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From facebooking to Personal Development Programme (PDP) By
Najeeb A. A. Gambo Forgive my neology and read through the thesis, I assure you that you will not regret joining my newly found ‘political platform’. To make my point more succinct, let me give you an overview of what I intend to share with you. By facebooking, I mean excessive indulging on Facebook without any clear cuts mission and by PDP – I do not mean the all-powerful People Democratic Party of the umbrella mythos. The PDP in question is that of Personal Development Programme! My choice of this topic was borne out of my encounter with friends both virtual and real on their motives for joining the new world of facebooking. On several occasions, I do ask the newbies on their motives for joining the social network but hardly could I get any informed and better argument beyond the meeting of old and new friends. Although the reason may to some extent be acceptable, but the more someone became deeply entrench, the more hypnotised and addicted s/he became to the extent that it will be very difficult for a person to spend more than fifteen minutes without ‘checking back’ to see the happenings in the virtual world. In fact, the effect is more pronounce on people blessed with Blackberry phones. In my on supposition, ‘an average ‘blackberrian’ is a distracted person’. In my own naïve and parochial understanding of life, a facebooker’s motive should go beyond befriending virtual and real people but should include among other thing the avenue to mentor and change people livesas well as discuss issues of common and professional interest (even though other outfits like LinkedIn do exist). In order for us to positively utilise our time, I opine that we shall try to strike a balance between facebooking and developing ourselves. By developing ourselves, I mean engaging in capacity building programmes that will one day give us an edge in real life situation or working environment ahead and above our competitors. If on the average someone spent two hours chatting with friends on Facebook in a day, I advise that hours should be divided in to two, while the former for facebooking, the later should be for personal development. To do that, you may wish to consider registering yourself with GCFLearnFree.org athttp://www.gcflearnfree.org/ . The outfit is supported by the Goodwill Community Foundation, Inc. (GCF®) whose mission is "to create and provide education, employment, and life enrichment opportunities for people who desire to improve the quality of their lives" free of charge. Of all the websites I am acquainted with and conducting my research on, GCF appears to me as one of the most outstanding and instructive website for someone to benefit from. The website is devoid of any unsolicited popup and is design in such a way that someone can access some of its courses (including Microsoft word, excel, power points and vocabulary tutor) with mobile phones. It is worth noting to state that at the moment over TWO million learners from around the world have taken advantage of their free learning opportunities and were awarded with CERTIFICATES! – FOC (Free of charge). In that site, a serious minded person will be given the liberty to enrol under computer section on computer basics, email basics, internet basics, social media basics, windows or Microsoft office – Words, Power points, Excel, and Access (certificates are awarded). Under career section, one will have the opportunity to be acquainted with career planning, job search techniques, resume writing, interview skills and job success. A section is also dedicated to help students improved their numerical skills. Their interactive class offers the opportunity for student to learn at his on phase and is design in such a way that student could listen to lectures, print the lectures or read it online depending on someone preference and personal choice. With this in mind, I believe, is enough for someone to consider the need to adjust the level of facebooking and join me in my new political party – the PDP of capacity building mythos. Lastly, I wish to state that in spite of my near advance knowledge in some of the courses I enumerated, I still find lots of issues that I don’t know and I am really enjoying. Lest I forget, the site has an interactive section called everyday life in which, I will recommend it especially for people wishing to travel abroad to master. This section covered the – how to’s – of operating vending machine, microwave, concept of cash back, label reading, baking, stamp values and other stuff which you may seems to dismiss as trivial, but from my experiences are very relevant and timely to learn. |