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.