Notes from the General Manager by Diane Jacoutot
400 High Schools in Ghana are set to get internet access for the first time next year. The project is just the beginning, said Director General of Ghana Educational Services Madam Benedicta Naana Biney, of great things happening in the educational sector as teachers and students get needed resources.
On the other side of the world, in General Santos City Philippines, the city government has launched a pilot programme to teach robotics in schools, having bought some fancy kit for their programme called SHEEP. SHEEP is a fancy acronym which basically means that they like technology because everyone knows that to do technology right you need good acronyms and the city Fathers in General Santos are not fools. I just want them to make a Robot Lunch Lady who will never get tired of picking the forks out of the mashed potatoes and won’t need a hair net. But somehow I don’t think that’s the main aim of this initiative.
Both projects illustrate the point to which technology has now become an essential part of education for developing countries who wish to pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty. I’m all for it!
Technology is everywhere and the pace of change is incredible. Moore’s Law says – and I’m paraphrasing here so please, technophiles, give me a bit of poetic license- that the capacity of computer chips, which form the basis of all things technological, doubles every two years. To illustrate, I heard a statistic yesterday that the technology in a simple singing birthday card, (you know, the type that plays initially-funny-but-eventually-irritating music when you open it) has as much capacity as the computers used to send astronauts to the moon back in the 60s. There’s Moore’s Law for you in a nutshell. It can be scary when you think too hard about it. What will the world be like in 20 years? But as long as it means I can have a hovercar of my own with a hovercar drivers license, I don’t care.
Technology has moved on at Teachanywhere, I’m happy to say. This week we launched our NEW and IMPROVED website Candidate Portal. As those of you who have read my blog over the years know, I say every morning to my reflection in the mirror, “My name is Diane and I am a Closet Geek”. I love technology that makes your life easier and doesn’t require you to read a manual in 6 different languages to do so. Finding an app or gadget that is clever and useful and easy to figure out makes me excited, fidgety and bubbling over with happiness. It’s a sickness.
The great thing about the new features of the website is that you can update your information and upload documents, as well as apply for jobs and set up your own job alerts. It gives you more control and it’s something that people have been asking about for many years. We get at least 10 inquiries a week asking “How can I change my CV/Email/address/etc”. ...and now you can! Yes there are some bugs (from time to time when updating a photo you get an error message – we are working on that) and yes, the font on the web page is small enough that those of us on the verge of needing reading glasses are forced to grope around for the blasted things... I know they are around here somewhere... but all in all there are some great features, made by some very clever people like Ross the Webmaster, bless his little tapping fingers.
I know that for most non Closet Geeks this might not seem earth shattering but like all things technological, it will make your life easier in small ways.
And it doesn’t require a manual to figure out. (I hope!)
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