rica
THE NATION WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 2011
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e-Business
Production Team: Femi Jolaolu, Lekan Hammed, Yomi Oseni, Ugo Ananaba, Michael Ojo, Lanre Malik Marketing: Adeline Atili, Nkechi Nwabaogu, Kemi Makinde, Lillian Nsi-Enodien, Mariam Adeyanju Edited by: O’seun Ogunseitan
Pls. send Questions to oseun2@gmail.com or text to
080 5511 9009
M.K.O.Abiola memorial videos on Facebook
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HE Nation newspaper databank and archives, at the weekend, began a month-long release of its Abiola memorial videos on the internet. Until July 7, which will mark the 13th anniversary of the death of Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola, internet users worldwide will be able to download and store their copies of epochal videos of the beginnings of the pan-Nigerian democratic struggle, triggered by the annulment of the peaceful presidential election of June 12 1993. The Nation had published the archival Abiola memorial videos in June and July 2009 and distributed them as free video and data disc inserts in the newspaper in honour of the large-hearted hero of the 1999 military handover. Although more than 200,000 copies of the free discs were published and given out free by the newspaper, requests for copies have still not ceased two years after. Now, OpenMarket, The Nation Databank’s burgeoning new multimedia marketing forum for Nigeria’s 80 million phone and web users, has teamed up with the newspaper to release the videos in four downloadable parts for phone and web users within and outside Nigeria. This week’s first of the four-part download is already available on the internet at www.facebook.com/pcuser2user Although a full download of the over two hour-long footage of rare videos of the June 12 crisis is possible on the internet, the extremely slow speed offered by internet service providers in Nigeria, has made it advisable to chop up the whole video into smaller bits. Downloads of a large single video file, will need to be restarted each time the download stops due to drop in internet
OpenMarket releases free archival video connection. Besides, YouTube, the internet’s largest host of web-viewable videos, limits its free user videos to a maximum of 15 minutes each. Tosin Akanmu, spokesperson for USbased Media Tools and Technologies, owners of the OpenMarket franchise, confirmed that the organisation will indeed open a web access that will enable owners of high-speed internet connectivity to download the video as a single file on July 7, the anniversary of Bashorun Abiola’s death. A single file disc (iso) image containing the videos and hundreds of photographs,
other documents and ebooks, including Dr. Olatunji Dare’s authoritative eyewitness recount of the June 12 crisis, Diary of Debacle, will also be made available for free download on the special weblink to be announced later. A disc iso image is a digital clone of a disc. It is a copy of the entire contents of a disc, as a single computer file. With a disc recorder software, mostly called disc burning software, such image will automatically turn a blank disc into an exact copy of the original disc cloned. The special disc iso image that will be released for free download from the
internet on July 7, will enable any PC User to create their own discs containing the Abiola videos for television viewing as well as for computer playback while also having access to rare e-documents and ebooks on the June 12 crisis including a comprehensive biography of Chief M.K.O. Abiola and other heores and heroines of Nigerian struggles from independence to the 1999 third democratic berth. A feature-rich archival disc of the same videos and more, as well as many new materials including updates to the very popular video on the Life and Times of M.K.O Abiola, will be published later by OpenMarket, for Nigerians who may find the internet access for the video download too technical or the disc-creation from the iso image too demanding.
PCUser2User forum releases second JAMB examination practice software on Facebook
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HE PCUser2user forum page on Facebook, now has a second JAMB tutorial software. The publishers of Nigeria’s first-ever e-learning software Fashola.exe at the weekend, published the second lastminute revision software on www.Facebook.com/pcuser2user. This second practice and tutorial software, also flash-based like Fashola.exe, contains hundreds of answer options to 10 selected short comprehension passages. The forum two weeks ago, also put the country’s first digital-age examination practice video tutorial for television and computers on the internet.
That 14-minute video preview is available on the same Facebook page, courtesy of The Nation newspaper. It is an extract from a multimedia disc package that promises to reverse the trend of mass failure in English language examinations across the country. The Nation Databank’s O’seun Ogunseitan created a flash-based examination test and practice tutorial software which he named Fashola.exe, as a model e-learning software tool and aid for Nigerian secondary school students. The software was adopted as a campaign medium by ex-students of Lagos-based Birch Freeman High
46,962 phone users have used OpenMarket ™ Have you?
School, in honour of Lagos Governor Babatunde Fashola, himself an exstudent of the school. The newly released second tutorial software is exactly like the Fashola.exe. It runs on virtually every type of computer available today with its web languagebased version. It uses answer options and answers to past examination questions, to teach the principles of the particular subject. Tosin Akanmu, spokesperson of North Carolina, US-based Media Tools and Technologies Llc, (MT&T) who midwifed the development phase of the novel multimedia e-learning package, said the new software is the second of a triad of English language tutorial software that will be released along with 10-hour long special television viewable tutorials, whose pilot she announced two weeks ago. Ms. Akanmu, a budding e-learning tools development expert herself, had said the successful creation of the new video is a breathe of fresh air for learning in Nigeria. MT&T she said, believes digital-age audio-visual teaching is one sure way to arrest the decline in quality and standard of education in the country “by teaching digital-age children with digital age tools”. The new interactive video version of the tutorial software, teaches young students, with animated texts and graphics-based television-viewable videos, playable on any regular home DVD player or computers. The discs also contain tens of e-books and software when used on a computer. The video-based test and practice tutorials, now being promoted by The Nation Databank and its American Associates, were developed from a database of more than 65,000 past examination questions and answers spanning the last 30 years and available with The Nation Databank. The databank believes the mass deployment of phone and multimedia computer technologies which make learning fun, hold the key to a reversal of mass failure in Nigerian schools.
Visit www.facebook.com/PCUser2User for the weblink to download Fashola.exe and others, as well as to watch previews of the JAMB-NECO-SSCE-SAT Video tutorial .