June 01, 2003 Newsletter

1. Global Junior Challenge: City of Rome, Italy
http://www.gjc.it/2004/index.asp
The Global Junior challenge is a competition open to everyone from around the world and focuses on the issues of the digital divide, youth and women. There are 5 main categories. Rome is the venue for the award ceremony, which will be held in 2004. Entries are already open and can be submitted online, but will close on 31st December 2003. An international panel of judges led by Prof Alfonso Molina will determine the finalists and winners in each category.

We in the UAE are proud to have a close relationship with Rome. In the previous two challenges, Robert Brown from the Higher Colleges has served on the international jury panel. In 2002, the UAE submitted a number of educational projects and OneDirham.com was successful in reaching the finals.

2. The Stockholm Challenge: City of Stockholm, Sweden
http://www.challenge.stockholm.se/
Considered to be the world's premier ICT challenge event, the Stockholm challenge is a global ICT competition run by the city of Stockholm. The challenge comprises six categories and is open to individuals and organizations from any country. The award ceremony is held in the "Nobel Hall", famous for a number of reasons and also the venue where the Nobel prizes are awarded each year. An international panel of judges led by Prof Alfonso Molina will determine the finalists and winners in each category. Entries will close on 1st November 2003, and the award ceremony will be held in Stockholm on 13th May 2004.

Again, there is a close relationship with Stockholm. Robert Brown from the Higher Colleges was a previous winner of the Stockholm Challenge in 1999. Ahnaf Abbas from the UAE was a finalist in the 2002 challenge.

These international challenges provide a focal point for ICT projects from the UAE to gain international exposure and credibility. We strongly encourage entrants in the UAE challenge to seriously consider entering their project into the global challenges of Stockholm and Rome.

3. Project Focus
In this newsletter, we focus on the "Sharjah Women's Portal", an ICT project that is helping change the way the college and its people communicate and interact. A special thanks to Aziz from the Sharjah Women's College of Higher Technology for providing the information below.

a) Can you briefly describe your project?
The SWC Portal provides a central online tool to access and exchange internal information as well as link to external information, applications and resources according to the needs, mission and choice of the institution.

b) What makes the Portal different from other Portals?
We believe it is the first "educational portal" to be used in tertiary education in the UAE and perhaps the gulf region. It is unique in providing strong academic and administration functionality. It has been customized making it an essential tool to all members of the college community.

c) What is some of the feedback you have been getting from staff and students?
For the most part very positive. In terms of faculty they indicated that the portal simplified their daily routine activities such as attendance, grades and other administration fucntions. It also helped them centralize all course related content and provided them with a history and a data base full of resources. As for the student, it also centralized all information and content. Moreover, it lets them get the information they need with out having to refer to faculty all the time.

Example feed back
"I love the facility on the portal to check when faculty are available. I no longer have to hold up printed schedules to the light!" Donna
"Those are terrific features and will be well used, especially the email to the class aspect. Thanks for the great work and effort to you and your team. You guys are doing a great job - in case you didn't already know!" Robb

d) How has the Portal contributed to the growth of the college?
For one thing it has established a solid IT strategy and infrastructure. The portal overall streamlined various tedious function that were done manually and required many staff and coordination. Example is online schedules, this previously required the printing and manual distribution of all the schedules for both faculty and students. Another example is grades.
Previously, staff had to deal with multiple spreadsheets. With the introduction of the portal all faculty now use a standard easy to build assessment schedule.

e) What are your views on the Challenge concept?
I think it is great way to share and showcase working models and share experiences provided there is clear and transparent judging. Also feed back on why a candidate failed to be short listed or eliminated.

4. Upcoming Events
We expect an announcement concerning sponsorship very soon. This will be followed by the official press launch of the 2004 UAE Challenge. In September/October/December there will be a number of Roadshow events held in each of the emirates open to members of the educational community, where details of the challenge and its partners will be announced. Exact details and timetables will appear in this newsletter and on the website once they have been finalized.

The last newsletter before the summer vacation will be June 20th. After this, the newsletter will take a short break but will be back on September 01 after the summer vacation.

So that's it for this newsletter. Remember, all the top stories, feature articles, rules, projects and latest news can be found online at www.uaechallenge.com

If you have any questions, please email us at
uaechallenge@hct.ac.ae