PH International

A sampling of student views on their most rewarding part ot their GNML online experience

USA | Global New Media Lab | 18 Apr 2013

Success
Students in the Global New Media Lab online program learned a range of tools and techniques for using social media for a social cause. Toward the end of the program they were asked to define the most important, the most rewarding, and the most challenging part of their experience. This success story presents a few of their answers.

Overview
B.R. from Serbia wrote:
The most rewarding experience of our GNML online program for me was developing my awareness, and the awareness of others, on a specific social issue in my home town in Serbia. That issue is equal opportunity in education for everybody. What made this activity so special was the fact that I was using social media to speak up about a specific problem in Serbia and attract the attention of others. This made me realize that the skills that I have gained during this program will reach their full potential when I direct them towards working with others. Sharing opinions and cooperation are important tools in resolving social issues anywhere in the world.

A.K. from Kazakhstan wrote:
I was thinking about problems of disabled people for a long time. I remember that I watched one movie about a man in a wheelchair. He could go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted and I realized that I saw just a few disabled people in my city before. It was a bad thing, that meant that disabled people don't have a "freedom" in my country as everybody else does. "How can I help, what can I do for them?"- that question didn't let me go for couple years. I felt that I'm just a little girl in a big world and I don't have any power. But few months ago GNML opened my eyes, it shown me that theres' a whole world of social media that I can use for any purpose. Before Global New Media Lab I thought that you need a lot of money to change something and now I know that using social media I can find people with the same ideas and a desire to help. It can give us an opportunity to work together even if we are in different countries or continents. Distance doesn't make a difference here, we can share our experience with computer technologies. I think it's great and I want to continue learning more and more about power of social media.

S.M. Pakistan wrote:
The most important thing I learned from this program is the actual power and use of social media. Before this program, I knew that social media could be used not only to communicate with the friends, share your interests and have fun but also to make a difference by a little effort, but how? I did not know that. But now I have my own blog, I have used YouTube to share how can I make a difference. The GNML online session have introduced me to new way to empower my words, have provided me a chance to take a initiative, and have introduced me to the real power of social media like Facebook and Twitter.

A.R. Indonesia
During the early stage of my participation in GNML, I have never expect I would learn so many important things from every sessions that I would have done. I have learned a lot of things those are very important to build and create an excellent campaign to promote a particular issues that has been choose as a project that I will actualize in my home community. They are 3 elements those have been the most important things that I learn from this program. The first one is, how to use social media Properly and wisely to engage people and promote the projects. The second one is, how to create an excellent project that will be actualized in the future in one particular issue that generally have concerned our own home community. The last one is to build a self-confidence and teach our own self to be a leader for our own home community and make a different to the better one ahead.