Malapoa College Library Digitizing Archive Photos

Technology has transformed the world so much that millennial - A person from the generation who grew up in the 90's and 2000's would have a very different outlook on the world. This is a generation of people who are generally civically incline; organize themselves in herds such as facebook and Tagged, riding the waves of ‘social networks’ and are orchestrating the new norms. The emerging pattern of learning beckons the curiosity of any educator. This is the world we need to understand so that we could embed education into these media rich outlets.

Malapoa College Library wants to move in that direction. This week the school library has recruited two student volunteer to help scan old archive photos. William Rakau and Leyanii Livu have volunteer their time at the school library. The volunteers are benefiting from this opportunity as a learning experience.

This is yet another initiative by the year 11 class of 1990. After organizing Joomla training for the school librarian and the college deputy principal, the group took up the photo archive project as a side project.

The project which involves scanning photos as old as 1966, has always been a valuable treasure to the library’s local collection as will be to Malapoa’s wider community once it is in a more fluid form.

“It is always a problem assuring the safety and quality of these collections” said Tarish Charley. Now that it is rendered digitally, the library can easily store and retrieve them. Asked weather the library will build an index around the photo collection so that it can be access by the wider audience coming from the web he replied with a smile and said “I don’t think of it that way but that would be interesting, we just don’t have the capacity yet”. Right now the goal is to scan all the archive photos. “We will worry about processing the photos into useful information later” He said.

The library has decided to replace the volunteers after a week. Asked why the library has undertaken such scheme he said, “Scanning photos is a repetitive job you find it interesting at the start but two to three days down the road these kids will get bored”. “Malapoa College has lots of students who are willing to help. Anyone of the seniors can take up the challenge and help move us along to accomplish the task” Said Mr. Charley

Meanwhile the enthusiasm for IT development at the Malapoa College brewed by year 11 class of 1990 has been making some wave on the internet. They maintain a blog with occasional ranting on events they are doing. People can visit the blog on www.malapoa.blogspot.com

Malapoa College Making Their Presence Felt on the Web

In this day and Age having a web presence has become the norm. In short the world has become more web centric. A lot of our endeavor, in diverse fields find their home on the web. The phenomenon we now know as social networking is orchestrating new way of seeing and doing things collectively. In education internet has open up new ways of learning.

This is the world Malapoa College wants to position themselves in. Thanks to an initiative by group of former student who call themselves year 11 class of 1990, The college Librarian Mr Taris Charlie and Mr. Willie Santhy the College Deputy principal are receiving a week long training in Joomla – a content management opensource system that is becoming widely use on the web.

Antonio Josiah The founder of Pedeserve – a Ni Vanuatu own IT company is providing the training at a discounted offering. The training begins on Wednesday 26th January to Thursday 3rd February at the College Library computer Lab. The new Malapoa College website is www.malapoa.edu.vu . It is currently underdevelopment.

The Year 11 class of 1990 regrouped around September of 2010 just for old time sake but they soon realized that they got something more than just a reunion. They are already forging a fruitful partnership with Malapoa College planning activities and projects that they can give back to the school. “We notice that giving back in the form of reciprocity is not the game here, but rather the activities we do are our token of heartfelt thank you to the school for caring and nurturing us intellectually to face the challenge in life.” says Daisy Warsal the group’s president. The group is primarily focusing on Capacity Building in Information Technology.

The school’s librarian Taris Charlie is very excited and very happy to participate in the training. “I want to personally thank the year 11 class of 1990 for being very generous in organizing this training” said Mr. Charlie. He sighed with dissatisfaction as he reflected on the state of Malapoa College lacking in Information Technology but he is optimistic that better days are coming if the college can forge greater partnership and be able to capitalize in the enormous human talents that she has help to nurture over the years.

Mr. Santhy the school deputy principal is confident that the approach that the group is taking in focusing on Capacity development in IT is one that is more fruitful. He is already seeing how to move forward in addressing IT development at Malapoa College.

“We have found the training to be an eye opener, for that we thank the year 11 class of 1990” Said Mr. Santhy.

Other schools around the country are modeling themselves after L’AUF and USP and Malapoa College is no exception she is determine to be a leader amongst them.

Joomla Beginners Session

Okay so now that we are out in the open with our intention of getting this website to realization,
Here is the plan of how the training will happen.

Session on Joomla beginners
Wed 12 -> 1.15 at the Library
Thurs 12 -> 1.15 at the library
Fri 12 -> 1.15 at the library
Mon 12 -> 1.15 at the library
Tues 12 -> 1.15 at the library
Wed 12 -> 1.15 at the library
Thur 12 -> 1.15 at the library

8 hours worth of training.
participants Taris Jax and Willie Santhy.

So that we know that things will happen as per our schedule. MC has committed themselves to providing transport for Antonio Josiah.

Year 11 Class of 1990 Picking up the slack

Happy New Year to everyone. Three weeks remaining before school start. Year 11 class of 1990 is picking up the slack. This class who regroup around the later half of last year, for nothing more than a reunion are surprisingly finding themselves venturing into a series of ambitious activities that could potentially be an asset to the school.

Right now the group is working on the school website. You can follow this link to find the school website. The site is in working progress.

There is an ICT group that is over looking the building of the this website and other activities that are related to Information Techonology.

The website is build on top of an Open source content management system called Joomla. The idea is to have a web authoring environment so anyone who despise writing html for web can easily render content.

In the meantime Willie Santhy the school's deputy principal and Taris Jax the school librarian are preparing a presentation that will go to the school council tomorrow the 26th of January 2011. Mr. Santhy will be laying out a plan to accomplish the realisation of Malapoa College's website and the idea capacity building in website development as an integral part of the website development.

While we realized the need to obtain the council's blessing on this project, impatience have taken hold and we are scheduling training that will happen during course of one week begining tomorrow the 26th of January 2011. This will be beginners training in Joomla. Antonio Josiah from pedeserve will be running an hour long session for the next 7 days at the MC's library computer lab.

MC will meet the Training cost. The two MC staff who will attend the training are Tarish Jax and Willie Santhy.

We are hopeful that this will be a fruitful endeavor.