I suggest the reading of the following site: http://windows7sins.org/
Archive for Education
National Workshops in ICT 2008
On the 17 and 18th November the national Workshops on ICT were held at the University of Malta. University IT students presented the results of their research to an academic and professional audience.
It is very encouraging that such a variety of theses have been presented to the audience and that, despite the size of the country, the university can offer to its students an environment in which IT research can be done and ultimately their results can be of practical utility to the industry”. “Unfortunately, insufficient funds are available to the academics to offer a better research environment. Research is capital in every society. A more worrying fact is that the issue of intellectual property is still unresolved at the University, and that academics still cannot be the full owners of their inventions.
The Maltese government should abandon the idea of reducing our university to the grade of a teaching university and instead to give all academics the tools to be able to devote their time to hard research and innovation, which constitute the real soul of any academic institution. It is through research that academics can give back the best, cutting-edge and up to date knowledge back to their students.
Provision of ICT courses at MCAST
The state of provision of ICT courses to be provided at MCAST is really worrying.
It is quite a surprise for me to learn that there is a risk that the setting up of teaching centres which are supposed to provide ICT courses at MCAST could be delayed. One has to wonder why the tendering took place so late and why the whole issue is ending up in court.
As IT skills are strongly in demand on the employment market and the Smartcity project will be greatly in need of such skills, all efforts have to be made to assure that adequate ICT education is available for students wishing to start an IT career.
The Freedom of Choice
I am welcoming the news that the Maltese government is entertaining the deployment of open source software (OSS) in the Maltese public service. More and more European Governments and companies are considering to move parts of their applications to Open Source.
Following this trend, the government shall revise its IT education strategy.
In today’s world, it is not acceptable that schools are obliging parents to purchase products of a certain brand so that their children are able to do their homework. Education should be freed of any product branding, concepts should be taught instead. We also must go away from the copy/paste mentality.
The program of studies at MCAST needs to be updated, students should have the freedom of choice for the content of their studies. The IT world is a very open world, standards exists but they are not concentrated on brands or products, but on concepts.
It is pointless to “produce IT clones” having all the same skill, IT is about diversity. This is very important considering the venue of Smart City.
