A phrase once uttered once by one of the students who took part in the Mural course impressed me deeply.

We are now going to the final week of lessons offered to a group of citizen journalists from peripheral areas of São Paulo, that have become the first wave of trainees of the "Mural" project.

For the third consecutive week, we had a high attendance rate, except for a few colleagues who were unable to come for health reasons. Those who couldn't attend have already sent emails asking to be updated on the content and pitching the stories that were asked in class.

For the second week in a row we had a packed room.

A group of 20 students from peripheral areas of São Paulo filled a room with only 14 computers on a gloriously sunny Sunday, and in the middle of the World Cup - worth noting that Brazil wasn't playing, though.

We touched on quite a few topics on this second lesson.

Yesterday was the first class of the Mural citizen journalist project.

We got to see the very basics of video.

But one of our students, Cacau Ras, who already has a good experience in video producing, already produced a little teaser of the first lesson.

If he's coming up with things like that by now, I wonder what he'll be doing next.

Next week, we'll come up with some different video tasks for all the students to undergo.

I'm looking forward to it.

I had hopes that, if not all, at least most of the students who assured me they'd be here on the first class would show up.

Folha de São Paulo, the newspaper where I'm hosted, has 12 computers in the training room I was given access to. Unfortunately the larger room, with 14 machines, was being used by Folha's own trainees and was not available.

In this last weekend me and assistant trainer Fabiano Angélico concluded the in-presence part of the AT&T funded course Digital Tools for Public Service journalism.

It took place from Friday, the 20th to Sunday the 23rd at the newspaper Folha de São Paulo’s training room.

We're now a few days away from the start of the The Digital Tools for Public Service Journalism course. Monday, the 19th of May, marks its beginning.

A total of 42 applicants were selected to take part of these three weeks of online training.

They have a diversified profile. Altogether, 18 of the selected candidates are professionals from the country's media outlets, either newspapers, magazines or websites.

But we've also chosen a good number of citizen journalists and of reporters working for smaller news outlets: a total of 10.

We did it...but actually, not yet. It was very tiring, we had some very long days of work, consumed a good deal of coffee and didn't have that much of sleep in the last few weeks, but I hope it will have been worth it.

We've nearly concluded the very last Unit of the AT&T sponsored course Digital Tools for Public Service Journalism. Right now, we are only going to correct whatever bits need to be changed and then we should be ready to roll.

We have, so far, received 75 applications of candidates with a somewhat diversified profile.

But, no, it is far from over.