Another ebook which relates the Bahá’í Faith to Christianity

 This ebook, "Jesus - in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh", reviews what Bahá’u’lláh has written about Jesus. Both Bahá’ís and Christians may get new insights from the forty or so quotations. He is very clear about the Divine nature of Jesus.

It is hoped that those investigating the Faith will find it useful. Further reading suggestions are provided for those interested, along with other information about the Faith.

Please ebooks will be free to download during the Ridvan period (from April 21 to early May).

This blog

 A glance or two at this blog shows that the writer's interests have changed in recent years. The focus is now mostly on the writing and publishing I find myself doing despite not being a great writer.

Currently I am having another book reviewed. This one looks at what the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh say about Jesus. 

I have also started another book - a short history of the Faith. This is very presumtious of me though it does seem to fill a space. This will keep me busy for the rest of the year probably. God willing I will have the energy and capacity to finish it. I hope to add to it colour pictures, a map, a timeline, links and so on - easier with an ebook than a printed book.

What is Kindle?

 This is a brief introduction to Kindle.

Kindle is a service by Amazon which allows ebooks to be created and sold. Usually they cost much less than a printed version and some are free. And there is no shipping or mail charge. They can be downloaded immediately to an app and read on your phone or read online. The Kindle app can be found in the usual places.

Paying for a ebook requires a bank card (VISA, Mastercard etc) unless it is free. The minimum cost for an ebook is $0.99 but $3-$10 is common. 

It is estimated that there are about 9 million ebooks on Kindle.

To buy an ebook you will need to create an Amazon account if you don't have one.

Once you are set up, to get an ebook you login to Amazon, find the book in the Kindle store and click the button to buy. When you go into the app you will find the ebook in your library.

Links

Amazon Kindle home page

Kindle app for Android

Windows needs a grandfather mode

 I have an elderly friend who is a daily user of the internet. Currently he uses a Windows 10 laptop. 

However he has memory problems and his eyesight is imperfect. He finds the experience with Windows very frustrating at times.

His problems I would try to summarise as follows:

- unwanted and unexpected changes in the user interface

- complicated login procedure with PIN, passwords etc

- unresponsive computer due to updates being processed

- text being too small including that of error messages

- too many unwanted features

- on booting up the computer appears ready but is not

He finds it very confusing when unexpected things happen. He needs things too be simple, straight forward and the interface to stay the same from year to year.

Third booklet now on Kindle

Title:  The Bahá'í Faith - A Short Introduction for Muslims

As before the book is $0.99. Please search in Kindle for "mancey Bahai". 

Book description:

"This booklet is intended as a short introduction to the Bahá'í Faith for those of an Islamic background. 

Its main teaching is that mankind is one people and that religion is essentially one and progressive.

The Bahá'í Faith is established in more than 100,000 localities in virtually every country and territory around the world. Please investigate."

Wikipedia - country carbon footprints?

Wikipedia is a great resource for information about countries and a favorite of students. However there is a lack of prominent information on country pages about greenhouse gas emissions and related data. Do we not need a section or subsection giving at least the current status?

A quick check of a few countries revealed surprisingly minimal information buried in various sections or nothing at all. One has to go to general articles on these issues to find useful data. Is there some reason for this that I am missing? There seems to be a lack of environmental info in general on country pages.

History will likely judge countries on their action or lack of action on this issue. It deserves more attention. It is up to internet users to take note and get busy. Perhaps Wikipedia can give some suggestions of how to format this data starting with something basic, so that countries can be easily compared.

I hope to work on generating interest in this here in Guyana.

Edited Dec 14

Caribbean ICT Roadshow in Guyana in July

The Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU) brought its Roadshow here last year. Next month it is bringing its updated Roadshow here with a new program. According to this article at the Ministry of Public Telecommunications (MoPT):

Guyana’s Roadshow will place special emphasis on raising awareness of and educating on the principles of 21st Century Governments – governments that are citizen-centric seamless and make effective use of ICT to deliver services to its citizens, internal and external clients. The Roadshow seeks to lay a foundation for establishing Governments throughout the Caribbean, which are fit for purpose in the 21st Century.

and

The Roadshow’s many activities and workshops will include:
• e-Agriculture Workshop – 9th to 11th July 2018
• 21st Century Government Workshop – 9th July 2018
• ICT4PWD Workshops, targeting the Deaf and Blind – 9th July 2018
• Digital Financial Services – 10th July 2018
• ICT4All – 10th July 2018
• ICT and The Justice Sector – 11th July 2018
• Innovator’s Forum – 11th July 2018
• Future Casting Forum – 11th to 12th July 2018
• Cyber Security Workshop – 12th July 2018
• Youth Fair and Forum – 11th to 13th July 2018

Internet Week Guyana

This event organised by the Ministry of Public Telecommunications along with the CTU and international organisations was a first for Guyana and was a success. A report from the Guyana Chronicle says in part:

The high-level technology conference was held at the Pegasus Hotel from October 9 -13 2017, as part of celebrating International Internet Week 2017. Stakeholders from the Ministry of Public Telecommunications, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), the Latin America and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG), and the Internet Society (ISOC), were all part of the success of this event.

A number of reports on it and other related activities can be found at the Ministry website.

Internet Society Guyana branch

Internet week was recently held in Guyana. One major outcome was the launching of the Guyana branch of the well-known and long-established international Internet Society. Here is an extract from a report of the event from CircleID by Malisa Richards, one of the main proponents:

Finally, Guyanese Internet users at all levels who are interested in internet governance issues and policy-making now have a local organization to address their interest. The Internet Society, a leading advocate for the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for everyone, announced on October 10, 2017, at the official launch of the Internet Society Guyana Chapter that they were happy to finally have Guyana onboard. It serves as a major development for the telecommunication sector in Guyana since we are currently in the process of liberalizing the telecommunication sector.

Work is underway to organise the local branch.

So what's going on with AI (Artificial Intelligence)?

There have been a number of scare stories about AI recently. This article from Hackaday (a techie news site) attempts to put it into perspective:

"AI techniques include matching natural language to predefined templates. That’s really all these devices are doing today. Granted the neural nets that allow for great speech recognition and reproduction are impressive. But they aren’t true intelligence nor are they even necessarily direct analogs of a human brain."

World Bank report on the internet and development

According to a New York Times article, The World Bank recently released a report (World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends) which had both positive and negative findings regarding the impact of the internet.

"Those who are already well-off and well-educated have been able to take advantage of the Internet economy, the report concluded pointedly, and despite the expansion of Internet access, 60 percent of humanity remains offline."

"...the vast changes wrought by technology have not expanded economic opportunities or improved access to basic public services in ways that many had expected. Rather, the report warned darkly, Internet innovations stand to widen inequalities and even hasten the hollowing out of middle-class employment."

"...it also takes pains to say that expanding access will not be enough for citizens to take advantage of the benefits. It also recommends enabling companies to compete, strengthening the skills of workers so they can obtain the new jobs and making government institutions accountable."

Making use of MOOCs

It seems to me that the Caribbean needs to make more of a major new educational opportunity - MOOCs. MOOC stands for Massive Online Open Course. These courses are available free on the internet and cover a very wide range of subjects. A very interesting example of how new technology can give us new educational possibilities which are truly global. Most courses are designed for the average person and require little or no special knowledge. Some are university level but most are not.

Courses usually last 5-10 weeks with around 4-5 hours work online per week. Common elements include weekly videos, quizzes, forums and reading. Generally they are done by major universities and are of high quality.

So far I have done eight or more and noticed very little Caribbean participation. I have not seen another Guyanese participant just one or two from the Caribbean islands.

Teachers could to do some of these and then encourage students. There are in fact courses for teachers. There are also courses for business people, for students, for engineers, for software developers (many on IT) and for those in the medical field. Participants range from pre-teens (not many I admit) to retirees.

While courses are free you can usually get a certificate if you pay for it.

Personally I have found the experience very rewarding and worthwhile. Courses are popular with young people and with older people. If you have a busy life with little time for browsing then it may not be for you. But you may still find something very relevant to your work which will make it a priority.

Can we do our own MOOCs in the Caribbean? I am sure we will but first we need to make use of what is already there and learn from it. Creating a good MOOC is no small task even for the large universities of N America and Europe.

Coursera
Popular and well-designed. Good forums. Very wide range of courses. Quality of courses generally very good but depends on the institution providing the content. Takes a while to find your way around.
A few random examples:
Introduction to Finance
Cryptography
Smart Growth for Private Businesses
Women in Leadership
Introduction to Acoustics 
Social Psychology
The Evolving Universe

EdX
Very good courses, perhaps slightly more slanted towards academic subjects.
A few random examples:
English Grammar and Style
Introduction to Computer Science
Human Anatomy
Psychology of Criminal Justice
Exoplanets

Futurelearn
Also very good. More Europe and UK institutions represented. Different forums style. Fairly simple to get started, less complex.
A few random examples:
The Science of Nuclear Energy
Cooperation in the Contemporary World
Preparing for University
The Science of Medicines
Religion and Conflict
Exploring Our Oceans

World Bank climate change MOOC

This is called 'Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided' and is being hosted by Coursera. It is being well-presented by a selection of experts in the usual Coursera format.  It is not a difficult course especially if you are familiar with the topic. Plenty of discussion. Recommended.

I am still hoping to see more Caribbean participants - only a small handful so far.

Coursera

I am currently completing a course (social psychology) online at Coursera and am favourably impressed with the way the course has been done. I believe not all courses they offer at Coursera are as good as this - more on this later. The video lectures were short (10-25 mins) and engaging with the lecturer speaking as in he was in a small informal group and punctuating the lecture with pictures, questions, video clips etc. There were downloadable readings. There were weekly assignments which were diverse, imaginative and not too academic. There were very active forums - possible because of thousands of students all doing the course together. There was also a series of customised Google Hangout sessions with other students in groups of 4 or 5.

The topic being psychology made possible a style which would be more difficult with the hard sciences but it seems to be near the cutting edge of online learning. Recommended.

Internet troubles - DNS settings

If you are using DSL and sometimes you just cannot get any websites though you are still connected then this advice may help you.

The problem is often that your browser cannot reach the GTT-provided name server (DNS) which is required to translate the website name into the internet (IP) address needed to reach it. The permanent solution is to provide a public name server address to your computer to meet the need.

A commonly used public name server address is that of Google: 8.8.4.4 or 8.8.8.8.
To add this name server address to your computer please see one of these tutorials below. Note - this needs some experience so ask for help if you are unsure. You can cause more trouble if you make mistakes.

How to change DNS Servers in Windows 7
How to change DNS settings in Windows 7 | 8

You can diagnose the problem more accurately by pasting the following address into your browser where I use the IP address directly not the name so DNS is not used:
http://173.203.187.14
If you get a webmail login site (this is just a random site to use as a test) then you do have an internet connection but the DNS may not be working so try the above solution. If you get nothing then you have some other problem or GTT does.

Another, temporary, solution is to close down your PC and modem, restart and hope for the best...

Using tablets in school - pros and cons

There has been a move to use tablet computers in schools. Having been a tablet (android) user for the past year or so, for 5 plus hours a day,  I have given some serious thought as to the pros and cons of tablets. After some research I have yet to find a good evaluation of the tablet in schools. Anyway here are some thoughts on the subject. Note that this post applies also to the more capable smartphones.

Pros
Lower cost
Portable
Free or cheap apps
Wifi built-in
Good for browsing, multimedia
Good for reading ebooks and other content
Useful sensors (much potential here, see here)
Android OS also widely used in smart phones


Cons
Limited battery life and charging issues
Keyboard (pop up) inadequate for serious text entry
Copying and pasting not easy
Graphics creation limited
Designed for personal use by one user, not multiuser
Apps and environment not designed for group/corporate use
Repairs more difficult than for PC
Security issues

Some of the problems are due to hardware limitations such as battery life, pointing inaccuracies and limited processing power and will mostly resolve. Others are software issues and fixable. For example there could be special accounts at Google for android systems that are used by multiple users and belong to a school or business. May be these could use facial recognition or fingerprint to switch users and wipe user data. Apps could store work online in individual accounts.
The difficulty of composing text for reports or assignments is not easy to solve without resort to full size keyboards (e.g. using bluetooth). I do not think using voice to text is ready yet or appropriate for class use.

There is no doubt tablets/smartphones will be used in schools, it is a case of making the best use of them but I do not intend to get into that complex subject here. I would just add that the rate of technological change is high which makes it difficult for teachers to keep up and for institutions to get a return from the funds spent. Change has to be planned for.

Many of the articles and evaluations found on the net are already out-of-date. No doubt this post will be out-of-date soon too...

Google Street View continues to expand

Thanks to continued technological advances it is now possible to become an armchair tourist and visit (some) distant lands virtually using Google Steet View. North America seems to have the best coverage but some other countries also have good or partial coverage - I have not come across a list but see Wikipedia which has a map showing coverage.

After touring some places in the UK I discovered that some important Baha'i sites can be visited including some in Israel (the gardens in Haifa, Bahji, part of Akka) and also the Houses of Worship in the US and Australia (search for Bahai Temple Australia etc). See this post for links.

Google has an excellent gallery with many collections of locations.

Now we need Street View for Mount Roraima and Kaiteur falls...

IT in university level education

Came across two interesting and relevant articles.

First from MIT Technology Review concerns MOOCs (massive open online courses) which are attracting attention but are really only getting started.

"As online education platforms like Coursera, edX, and Udacity burst onto the scene over the past year, backers have talked up their potential to democratize higher education in the countries that have had the least access"

But:

"One of the major challenges for MOOCs—which so far mostly come from U.S. universities—is to tailor the content of courses to a diverse worldwide audience with any number of combinations of language, educational, motivational, and cultural backgrounds."

Doing one of these well is a major effort and requires many skills (e.g. graphics) not just a lecturer with a bit of training. Hopefully these courses will endure and be refined and improved over many years. Sustaining motivation is problem and most students find standalone online courses difficult to complete unless they are short.

And secondly is a rather critical article from Information Week about the use of IT in the university classroom:

"Professors at top research universities are highly skeptical of the value of the instructional technologies being injected into their classrooms, which many see as making their job harder and doing little to improve teaching and learning."

Note that while this may be indicative this a not a proper survey.

E-Governance Data Centre started

According to an article by GINA, apparently based on information provided by Project Coordinator Mr. Alexei Ramotar, worked has started on construction of this centre. The core of the data centre will be housed in 3 containers which house power, cooling and servers. This allows relocation in the event of flooding or other disaster. Using special containers is not unusual for a modern data centre.

The centre will be hooked up to the optical fibre cable coming from Brazil. Cables will also connect it to government offices.

Mention is also made of 55 sites around the country and of a 4G network. Presumably these will be the 4G cell towers. True 4G provides a faster mobile data service than is available nationally at present and often it replaces DSL for data service and is used on laptops. This service may tie in to the OLPF project and to internet access for schools but this is not mentioned in the article. There will be many bandwidth and security issues to resolve as the project unfolds but it holds much promise.

Of particular interest to me is mention of open source software: "... an electronic library will be created utilising open software."

Other links
Demerara waves article

Online courses for education

There is significant interest locally in this mode of education. Recently there has been a surge of organisations offering free online courses in a number of academic areas especially IT and mathematics. The more interesting ones try to be interactive in various ways. Technology Review has done a valuable article comparing some of these courses and highlighting the pros and cons. It is early days for this kind of education and the results are mixed.