WORDCAMP ENTEBBE 2019: Where Teachers of ICT Met the Practitioners of ICT

The day you stop learning, is the day you start dying.” It is for this reason that teachers of ICT under their umbrella body ICT Teachers Association of Uganda overwhelmingly converged at Nkumba University on Saturday 30th March 2019 to attend the first ever WordCamp in Entebbe.  

Some of the ITAU members who were at WordCamp Entebbe 2019

To the uninitiated, WordCamps are informal community organized events put together by WordPressers to share ideas and get to know each other. The one at Nkumba organized by Arthur Kasirye was the first of its kind in Entebbe and was graced by over 100 participants, three quarters of whom were teachers.

A section of delegates at WordCamp Entebbe

This particular event was sponsored by Blue Host, Go Daddy, Gig Starz, Nkumba University, William Jackson (A teacher), Woo Commerce and Jetpack. The heavily subsidized tickets were an incentive for delegates to travel from as far as Kisoro, Koboko and Mbale. The Kampala WordPress community under the leadership of Laurence Buhiirwa, Mukalele Rogers and Franklin were visible pillars in support of the event from the start to end as they gave their all to see the event through.

The ‘Sky Blue Brigade‘, Arthur (R), Franklin and Trillion take a pose.

Teachers, the fountain of knowledge and wisdom were this time the students as their former students gave insightful presentations that covered the basics of WordPress to the advanced aspects of the world’s most popular Content Management System.

Presentations ranged from basic installation that was handled by Shafiq to more advanced topics like cleaning a hacked site by Hussein Kuloba. Delegates were also taken through site links and content structure, a topic that was handled well by Hamza. This topic was one of the long awaited topics that would help delegates improve on the online presence of their schools’ websites.

These are some of the presentations shared by some of the speakers during wordcamp Entebbe.

Dowload below.

Delegates who stayed around Entebbe were treated to an evening session by Rogers Mukalele who took them through Microsoft Expression Web and the process of buying domains.

Rogers Mukalele takes residents through MS Expression Web

What next?

Since WordCamps are not organized by teachers, the ITAU executive under the chairmanship of Mr. Kakaire Charles is mandated to also organize Capacity Development Workshops whose themes surround entirely the interests of the teachers and their profession. Building on the success of last year’s workshop, this years workshop is to be held at Kololo SS on 6th and 7th May 2019 at a fee of 50,000/= for commuters and 60,000/= for residents.

ITAU Chairman Mr. Kakaire Charles (In checked shirt) poses with Mr. Aaron and Mr. Dumba (In blue)

This year’s topics according to the National Co-odinator will include

  • Setting balanced examinations
  • Advanced Word processing
  • Elementary programing
  • Advanced Databases
  • Computer Lab Management
  • Pedagogy
  • Web Design with Expression Web
  • Improving grades in theory papers and
  • Presentations about the long awaited SACCO.

The success of WordCamp Entebbe is one of the inspiring forces behind this years capacity development workshop. To me who wants to learn, I will surely be there.

Narrated by,

Dumba Stephen
E-zone School of Computing
0752 111 223 / 0772 111 223

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