computer literacy. The program is a five-week program based in the Red Cross Hospital in Ashrafiya. Our goal is to bring Iraqis, Palestinians, and Jordanians together to build a community blog in order to share their experiences.

After a rough start, the training workshop finally got underway with 11 participants. Shaden got underway with a quick survey to ask about general Internet usage. Nearly everyone uses the Internet everyday, with just a few saying they don’t use the Internet. When Shaden asked if people use Facebook, one participant mentioned that the Internet and Facebook are one in the same to them.

The first skill we looked to teach was basic searching skills. How to use search engines, making basic queries with excludes and includes and how to refine your search as much as possible to find what you are looking. Most participants have used Google, but mostly to search for pictures.

From searching, we moved on to Wikipedia. A quick query on Iraq, brought on an interesting discussion of the accuracy of information and where the information comes from. You can edit the page, discuss the information, and other options. The participants seemed very interested.

From Wikipedia we move to Yamli, the Arabic/English search engine. You type the Arabic in English letters and it translates it to the Arabic characters. We moved quickly on to ikbis and youtube.

After a quick break, we on to blogging. More to come soon.

To show exactly what a blog is and what it does (and how to register it), we started a blog called yazan7ammo.maktoobblog.com. We did a quick tour of different blog services including Maktoob, Jeeran, and Blogger. Another participant, started his own blog on blogger.com, http://blaskvirus.blogspot.com/.