Students using Skype to contact their teachers for homework and lessons - Star

June 24, 2009

KUALA LUMPUR: School is out for a week but Form Five student Wong Voon Fei is hard at work, using Skype at home to contact his teachers for homework.

The student of Sri Cempaka International School in Cheras, which has been closed following two flu cases, is still attending classes via Internet.

Lessons as usual: Voon Fei discussing the school’s upcoming Fame musical with the head of multimedia Raphael through Skype. He also attends classes online through the Virtual Learning Environment platform. The school is closed for a week due to A (H1N1) cases.

“We are on Skype with our teachers to get our homework, which we have to do and submit by the due date.

“There is a timetable to follow, so I only chat on Skype with my teacher according to the subject period,” said Voon Fei at his home yesterday.

He was also online to discuss the school’s upcoming Fame musical with the head of multimedia, Raphael Hamzah.

However, a slow Internet connection prevented him from accessing the chatrooms on the school’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for his history lesson.

“Today (yesterday) is the first time the whole secondary school is using the chatrooms, so there are connection problems but it will be fine on Thursday (today),” said Cempaka Group of Schools vice-chairman Dr Iskandar Rizal.

To solve the problem, he said, the teachers and students moved their chats to Skype yesterday while the VLE was used for uploading and downloading presentations, notes and information.

Sri Cempaka is the first school in the country to adopt a one-to-one learning environment, where each child has a laptop computer and is guided by the teacher via a laptop computer as well.

Govt aid extended to post-grads in private institutions - The Star

June 23, 2009 By FOONG PEK YEE

KUALA LUMPUR: Those doing Masters and Phd in all the 24 local private institutions of higher learning can now apply for Government financial aid from this month.

However, there are conditions.

An applicant must be unemployed, retrenched, without regular income or a fresh graduate.

Those doing Masters programmes will get RM10,000 and those doing PhD progammes will get RM20,000 respectively.

Prior to this, only the country’s 20 public institutions of higher learning and three local private institutions of higher learning were qualified for the aid.

The aid, part of the second economic stimulus package announced by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak in March, would be opened to those who are below 45 (during the time of application) from now, compared to age 35 for applicants for Masters programme and 43 for PhD applicants.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Norden, in a written reply to a question from Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting (BN Kulai), as to whether the Government would extend the aid to local institutions like Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, said the applicants would also need to have a CGPA2.50 now instead of CGPA2.75 initially.

There are 10,000 places for Masters and 500 for PhD. At the Parliament lobby, Deputy Higher Education Minister Dr Hou Kok Chung said 3,377 applications for Masters and 225 for PhD had been approved until this month.