It may be a wrap for this blog, but it is definitely not a wrap for the issues we have talked about. The convergence of more than 2,000 participants from over 100 nations who attended the three-day DW Global Media Forum to discuss “Culture. Education. Media – Shaping a Sustainable Future” was testimony for me that this discussion just got started at another level.

For me as a media professional with a background in education, it was interesting to see around 500 colleagues in media, including bloggers, meeting with policymakers, businesspeople, academics and representatives of civil society organizations to share their experiences and ideas.

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I have spent three days now at the Global Media Forum. I have met the other bloggers, I have made new friends and met old friends from all over the world. I have eaten and even danced during the famous GMF boat ride on the Rhine River. So besides the serious side of the conference, there is also a fun part to it.

One of my areas of interest as a trained journalist and as a trainer of people in media is the influence of the advancing digital world on journalism. That’s why I attended a workshop organized by the DW Akademie with the title: New Trainers for New Media? Challenges for Human Resources Development in Media Support in a Fast-Changing Media Landscape.

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The Global Media Forum started on Monday with plenary session 1: “Rating vs. Quality: Media caught between market pressure and the mission to educate.” It was a very engaging discussion, and there were representatives from the US, Germany, Russia and South Africa. Above all, participant Trevor Ncube made a particular impression on me. He is deputy chairman of M&G Media Ltd in South Africa and chairman of Alpha Media Holdings in Zimbabwe, and he started by saying that when the media neglects Africans, it is generating misinformation.

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So far the conference has been interesting. I attended one of the workshops dealing with fun ways to learn, hosted by the Deutsche Welle Learning By Ear (LBE) program. I think the LBE program offers a great way to learn using formats such as features and radio dramas. I have attended the Global Media Forum two times before, and I found this particular workshop very entertaining. Normally the workshops consist mainly of PowerPoint presentations and talks. In this workshop, we watched one of the radio plays scenes being dramatized live just so the audience could get a taste of how the plays are conceived – although of course they are mostly radio/audio.

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Last weekend and the beginning of this week have been fascinating. If you had asked me a few weeks ago, before I started to write these blogs if the work I do had anything to do with education, I would have answered with a strong no. I would have mentioned that I train youth in media skills and that I also work with an educational foundation that helps develop solar light capacity in schools. Of course, these activities have everything to do with education. Writing for this blog has highlighted this rather obvious fact to me.

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Before I talk about paths other family members in my generation took in the German educational system, I want to come back to what my cousin Thorsten said in his interview: “The future of education is in Web.2.0.”

Many of the other bloggers and I have already written about this: No matter whether in Kenya or in Germany, technology opens new doors to education everywhere. But these don’t overcome old problems.

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I had a busy weekend recently. The organization that I coordinate – Filamujuani – was shooting the second episode of a TV show called Zuki. It was amazing, though, to see the students of Filamjuani finally coming of age, taking the reins and running the show completely.

The TV series is about a schoolgirl born in Kibera whose passion is music, but unfortunately, she has no avenues to learn it.  She has a talent that even she doesn’t understand.

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A friend will ask me occasionally, “Have you seen the latest episode of…” – and then name some program. I usually answer, “You know, I haven’t watched TV for about 2 years.”

Strange, isn’t it? But actually it’s all quite simple: I find nothing interesting or noteworthy in the most well-known channels. When there’s anything educational, I can also easily find it in the Internet. And many in my generation do the same. It’s not that the Internet penetrates more and more into our lives – it’s that it substitutes many spheres of our lives that intelligent young people are not satisfied with. So what’s the connection with education here?

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I read Maria’s first blog entry, and some of her words resounded heavily with me. In her post, she explains why she changed jobs: “Truth is, at the NGO, I encounter different realities than my own, I can work in programs that aim at social inclusion and better quality education – actions that imply a commitment to society from the perspective of the fellow other.”

Her post reminds me of my work with Givewatts – an organization that brings clean, renewable and safe energy to people like Peter Ochieng, a young man in a video I was just editing.

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