ICT answer to teacher shortage, says ministry

By Augustine Oduor
Ministry of Education is forging partner with stakeholders in an e-learning initiative to help address shortage of teachers.
Director of Quality Assurance and Standards Enos Oyaya said with ICT, a single teacher could serve many learners in several schools.
"Today, a teacher confines himself to learners physically present in class. This means many more cannot benefit from the teacher’s services. ICT will reverse this," he said.
The country has a deficit of 61,000 teachers. Last year, only 18,000 teachers were employed on contract.
Standard Group Chief Operating Officer Sarvjeet Channa challenged the Government to promote ICT programmes.
"Online media has equipped youth to access information at the tap of a button. It saves time and financial resources for parents, guardians and youth while they consult on various educational options they desire to undertake," he said.
Mr Channa said ICT should be incorporated in primary and secondary school syllabus. He urged the Government to ensure access in rural areas.
The two spoke at Serena Hotel, Nairobi, on Tuesday during the launch of Express Communications Ltd (ECL) education website -www.educationinkenya.com.
The project is a partnership between ECL and Standard Group. Kenya Commercial Bank also sponsored the function.
ECL managing director Sammy Masara described the website as a ‘supermarket’ for education information. He said the website will eliminate challenges of education information distribution as it would be accessed globally any time.
"We are challenging stakeholders to adopt new technology in public and private sectors because it also exposes businesses to the world," he said.
Oyaya said the Government was already putting up necessary infrastructure to realise the plan.
He said the project was part of the initial Economic Stimulus Package plan to purchase 300 refurbished computers per constituency.
"About 1,050 schools have been selected to pilot the ICT programme and are already receiving money towards purchase of equipment," he said.
About Sh980 million has been set aside to roll out the project and each school would receive Sh1 million.



 A link to the website:

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000036261&cid=4

Final Project Idea

Alright, so I have a couple of similar ideas for units of work....

The first idea has the end goal of students redesigning a game of their choice using Game Maker. This fits nicely in VELS 5.25 and in particularly the visual thinking aspect. My plan is to create a serious of tutorial videos (learning tools) for Game Maker which would be used as by the students in conjunction to set project work leading up to their final project of redesigning a game.

My second idea has the end goal of students redesigning a website (one with bad layout and design principles) through the use of HTML. This would fit into VCE Unit 1 Outcome 3 and once again my plan would be to create a series of tutorial videos in conjunction with the project work (this would most likely be something like designing a website for their favourite sports team) leading up to the final project of redesigning the website.

EDIT: So my final choice was neither of these options but something similar to both. I've decided to make a series of tutorial videos on how to use Photoshop, with the end goal that students will be able to redesign their own movie posters into another genre. So for example redesigning the movie poster of Australia to look like a horror film. I plan to produce the tutorial videos as well as an example of student work, transforming a movie poster into a different genre. This fits in with unit 1 outcome 2 in media studies.

Monash Uni Website Hacked

Ben Grubb

April 18, 2011
Monash University has reported to "specialist agencies" the hacking of its website home page, which on Saturday displayed the words "Hacked by yaser007" in red above a picture of the Iranian flag within the outline of a map of the country.
In an emailed statement, Monash University chief information officer, Mr Ian Tebbett, said the site "was subject to an external hacker breach on Saturday" but that "the situation was quickly identified and dealt with".
He said no university data had been compromised and that the effects were "limited to the publishing of non-Monash material on the externally-facing website".

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It appeared, Mr Tebbett said, that neither Monash, nor the wider Australian higher education community, were a "specific target of the attack".
Monash's own investigations of the matter were "ongoing", he said. "We take the matter of security of all our IT resources very seriously and strive to balance the risks involved with the benefits gained from these resources."
In an email to all students this morning, Mr Tebbett said that it appeared the hacker "was using a series of web resources across the world (including those at universities in the UK and USA) to modify web pages hosted at Monash". He had asked that a "detailed report" be provided to the ICT Security Committee "as soon as practical".
"Any recommendations which they might make will be considered by the University Council Audit and Risk Committee," he said.
One screengrab supplied to Fairfax by a student of the Victorian university showed the Monash website remained hacked at 12.52pm on Saturday. Shortly after, the website returned to normal.
Mr Tebbett said that between 12pm and 2pm on Saturday "users may have seen alternating correct and incorrect presentation of the website" while Monash's ITS department resolved the matter.
The hack appeared to not only affect the university's home page but also access to other parts of the site, including the university's library and Faculty of Engineering websites.

This isn't the first time a hacker has targeted an Australian university's website. In January, a hacker who nicknamed himself "Evil" sabotaged the University of Sydney home page and altered corporate webpages.

The University of Sydney called in two internet security firms after the incident occurred to beef up protection from hackers



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/security/monash-uni-website-hacked-20110416-1diko.html#ixzz1PPHd0jmy