Noor

Today at the Hilton Hotel the second day of the Sixth Annual Symposium is being held. This Symposium is about Learning and Technology meaning: the way that technology is helping with learning these days.

Technology- say for instance a computer, you can search for anything needed but with the help of the internet which is another piece of ingenious technology.

Students can use the information given on the internet and then type it. There is a bonus you can check all of your work with the inbuilt spelling and punctuation checking and also a dictionary and thesaurus if needed.

With internet we can connect to the World Wide Web for answers of all our questions. There is also email and mobile phone which allows students to keep in touch with their teachers and classmates when they are away.

For younger children there are games that are fun and entertaining, yet they are at the same time educational.

At this symposium there are a lot of booths all of different things from a Lindt Chocolate booth to a Microsoft booth. Booths from universities, colleges and schools for children there are also people from hospitals, all advertising and handing out brochures to help promote and get more people to apply for their business, company, college, university or school. At this symposium I have had a lot of fun, met new people, made new friends and learnt more about the technology in and of Saudi Arabia.

By the way my Dad works at the college as a professor.

“If we can do it…”

Mona





“…so can you”

Ummah Films star Baba Ali and his right hand Yusuf Chowdhury talked to a room of guests about “Publishing Videos on the Internet” since although not professionals are very experienced in the field.

They discussed some of the planning needed to be done before actually uploading a video onto the internet:

• Objective- why do you want to make videos?


• Topic- this must be analysed by establishing who the audience is (young, old, students, professionals, beginners/experts in a field etc)? And what does this selected audience want to see?


• Relevant Issues- it will be a waste of time if you record something that has no relevance, in order to create a relevant issue there needs to be a relation with the audience to connect with, something that has a meaning to them.


• Ideas- write things down as soon as you get them

The speakers were very good at keeping the audience engaged and were very supportive of us actually going forth and creating videos, a quote by Baba Ali “I started while sitting in a chair in front of a camera, all of you here today are sitting in a chair with a camera in front of you” they both also insisted how they are not professionals and learnt his along the way. Baba Ali had no idea that his first video would cause such a snowball effect.

Publishing videos online is a great way to voice your opinion, especially when you have something to say but not in the position to say it in, you can send a message to any figure or group or humanity as whole by just recording yourself and letting it be seen by whoever will be interested in the topic.

From this session I learnt that anything is possible, nothing should stop you because the internet has so much information that you can gain any form of knowledge and do what you want to pursue with help and support from others.

See me soon in a monitor screen near you!

I tunes

Sara

This lecture was given by Mr. Mohammad Minyani he is the one who introduced Apple (Macintosh) into the companies around Saudi Arabia.

He spoke about mobile learning and itunes which is an application that works directly with MP3 players. People can download audio and video based upon a variety of interest (music, news, educational lectures, movies, etc.) from this store.

Specifically, iTunes is beneficial to mobile learning, because it is facilitating the ability to distribute information to mobile devices from anywhere in the world. He gave an example of one person he knows that learned the English language from the iPod based upon getting lessons from iTunes.

Maybe I can ask my parents for an upgrade to my iPod if I say that I can get something educational out it!

Moreover, he talked about the broadcast (podcast) where downloading is used in a very practical way. You can learn about almost any subject on the go and search about what you want to learn though iTunes U. Then download it from iTunes to the iPod. There are a number of broadcasts in both English and Arabic. iTunes U is a new style of education that I might really be able to get into.

Building Circuits

Sara A

This was a pretty technical workshop. The speaker Dr. Michael Kaltoi gave an explanation about how to build a simple circuit. The interesting part was that he used a 3D Multimedia Simulation to teach this process.

Some examples were given to show how these circuits worked and how they looked like in real life. The process of “how to build a simple circuit” was all based upon an application where you can simulate the process see if it works on screen and then build it in real life. Cool Stuff!

Students can really benefit from doing this type of applied work.

Committee work:

Ahdab

I volunteered to work with the registration committee. This is one of the most fundamental jobs at L&T Symposium.

The team was incredibly amazing and full of hard worker whether males or females.

They were ready at all times to serve L&T , they even offered services even if they were not asked to do them.

This is the first time that I worked this hard in registration, particularly in events as big as the L&T. I'm also sharing my duty as a blogger which was a great opportunity to experience this aspect of technology. Thanks to Dr. Emet Laboone.

L&T and registration enabled me to see Queen Rania Al Abdullah!! And of course meet old friends and school teachers.

At the end, I interviewed my old school teacher. She gave some pretty positive feedback about the symposium and the information that the symposium provided.

That made us and me, especially, recognize that we have (Effat College Team) really done something.

Although there were many obstacles, especially technical ones with printers, PCs and electricity, we managed every single issue in such an efficient manner that we still appeared professional.

So thanks, to the most amazing team and thanks to our lovely Effat College for allowing us students to work, share and participate in such a huge event.

Online exams' assessment

Ahdab

Assessment is an essential aspect of the learning process. Dr. Rafael Lami Dozo presented this topic in one of L & T's workshops. Assessments can be exams or measurements.

He emphasized the importance of online assessment which reaches all types and mental levels of people. The main purpose of assessments is to serve educating students in coordination with the needs of the society (just like what Dr. Arwa al Aama emphasized). Dr. Rafael included some questions during his session and that is an important action to take in classrooms to maintain concentration level of student and make sure they're awake and alert.

Exams might contain subjective or objective questions or a mixture of both. But, what depends most is what the instructor want to measure analytic abilities, memory or reflection, not that they make an online assessment (type of measurement over type of technology).

Organic Education

Sara A

This was a very interesting lecture given by Hugh Osborn, I liked it very much because the discussion was about the 21^st century solutions. Mr. Osborn provided an explanation about the under performing system in the U.S.A and discussed solutions that focus on creativity. Moreover, he discussed the global imperative force and a comparison between the 19th century model and the 21st century model.

One of the main points he made was about organic agents and "the connection being very powerful as time goes by" and he said that "Google is an organic help education".

He also talked about the universal model that student's self organize when they go to the Internet, but unfortunately on the other hand imaginative play time for children is almost non-existent.

Then before coming to the end, he talked about some goals. He said "achievement must be through academics" where "soft-skills will lead to motivation and working in groups"; then innovation comes into place. The universal model will include leadership where "everybody is a teacher and student".

Finally, he talked about the organic education in the U.S.A (North Carolina) and showed the results of the organic education model. He explained how to go from organic to mechanistic schools. He talked about the gifted children who were given intense education and how the teachers there are innovators.

When it comes to how the students receive information he said "there is no structure for text books because teachers are using the books as references only and children don't know what a test is until they actually take it". He also said that "children will become trouble makers if the shift will be from organic to mechanistic education".

International Bloggers!! - Mr. Ahmad Al-Omran

Ahdab

Mr. Ahmed Al-Omran was another speaker who talked about his personal experience and history with Blogging. He is one of Saudi Arabia's first and biggest international bloggers. His passion is journalism but he studied Pharmacology. He started with different, fun and personal blogs and became evolved to what the blogger he is today.

The speaker also said that usually people get used to blog and they can share interests or a variety of things with others whom you might even not know.

The essential parts of blogs were mentioned in his speech that are: Freedom, Making your dreams come true, Critical thinking and actions towards a civil society.

From a personal point of view, we (Saudis) are really proud to have this guy here and benefit from his experience.

Development of women's web paging skills in King Abdulaziz Unversity

Ahdab

Today, I attended a session by Dr. Arwa Al-Aama. She is an instructor in King Abdul-Aziz University. Her session was about service learning which means learning from the society services.

Students (females) produced projects of web paging for several non-profit institutions as campaigns. The main purpose of such programs is to make students learn by doing. Indeed, the program resulted in wonderful benefits for the students, instructor and clients. At the end, there were three winning projects and each student was rewarded with a recognition letter from their clients.

One of the "Corporate social responsibility" program's main clients was Savola group, which rewarded those students who authored the company's web page. The students, the instructor and the client all evaluated the program. This is a great start for women to begin developing web pages in professional and non-professional manners (e.g. constructing web pages could be a hobby). Although students found some obstacles while collecting data from clients, they still worked to reach their goals of that program.

Personally, I think this type of projects like this should be given in all colleges and universities for the students, instructors, colleges and communities to benefit. Instructors in schools or colleges must make use of use programs in coordination to their curriculum.

Finally, this is an opportunity for all women to work and prove themselves in business and technology universe.

Saudi Arabia Dreaming...

Sara S

This lecture was given by "Mr. Amr Khashogshi" (Amkest Group), his topic focused on "Saudi Arabia Dreaming" The Peopleware Upgrade!

At first, Khashogji focused on the type of learning that is focused on in schools in Saudi Arabia. He felt that this is an area, which needs more attention, especially in higher education. Some areas that need attention are speech skills, curriculum, education facilities, etc...

He spoke about how students need these important skills to improve their abilities in school, develop their ways of learning, and build up a high self-esteem.

He spoke about the power of the "E" which stands for - educated, efficient, and employable. All of these E's must be available in our students. If these are part of the curriculum, students will be more confident, have a higher self-esteem, and be responsible for their own education.

Actually, students should develop their speech skills from the kindergarten until the 12^th grade, at these stages students are more willing to learn these important skills. However, once they reach high school, they should be able to introduce themselves properly and even give a long speech. Students also must respect time and work rules. Therefore, they will stick to their appointments in the future, and submit anything that others want in the required time.

Efficient teachers must try to train their students by giving some useful workshops, and helping them to improve themselves not only by giving lectures, but with helpful workshops that will make them ask for these workshops every time the need them.

About the curriculum, Khashogji described that the curriculum in the school should consist of: math, science, English language, and computer skills, as well as other important subjects. But he said that these are the important courses that our teachers must look at them and improve them before improving students' skills.

Khashogji also talked about Education facilities, in which that there are some buildings that are not designed for learning. However, students and teachers need a real place for education, as well as a safe building for both.

The last thing he mentioned is the initiative. Learning center is very important to be located and selecting professional teachers from everywhere in the country, and train them with the needed skills, to be able to teach the next generation in schools.

He also added a very good quote at the end, which is:

"Talent is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach.

Genius is like a marksman who hits a target which others cannot see". By: Schopenhauer.

From my viewpoint, I think that Khashogji's lecture was very important and useful in order to improve our society, and make a good education in the next generations.

"The world is veiled in darkness"...

Mona



Certainly NOT in the production house of Final Fantasy!

Muqeem Khan gave a lecture on the weaknesses faced by the Final Fantasy team through a wonderful power-point full of enticing video footage as well as art story boards.

He gave a statement at the beginning of his lecture which states that “talent and technology was not enough” and noted that he will reveal the third needed “T”. Then went onto discuss three different notions: facts, memories and challenges.

Some of the facts include:

• The duration of 3 years it took to solve hair, fabric and garment perfections


• Those who worked the rendering and special effects were into allowed to use ANY real footage which included fire, and so they had to go back to the computer screen.


• 170,000,000 dollars was used for this project in 1997


• A lot of rendering took place


• A lot of work was put into various shots, but at the end when the film was completed, only a few were selected, so sometimes a lot of the hard work doesn’t end up in the final picture, but can be reused at another time.


• They had heavy machinery to intake the heavy data that is involved in these kind of effects.

I was amazed by the amount of TIME and MANPOWER it took to create the simplest image. When you watch it on the big screen you take it for granted and just choose to admire the special effects or decide to criticise its authenticity but never look into what must have happened “behind the scenes” so to speak. For example, in order to create the characters movement, actors are dressed up in black clothes and have white balls attached to them at various joints, and then 16 optic cameras are palced in different section is order to capture the balls movement and create a 3d motion on the screen, this is then taken to a different field where they create the rendering for it, which moves onto a different field where they add voiced…the results of these films and games are phenomenal.

In some way this reminds me of Labyrinth (1986) and the many people and time it took to create something so visually taken for granted.

The memories section showed footages of various members of the team (offices based in Honolulu, Hawaii) giving a small talk about their position in the establishment and what their job involves.

Finally Challenges that were faced:

• Translation between Japanese and English as those were the two main languages


• Culture clashes between a diverse team


• Upgrades causing problems for thorough development


• Different communication across different sectors of the production house, but because everyone had one single object goal it allowed them to collaborate building listening skills and the art of respecting others.

Khan had almost forgotten his last “T” as time was consuming at the start of the L&T and during Q&A I made it a point to remind him, he was glad of reminder and said that apart from Talent and Technology, Tolerance was needed. I would think that would go with everything in life.

A truly wonderful chance to have heard a great man talk about his field of work who has also worked on big films such as “Armageddon”, “Flubber”, “Deep Rising”, “George of the Jungle” and others.

Emergent Technologies - Blogging . . .

Sarah S

This speech was produced by "Baba Ali" (Ummah Films), and "Ahmed Alomran" (Saudi Jeans). The main topic was blogging, and how people can benefit from blogging things online.

Because internet is becoming the major thing in people's life and people are finding out what they can know what is new from the internet. However, "Baba Ali" explained how he used that, and he talked about his "making Ummah Videos" and publish it to people online according to the Islamic view.

The main point was about how to use the internet, and how Baba Ali used research in the internet. He explained that why blog is more beneficial than using web search in order to make people use blog in the future. He said that when he wants to search for something new, he would start searching it in the Blog, and then search it in other web search, because it has a lot of true and free information. for example, if anyone wants to learn how to use Photoshop program, he/she easily can go through "YouTube", and look for it for free without any difficulties. that site is one of sites that people can blog video in. That will make people learn new things for free, and also they can start share new things with others like sharing new ideas or new experiences. From that, he started to make his films "Ummah Films", and share them with people.

The other speaker "Ahmed Alomran" also talked about the benefit of Blogging!! And how he started first started in college. He entered Pharmacology in college because his father wanted him to study this major, while he wanted to go into Journalism.

However, after he graduated, he started to look at what he liked more, which is communicating with people, and this is included in journalism. He became a very successfully blogger because he was interested in this thing from the beginning. One thing that I took away from his speech was "do whatever you feel yourself into" which means that if you are interested in something and you feel that you can do better and you can make a great success, you just go through it without thinking. If anyone has a high passion of doing something, she/he will do better than doing anything else. Ahmed focused his talk more on social networking.

That speech was very interesting because not many people know what a Blog is? The two panelist explained how they began using blog, until they made a great success in their life and they are very proud of it, and I think that they should be proud of that, to let people know how to create new things, and share it with other people.

What's in a Comic

Mona




Apparently Alot!

Attending Dr Naif Mutawa's lecture on his creation of “the 99” was an inspirational journey for me as I am an aspiring web-comic artist with same goal of presenting Islam in fresh new medium without being completely blatant of the religious implications, but just a general awareness.

Mutawa's vision had begun through various random encounters; he has been through some tough times as an Arab Muslim and faced a fair share of hardships with the dream of wanting to be a writer and facing censorship issues with the country.

Some of the interesting comments he made was the presence of religious backdrops and references in hugely famous movies and comics. He gave the example of Christianity in North American based comics, how each character was an orphan, had a message for the people and was given a power from above. Much like Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him).

• Spiderman: both his parents died, was bitten by a spider swaying from an above web while Peter is in the middle of a science demonstration


• Batman: Bruce Wayne witness his parents murdered which drove him to fighting crime and the bat is symbolic of a Bat which life’s high above


• Superman: Clark Kent was adopted by the Kent’s family and his power came from a radioactive source that came from above and beyond the world

Likewise, Japanese comics focused around teamwork which is a prevalent attribute of the culture.

One thing I found so fascinating was when he spoke of when he had first started publishing the comics of “the 99” and at the same time the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) was in its peak, so that anyone who went into a search engine and potentially typed “Muslim cartoon” would have most likely reached to “the 99”.

What I loved about the idea of this comic was that it was stressing Islam in a way people are use to, there is no indication throughout the book of anything related to the religion, and yet it is still heavily rooted in its visual atmosphere.

Suffice it to say, I managed to meet this extraordinary man in person, obtain an autograph and many comics to read up on.

Dr. Farouk El-Baz

Dr. Farouk El-Baz has arrived in Jeddah, and he visited the College on Wednesday afternoon. For some of us who were there, it was like meeting a rock star! He came in the middle of our chaotic preparations for the event, but he was a good sport about it all.

Speaking of preparations, we are all packed and ready to go. Fifty-plus boxes filled with CPUs, monitors, laptops, cables, badges, invitations, event materials, etc. will move from the College to the Hilton early tomorrow morning. Thanks to our mini army of maintenance staff, IT staff and wonderful volunteer students (guys and girls), we hope Inshallah to have everything ready in time for the event.

Also, our speakers and guest have started arriving and settling in. Ahlan Wasahlan! Welcome to Jeddah, we are all looking forward to meeting you soon.

Note: There will be a speaker's meeting at the Hilton on Friday at 5:00 pm. If you are unable to make it (some of you are going on Umrah), that's okay. But it would be a big help to us to be able to brief as many of you as possible on Friday. Hope you can make it.

Opening Night Keynote Speaker

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, is our Opening Night Keynote Speaker.


We have now officially announced that Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah will be joining us at the Opening Night of the the Symposium. Needless to say we are all thrilled and excited by this honor. Preparing for a Royal visit is not easy but her tremendous achievements and commitment to humanitarian causes are a great inspiration to us here at the College. Just like another wonderful woman, our founder the late Queen Effat.

Preparations

Preparations for the event are now in full swing. I think we've finally sorted out the travel and lodging arrangements for all our visitors. We are expecting over 65 speakers, about half of whom are coming from outside Saudi Arabia.

The schedule is also done thanks to our Program Committee Chair, Dr. Houria Oudghiri, who's been struggling with the more than 50 presentations and workshops that will be part of the event. We are sending this out soon to all the speakers, but of course there may still be last-minute changes to be made. We are quite proud of the lineup of speakers and talks that we've assembled.

We are very excited to meet all our guests. We are looking forward to learning from you about technology in the different areas that you are experts in. At the same time, we are eager to share information with you about what's going on technology wise in this part of the world. Finally, we also hope that you will get a chance to know more about Effat College, Jeddah, and Saudi Arabia.

- Annette

Log On!

Welcome to the Learning and Technology Symposium 2008 blog! With less than two weeks to go before the event, the Symposium organizers are working hard to make this year's event a memorable and worthwhile experience for all.

Feel free to share your comments or post questions on this blog. To all our guests coming from outside Saudi Arabia, we hope you have managed to get your visas and we wish you a safe and pleasant journey (Inshallah) to Jeddah.


Annette Lagman
Vice Dean for Information and Educational Technology Services
Effat College