Real Things Happened..

Beware of computer illiterate in the workplace

Still computer illiterate in 2006

Source: Youtube

'Engkey' English Teachers: Egg-shaped Robot Teaches South Korean Students

English teachers always are very expensive in non-english countries. But South Korea has found its solution, they’are testing Engkey, a robotic teacher, in the Philippines. Engkey will walk in class among students, will talk to them and teach them English language, and can do a little dance too. But its a little clumsy and ugly robot. It don’t have human like figure, Instead of face it has a LED screen.

The developer say these robot will not require health care, no more sick leave, or vacation pay, but to get this teacher you must have to pay about $10,000 for one. A total of 29 English-language education robots will be placed in 21 elementary schools in Daegu next week for a four-month feasibility study to check the commercial viability of robotic teachers, to go on sale in 2013. 

The state-run Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) said Friday that the robotic assistants, dubbed “Engkey” combining “English” and “disc jockey,” will help teachers during English classes. “We will carry out the second-phase pilot program with Engkey until next March after wrapping up the first project over the past year in Masan, South Gyeongsang Province,’’ KIST spokesman Park Young-ho said. “We learned that Engkey should be able to fare well in markets based on the first phase of experiments. We are poised to conduct more pilot runs before commercially launching the robots in 2013.’’

It looks like South Korea’s aspirations of having robots in classrooms, teaching their youth, which were aiming for 2012, may be seeing adoption at a quicker rate. But, that’s not stopping a school in Daegu, South Korea, from planting a few 3-foot tall robots, oddly shaped like huge eggs, right in front of students, and teaching them English. The students reportedly love the Engkey, though, and that’s kept the little bots around.

In total, the Engkey robots stand 3.3-feet tall, and feature a small display where a female woman’s face is displayed. The robots don’t control themselves, though. The English teachers are in another room, controlling Engkey in its content, as well as the reactions to the students. The image of the woman’s face will actually copy the reaction of the teacher’s, thanks to cameras watching his or her face. 

Other than the fact that the students love the little ‘bots, the schools are adopting the robots at a faster rate due to the cheaper cost of hiring Filipino teachers. According to a school official, Kim Mi-Young, “The kids seemed to love it since the robots look, well, cute and interesting. But some adults also expressed interest, saying they may feel less nervous talking to robots than a real person.” She went on to add that having a robot in the classroom makes the students more active, and that their participation has climbed steadily since the robot’s introduction. Source : Web & Korea Times


Source: http://news.krisaru.com/

Free Web Tools For Educator

Dear Educators, please explore how limitless technology can transform education although the tough budget situation those schools across the nation are facing. Doing more with less has become a mantra among technology enthusiasts, and in turn, free resources are more popular than ever.

WebList is a tool that gathers different resources and aggregates them under one main URL. Users can collect different websites, images, documents, and videos in an editable list. Each resource receives its own URL, but users can send the main URL to colleagues and share all resources in one place.

TypeWith.Me lets users collaborate in real time in a chat-like format. One user creates a document and sends the URL to others, and each user types in a different color. Users can import and export text files, websites, and documents for collaborative learning, brainstorming, and editing. Students can collaborate with one another on projects or group study sessions, and revisions are saved. A time slider function lets users and teachers view the chat progression.

My StoryMaker, from the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh, lets students create their own stories that are archived for 30 days. Once created, a story is saved as a PDF and can be exported to a computer for permanent access. Students can play with characters, shapes, colors, movement, and sentences. Because users can’t edit a story after it is created, Daugherty recommended asking students to map out their stories before creating them online. It’s particularly popular with first and second grade students in the district, she said.

Glogster EDU lets educators and students create online multimedia posters with text, photos, videos, graphics, sounds, drawings, data attachments, and more. A “Glog” is created using a drag-and-drop feature. Once projects are complete, a teacher can share students’ work in a variety of educational settings. Glogs can be embedded in a blog, wiki, or website, or shared with others using Glogster EDU’s presentation capabilities. The teacher easily creates a private virtual classroom with students by registering for a teacher-administered account, generating student accounts with safe logins and passwords, and monitoring all activities within the account throughout the learning process. Student accounts can be created without providing eMail addresses or other contact information. Educators can choose the number of student accounts, and Daugherty recommended signing up for the maximum number of free accounts available, because educators will keep all the accounts they open when they sign up.

Tagxedo turns words, including speeches, news articles, and student research papers, into a tag cloud. Students and teachers can choose the shape of their tag cloud, and they can import a picture if desired. The most frequently-used words appear the largest in the cloud. The site also features a list of 101 ways to use the resource.

ViewPure is exactly what the name implies: pure video viewing. It gives educators the ability show students YouTube videos without advertising, free from links to suggested videos that might be inappropriate, and without user comments below the video. Users can copy the video’s “pure” URL for future reference. In addition, teachers can opt to install a “Purify” button on their browser’s toolbar. Instead of pasting a YouTube video’s URL into the ViewPure URL field, an educator can simply click on the “Purify” button while viewing the YouTube video to instantly clear it of questionable advertisements and materials.

(Editor’s note: M86 Security has created a free website that also strips YouTube videos of their comments, links, and advertising. This website, called VuSafe, lets teachers create online video libraries of their favorite educational videos from YouTube and other sources, but unless the school uses M86?s web filter, YouTube must be unblocked on the teacher’s computer if he or she shows the videos in class.)

TubeChop helps educators avoid the hassle of skipping through videos to find a certain clip within the video. Instead, users can select and “cut” just the portion of the video they would like to show or share with others.

Museum Box is a presentation tool in which students put pictures, videos, and text into a virtual box. For instance, a student researching a project on the Renaissance might identify artwork or important documents from the time and place those into the box to show what life was like during the period and what important discoveries or advances occurred. Source : eclassroomnews.com

Source: http://news.krisaru.com/ 

E-Commerce

In the emerging global economy, e-commerce and e-business have increasingly become a necessary component of business strategy and a strong catalyst for economic development. The integration of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in business has revolutionized relationships within organizations and those between and among organizations and individuals. Specifically, the use of ICT in business has enhanced productivity, encouraged greater customer participation, and enabled mass customization, besides reducing costs. Electronic commerce or e-commerce refers to a wide range of online business activities for products and services. It also pertains to any form of business transaction in which the parties interact electronically rather than by physical exchanges or direct physical contact.

Is e-commerce the same as e-business?

While some use e-commerce and e-business interchangeably, they are distinct concepts. In e-commerce, information and communications technology (ICT) is used in inter-business or inter-organizational transactions (transactions between and among firms/organizations) and in business-to-consumer transactions (transactions between firms/organizations and individuals).

In e-business, on the other hand, ICT is used to enhance one’s business. It includes any process that a business organization (either a for-profit, governmental or non-profit entity) conducts over a computer-mediated network. A more comprehensive definition of e-business is: “The transformation of an organization’s processes to deliver additional customer value through the application of technologies, philosophies and computing paradigm of the new economy.”

Difference types of e-commerce

• Business-To-Business (B2B)

B2B e-commerce is simply defined as e-commerce between companies. This is the type of e-commerce that deals with relationships between and among businesses.The more common B2B examples and best practice models are IBM, Hewlett Packard (HP), Cisco and Dell. Cisco, for instance, receives over 90% of its product orders over the Internet.

Example of B2B from Malaysia:Exabytes

• Business-To-Consumer (B2C)

Business-to-consumer e-commerce, or commerce between companies and consumers, involves customers gathering information; purchasing physical goods (i.e., tangibles such as books or consumer products) or information goods (or goods of electronic material or digitized content, such as software, or e-books); and, for information goods, receiving products over an electronic network.

Example of B2C from Malaysia: maybank2u

• Business-to-Government (B2G)

Business-to-government e-commerce or B2G is generally defined as commerce between companies and the public sector. It refers to the use of the Internet for public procurement, licensing procedures, and other government-related operations. This kind of e-commerce has two features: first, the public sector assumes a pilot/leading role in establishing e-commerce; and second, it is assumed that the public sector has the greatest need for making its procurement system more effective

Example of B2G in Malaysia: Pemudah 

• Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)

Consumer-to-consumer e-commerce or C2C is simply commerce between private individuals or consumers. This type of e-commerce is characterized by the growth of electronic marketplaces and online auctions, particularly in vertical industries where firms/businesses can bid for what they want from among multiple suppliers.16 It perhaps has the greatest potential for developing new markets.

Examples of C2C from Malaysia: Mudah

• Customer to Business (C2B) 

     Individual customers offer to sell products and services to companies who are prepared to purchase them.This business model is the opposite of the traditional B2C model. Elance was one of the first web

sites to offer this type of transactions. It allows sellers to advertise their skills and prospective buyers to

advertise projects. Similar sites such as Peopleperhour and Guru work on the same basis.

Islamic e-commerce link :Islamic e-commerce

Information System (IS)

An information system (IS) can be any organized combination of people, hardware, software, communications networks, and data resources that collect, transforms, and disseminate information in an organization. 

INFORMATION SYSTEM RESOURCES

The basic IS model shows that an information system consists of five major resources:

• People resources

• Hardware resources

• Software resources

• Data resources

• Network resources

People Resources: People are required for the operation of all information systems. This people resource includes end users and IS specialists.

End Users - People who use an information system or the information it produces. Most of us are information system end users. And most end users in business are knowledge workers, that is, people who spend most of their time communicating and collaborating in teams of workgroups and creating, using, and distributing information.

IS Specialists - People who develop and operate information system including system analysts, software developers, system operators, and other managerial, technical, and clerical IS personnel.

Hardware resources: include all physical devices and materials used in information processing.

Machines- physical devices such as computers, peripherals, telecommunications networks.

Media- all tangible objects on which data are recorded paper, magnetic disks etc.

Software resources: All sets of information processing instructions.

• Program - a set of instructions that causes a computer to perform a particular task.

• Procedures - set of instructions used by people to complete a task.

Data Resources: Data constitutes a valuable organizational resource. Thus, data resources must be managed effectively to benefit all end users in an organization. The data resources of information systems are typically organized into:

• Databases - a collection of logically related records or files. A database consolidates many records previously stored in separate files so that a common pool of data records serves many applications.

• Knowledge Bases - hold knowledge in a variety of forms such as facts and rules of inference about various subjects.

Network Resources: Telecommunications networks like the Internet, intranets, and extranets have become essential to the successful electronic business and commerce operations of all types of organizations and their computer-based information systems. Telecommunications networks consist of computers, communications processors, and other devices interconnected by communications media and controlled by communications software. The concept of network resources emphasizes that communications networks are a fundamental resource component of all information systems. Network resources include:

• Communications media (twisted-pair wire, coaxial cable, fiber-optic cable, and microwave, cellular, and satellite wireless systems.

• Network support (people, hardware, software, and data resources that directly support the operation and use of a communications network)

An information system model expresses a fundamental conceptual framework for the major components and activities of information systems. An information system depends on the resources of people, hardware, software, data, and networks to perform input, processing, output, storage, and control activities that convert data resources into information products.

The information systems model outlined in the text emphasizes four major concepts that can be applied to all types of information systems:

• People, hardware, software, data, and networks, are the five basic resources of information systems.

• People resources include end users and IS specialists, hardware resources consist of machines and media, software resources include both programs and procedures, data resources can include data and knowledge bases, and network resources include communications media and networks.

• Data resources are transformed by information processing activities into a variety of information products for end users.

• Information processing consists of input, processing, output, storage, and control activities.

(Source: Foundations of Information Systems in Business )