MIRI: ‘Everyone talks about Facebook, but what is it?’ It is one of the questions that intrigues some 36 community leaders as they ponder on the power of the popular social networking site.
Community leaders from Miri, Niah and Sibuti divisions attended an ICT Literacy 2010 course organised by Industrial Training Institute Miri (ILP) recently.
ILP director Mohd Faizal Tokeran was also present during the course and officiated at the certificate presentation at the end of the course on the same day.
To some of the participants, it was their first experience in using a computer, some were even scared to move the mouse,” said Faizal.
The ICT literacy course has been set up to introduce the community leaders to the Internet as a way to reach out to the community at an instant.
Realising the need to pursue the knowledge of utilising the Internet, ILP made an effort to help the community leaders gain the necessary skills to interact with the public through the popular social network, Facebook.
At the same time, the course was also to prepare the community leaders to operate the computer hardware in line with the government’s aspiration to supply netbook to them under the 1Malaysia programme.
According to Mohd Faizal, the institute planned to make the programme as their annual activity in the future due to the overwhelming response from the community leaders.
“Upon completing the course, the participants will able to understand better what Facebook is all about and not only knowing it by name but also how to interact with the application,” he added.
It is another means for the leaders to communicate both locally and internationally among those in its network.
At the same time, if the community leaders are actively ‘online’ and interact with their ‘friends’, it will the medium to get up-dated on the latest information on almost anything that happens in the country.
“During the course, we also line up all the benefits that the free social network website could offer such as the community leaders would be able to post and inform their networked members on upcoming events,” he said.
Community leaders are also able to promote any programme such as homestay with colourful pictures – as they say, a picture can say more than a thousand words.
Therefore, through such cultural programme, its will attract foreigners to come to Miri city and surrounding areas, which will boost their economic benefits.
Miri ILP technical advisory committee member Charles Soo also mentioned that it was hoped the participants could apply the knowledge gained from the literacy course, which would be beneficial to the community.
The course was conducted by Miri ILP instructors with the assistance of 10 students as facilitators.
He also said that through organising such a programme, it would also help the institute to fully utilise the facilities available at the centre and more programmes involving the community would be planned in the near future.
With the existing total of 375 students, the institute aims for more students enrolment next year through diversifying it courses such as Diploma IT System (Level 4) by next year.
Miri ILP also works closely with the industrial sector thus provide its students with immediate on-job-training at the end of their course to ensure them a bright future in a competitive world.