Mohammed's Blog

As you know, I am an active member of Saudi IT club which is obviously an Information Technology club. Our activity mainly involvled spreading the IT culture trhoughout Saudi Arabia. The club is led by great people and that’s probably the reason why I am a member there and why I am still part of them.Saudi Arabia needs for that kind of things, the population has started to be open to the internet. And to be honest, for some of us and some of you, the internet or the computer can be a fearsom place if you decided to venture through it without a guide. You buy a computer and you put on your home and after few hours of thinking you finally hook it up to your monitor and your keyboard and mouse. During my time working and teaching people at the I.T Club I saw alot of people that were intimidated from the computer.

I remember once seeing an eposide of DR.Phil, where this women was scared of touching the mouse and the screen. She considered that computers are the source of all evil. And that computers were the vechiles of the devils. And that the computer may develop a mind of its own and may attempt of murdering her. People who are scared of this magnificent technological masterpiece DO EXIST.

My point is, that computers & the internet can be really scarey world for some people. And we have alot of those people here in Saudi Arabia. One of our missions in Saudi Information Technology Club is to provide Saudi citizen with guidance that they need to venture fourth into this world of computers.

Anyway, back to our subject. As I said mentioned above that one of our missions is to educate the people about I.T. So we started this summer program for kids (Ages 8 – 14 where we teach children the basics of computers, basic of programming, we also give them an introduction to personal deveopment such as goal settings and time manangement and motivation. We tailored the program so it fits into our students brain so dont worry about saying that it is too much for little kids. Nothing is too much for them, they can understand clearly and I can say that confidently from my experience with them.

Microsoft came and offered us support inexchange of publication, so they gave us 2 free Xboxes so we can use it as prizes or we can run tournaments using it. (When we asked for 5, but since its free, I can only thank and not complain. ) And they also offered us freebies such as USB flashes (They gave us away 120X USB flash) And alot of community service brochures and awareness campaigns. So we used thier files and gave the USB’s to the children so they can save thier data on.

So thank you Microsoft for your support! And a special thanks DR.Mamdoh Al Najjar, Microft’s corporate Social Responsbility Leader.