My overall experience at the National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) has been very fantastic and memorable. Give me some minutes of your time and let me gist you about my experience so far.
We are currently in week 7 of the practical session on the Course Online Journalism. The program started with the Certificate part which was about 70% online due to the situation of Covid-19 in the country which led to the shutting down of schools.
Our first exercise on blogging as part of the program was to write about our Covid-19 experience; hence the writing of my blogpost “My Covid-19 Experience”. The other part (Rotational Exercise) was done on campus where we explored the different departments of the school including Directing, Photography, Sounds, etc.
We commenced the Diploma part of the program in September 2020 after a short break. We once again started with online tuition for 8 weeks then came on campus to continue with the practical session which is still in progress.
In the first week, I was tasked as a Class Rep to create a blog for the class on Blogger.com which I enjoyed doing. We were then taught how to upload pictures and videos on a blog, that I was already familiar with. But in the following week, we were taught how to embed audio in a blog by uploading it on SoundCloud first. This was very new to me so I developed a keen interest in the lesson. We were all asked to record 10 seconds of audio and embed it in the class blog. I later learned about how to do the same on WordPress by myself.
We were then introduced to facts-checking of news stories. We were grouped into two and I was appointed as a leader in my group. It’s interesting how I’m always leading right? I guess that’s what I’m born to do; my leadership roles started way back in Class 2 when I was about 8 years old.
Back to the facts-checking; so we were once again asked to choose a news story and fact-check it whether it is an authentic story or fake news. My group chose a story that was circulating on social media that “Dangote Foundation was supporting people with funds.” We used the various means of fact-checking as we were taught, and came to the conclusion that the story is fake; I was once again appointed to do the presentation for the group.
I’ve taken enough of your time, so I’d like to end here. I shall bring you more updates later on as we are nearing the end of the program. So subscribe to my blog so that you will be notified when I post something new. And browse through my poems and soak yourself with some love before you leave, and stay safe.
rjbaidoo 