I thought on this Sunday morning we could do with a bit of ranting from a foreigner about the Malaysian driving experience.
Month: March 2012
EduwebTV, hello again.
After a seven-month sojourn in the multimedia Nextgen e-content development section of the office, I was reposted to my old hunting ground – EduwebTV- in early March 2012. Being an obedient civil servant, I had no qualms about the move. I take it as a challenge to improve EduwebTv. With BestariNet in full swing, we cannot fall back on the connectivity excuse anymore to explain low usage. Despite the latest hits statistics indicated that we have registered 482 million hits, posted 4,232 videos and 32,000 downloads, it is not an impressive achievement as Alexa’s ranking statistics showed that EduwebTV has gone from 17,600th to 23,000th in the country. Having said that, I must congratulate the dedicated TVP team on their continuous perseverance despite limited resources. I take it as a challenge when the audit people said we cannot handle EduwebTV as good as the company. Usage statistics showed that, viewership is comparable to ZHTS era. In fact on certain months, viewership in our reign is higher. But we have to really position ourselves in this 1BestariNet era. The linkage to the FROG VLE was completed recently and we need to be sure whether EduwebTV videos can be directly parked in the FROG or it is just another link. My recent foray into the Frog showed that, videos from EduwebTV cannot be stored in the widget store. It can only store the link page. That is not very impressive. I was under the impression that, videos can from EduwebTV can be stored in the widget store and can be dragged to the main page as and when needed. Anyway our main task now is to produce enough quality materials to enable teachers to prepare at least 80% of their lessons using materials from our widget store. That much has been stated in our KPI for this year. I wonder how we can effectively measure that 80%.
After all the effort that we put in to promote EduwebTV as anywhere, anytime, anyone source of educational videos, they are still thousands of teachers with scant knowledge of it. Most teachers attribute the invisibility to lack of connectivity and time.
It was a bitter sweet experience leaving the NextGen e-Content team. As I have been with that team a few times before, the camaraderie is very strong. This is the team that I can remotely asked to stay back till 7pm without so much of a hiss of protest. Despite their protestations about the viability of the NextGen e-content, they still ploughed along to ensure it is a success. I can understand their attachment to the e-bahan. The process has been with them for almost a decade. It is a tried and tested process that has garnered ISO certification. If it ain’t broken, why fix it one may asked. Then again, we have to keep up with times. Actually there aren’t much difference between the process standards of the NextGen e-content with e-bahan. So I say give it a go this year. If things do not quite work out we can always revert to e-bahan. After all the e-bahan has all the characteristics of the NextGen e-content. To my successor in that department, I wish him luck. You have a very strong team. I will always feel that I am still very much a part of the team. The key part of the NextGen e-content is the establishment of the Community of Practice (CoP). I am really banking on this CoP to drive teaching and learning into the new era.
Sperm harvesting
While waiting for the car being serviced, an interesting news item in the NST today really caught my attention. It was in the foreign news. The item reported that a few hitch hikers in Zimbabwe refused to hop into cars driven by women. One of the lady was bewildered because invariably men would love to jump at the chance of being picked up in car full of women, what more if you they are hitch hiking. Apparently the men were afraid of the “sperm harvester”. Apparently they were many cases of men reportedly being forced to have to produce their sperm either being forced to sexual intercourse or otherwise. The women would later collect the sperm in the used condom. Some were even forced to do it at knife point. What is more bewildering, nobody seemed to be able to give a logical explanation what on earth the sperm would be used for. Most reports say the sperm is the main ingredient in some ritual for good luck and medicinal therapy of some sort. If it is on 1st of April, I would have thought the news must be an April fool item. I think we have found a place to incarcerate our serial rapists. Send them to that district in Zimbabwe and let them face those ladies. At least they do not have to force themselves upon women and they will get the chance to taste their own medicine. And they can put their sperm to good use – what ever it is for.
Another news item reported that the Stoke City Football Club manager, Tony Pullis, escaped driving ban, despite being found guilty driving at 150km/hr and accumulating 15 penalty points by giving one of the most outrageous excuse I have heard thus far. Asked on why did not he hire a driver, he said he cannot have a driver to help him as the driver would pry into his telephone conversation while driving him around. That would be detrimental to the general health being of the club as many of the conversations were secrets pertaining to the wheeling and dealing he conducted on the management of the players for the club. How’s that for glib!
R4P Rally – video snippet
Last week I wrote about the groups supporting PPSMI intention to hold a rally voicing their dissatisfaction over MOE’s decision to abolish PPSMI. From the look of it, I do not think the group managed to round up 10,000 people as they claimed earlier.
R4P rally http://bcove.me/xetm7d6y
Here is the video of the gathering, courtesy of the Sunday Star. Unfortunately the rival group’ gathering was not captured and only gained a few lines of mention in the paper.
Bring back the glory days of Proton, so said Dr. M
Recently, the Proton’s advisor urged Proton to bring back its glory days. Upon examination, the so called glory days of Proton was in my view actually a sort of forced glory that enbled Proton to gain billions ringgit of profits. In order to enable the then fledgling Proton to gain its footing in the automative sector, the government enforced many restrictions on other (foreign car companies) makes of cars. I remember drooling over a gleaming red Nissan Sentra as the price was way beyond our reach as compared to Proton.
So the average Malaysian wage earners which I reckon formed the bulk of car buying public at the time can only afford to buy Proton. We had to put up with freezing power windows, jammed central locking, leaking boots, low grade Blaupunct stereo system, and the list went on and on. What choice did we have at the time as other brands we artificially made so expensive, it is almost economically suicidal for middle income family to buy other makes of cars. The price diference can be as much as 30k for the same cc (as in the case of 1.5 Saga and 1.6 Sentra). Protonvirtually monopolised the domestic car market by virtue of Government’s instrument. The Proton sales people were so arrogant, you either take it or leave it. The situation got so bad, it came to a stage where a second hand Proton car was more expensive than a new one. Strange as it sounds, it was the scenario way back in the late 80s and early 90s. A friend of mine had to travel all the way to Terengganu to book his car in order to avoid the long queue and paying high booking fee. The true test came when Perodua came into the picture with the resilient and durable Kancil and later Myvi. No sooner Proton lost its lead. People were tired of paying premium money for low grade cars.
Only these few years Proton began to improve the overall quality of its cars and its relationship with the cutsomers. Had Proton really build up its customers confidence all these years and maintain the quality of its cars, it surely had no problem in maintaining its lead in the domestic market. After all it had a terrific headstart as compared to Perodua.
So to bring back Proton to its glory days is a pretty tall order as its former glory was, in my opinion, never a true glory in the first place.
A Nation of Maths Dunces
Column 5, page 26 of NST today carry the title “A Nation of Maths Dunces”. The news reported that 17 million of adults in England has maths capabilities of, at best, of an 11 year old. The numeracy skill is so bad, it far exceeds the poor literacy, which is five million. The decline continues despite billions of pounds poured into programmes to arrest the decline and improve the situation. The report also added that school leavers with this defiency most probably would end up jobless, in prison or getting pregnant at a very young age. This further fuels the image of England as a nation of bastards and yobbos. The NGO who did the survey, National Numeracy, blamed the decline on years of neglect of Maths in school and a culture of prevalent attitude that it was “an honour” to be bad in Maths. One can get away from Maths just by saying ” I can’t do it”. Of course these people learn maths in English!
In the light of the declining interest of Maths and Science in this country, it is really scary, especially if we read this along with the PISA report for 2010 that shows Malaysian students performance in Maths and Science is declining. I think Malaysia is already taking action on this with the LINUS programme. LINUS stands for literacy and Numeracy Screening has been adopted as one of the education ministry NKRA. For the past couple of years, there was a steady improvement in the literacy and numeracy of primary school students. having said that, I would like to see a real improvement in the attitude of students towards Maths. With advent of automation (read calculators), students do not see the need to learn how to understand the underlying concepts of addition, substraction, multiplication, and division. Even worse the need to do mental arithmatic is deemed “leceh” (tedious). Why bother to crack your head when you can get the answer from your handphone, ipad, notebook or simple calculator. Add this to their disdain of the need to learn the various mathematical theorems and learning only to sufficiently equipped one to answer exam questions, I am not surprise if we are heading towards the path of the 17 million English adults whose mathematical prowess is no better than primary school children.
Mata Satu 