EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
Well, it very nice presentation given by Mr. Bahati Sanga on Friday April 25, 2009 concerning education technology. This task were to be done by Mr Sanga and Austin, unfortunately Mr. Austin was having some excuse so he was not around.
Introduction:
Education technology is the way of identifying, solving and facilitating learning process by using the available resources/tools. The education technology should not be mixed with technological education. In the education, the main goal is to teach the knowledge and techniques on developing technologically. These two things are quite different; technological education is the situation where by education is used to build up tools for education like machines etc.
Education technology has got so many objectives but here I am going to site to only some of them which are the most important in the human life and in the learning process. The first important thing which should be noted down first is to analyze the characteristics of the learner. That is some learners need to be given the overview of the content and then start finding the good things within and others want to follow the sequence of the topic from the beginning up to the end.
The second thing is to evaluate the learner's performance in terms of achieving educational objectives. The teacher as the facilitator should evaluate the performance so that he/she can know where the point was not clear to the learners and also to know if they can utilize the knowledge given in their daily life.
There are about three aspects which should be considered in the education technology;
There should be an input which involves the provision skills of teaching and awareness of teaching and training methods.
Another thing is a process whereby it generates situation for presenting the subject matter systematically. Here it is the ability of using the available tools for acquiring the knowledge for example projectors, computers etc.
The last thing which is obviously is the output; here it includes mainly the terminal behaviour of the activities which have been done and how the learner has been changed. It clarifies on how the objectives have been reached through the content. The learners should show the changes after learning certain content.
Conclusion:
Education technology is very important in our life especially in the developing countries. For example by considering the computers in the learning process it helps the learners to gain different skills from around the world rather than sticking to what the teacher teaches.
Moreover this should be kept seriously since in case used wrongly can totally spoil the learners and increase the number of failures/unskilled people in the society.
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Thursday, 23 April 2009
IMAGE COMPRESSION:
Introduction:
The image taken by the normal digital camera is 100megabites. This size is very big in case if you want to use these images in the website or even attaching through the email. By introducing the knowledge of image compression these things is very possible and easy.
By considering the knowledge given by Mr. Justine Ngimba and Zuwena Mgova on Monday 20th/April/2009 through their class presentation, at least most of us now know we have knowledge of image compression. Their presentation was very good and attractive since they were showing on how to compress the larger images to smaller images of different sizes.
The image compression is the process of reducing the size of the data files from large files to smaller files without losing the information. This image compression is very important in since it makes quick transferring of images through the network, also serves the space in the storage devices e.g. hard disk and movable storage devices and also it serves time in the process of image downloading and uploading.
There are different types of image formats depends on the intended use of the image. These image formats includes;
Conclusion:By using image compression we can easily upload and download image files. Also it is possible to attach many images in the emails without facing any difficulties during uploading and downloading.
The image taken by the normal digital camera is 100megabites. This size is very big in case if you want to use these images in the website or even attaching through the email. By introducing the knowledge of image compression these things is very possible and easy.
By considering the knowledge given by Mr. Justine Ngimba and Zuwena Mgova on Monday 20th/April/2009 through their class presentation, at least most of us now know we have knowledge of image compression. Their presentation was very good and attractive since they were showing on how to compress the larger images to smaller images of different sizes.
The image compression is the process of reducing the size of the data files from large files to smaller files without losing the information. This image compression is very important in since it makes quick transferring of images through the network, also serves the space in the storage devices e.g. hard disk and movable storage devices and also it serves time in the process of image downloading and uploading.
There are different types of image formats depends on the intended use of the image. These image formats includes;
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) GIF (Graphical Interchange Format) PNG (Portable network graphics) BMP (Bitmap). As IT professionals we have to be familiar with all these types of images so that we can work with any kind of images without facing any difficulties. Something we have to bear in mind is that image compression can only be done in the original image and not the compressed one and also do not save to the new format if you think you need to go on compressing image.
Conclusion:By using image compression we can easily upload and download image files. Also it is possible to attach many images in the emails without facing any difficulties during uploading and downloading.
Sunday, 19 April 2009
DATA MINING
AIntroduction: very interesting topic was introduced as the presentation work by Mr. Remmy Kaaro together with Mr. Joshua Shendu. The topic was all about knowledge discovery. They explained a lot about how to extract hidden information from different resources. They actually gave a good presentation which was understandable to us.
By definition, data mining is the process of extracting and analyzing large amounts of information in order to find important data from different hidden sources as well as summarizing them into simple information that can be identified easily.
They explained several forms of data mining; Relation data mining, text mining, Audio mining, image data mining, web data mining and video data mining. All these were showing on how to extract the data from many different sources.
There are specifically three stages of data mining which are;Exploration:This stage usually starts with data preparation which involves cleaning data and data transformation.Model building and validation:This stage involves considering various models and choosing the best one based on their predictive performance.Deployment:This is the last stage which organizes and presents the knowledge gained in a way that the customer can use it, usually involves the use of the model selected as best in the previous stage and applying it to new data in order to generate predictions or estimates of the expected outcomes.
There are several advantages of this data mining; here are some of themIn banking: The bank analyzes the information and it can advertise certain products to one group while advertising different products to another group.Marking, researchers and reinforcement.
Regarding of the advantages of data mining still there are some disadvantages which is very bad incase the technology used wrongly. We have:Security issues; It needs the high quality security any leakage of information can cause problems.Misuse of information; if happens the information to leak, then it can be used sometimes in criminal matters and also use the information to harm other people because of their wealth records. Privacy issues; there are some issues which people do not want them to be known as public issues so the information should be kept hidden always.
Conclusion:Data mining is just a better solution and sometimes can act as a cure for certain types of problems in the daily life of human being.
By definition, data mining is the process of extracting and analyzing large amounts of information in order to find important data from different hidden sources as well as summarizing them into simple information that can be identified easily.
They explained several forms of data mining; Relation data mining, text mining, Audio mining, image data mining, web data mining and video data mining. All these were showing on how to extract the data from many different sources.
There are specifically three stages of data mining which are;Exploration:This stage usually starts with data preparation which involves cleaning data and data transformation.Model building and validation:This stage involves considering various models and choosing the best one based on their predictive performance.Deployment:This is the last stage which organizes and presents the knowledge gained in a way that the customer can use it, usually involves the use of the model selected as best in the previous stage and applying it to new data in order to generate predictions or estimates of the expected outcomes.
There are several advantages of this data mining; here are some of themIn banking: The bank analyzes the information and it can advertise certain products to one group while advertising different products to another group.Marking, researchers and reinforcement.
Regarding of the advantages of data mining still there are some disadvantages which is very bad incase the technology used wrongly. We have:Security issues; It needs the high quality security any leakage of information can cause problems.Misuse of information; if happens the information to leak, then it can be used sometimes in criminal matters and also use the information to harm other people because of their wealth records. Privacy issues; there are some issues which people do not want them to be known as public issues so the information should be kept hidden always.
Conclusion:Data mining is just a better solution and sometimes can act as a cure for certain types of problems in the daily life of human being.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
SPEAKER RECOGNITION
SPEAKER RECOGNITIO is the human identity system based on the voice analysis. Human being is able to identify someone simply by his/her voice. Within few seconds of speech it can be quite enough to identify the voice which is familiar with.
Speaker Recognition can be simply defined as automatic recognizing who is speaking based on his/her voice. Here the machine is treated in such a way that it can understand the voice of one people or a certain group of people and being able to identify them from any other people.
There are mainly two classes of speaker recognition which are very often used.
The first one is “Speaker Verification”. This speaker verification is the process of accepting or rejecting the voice of the user/speaker, this is the simpler one since the machine/computer is just verifies the single user if he/she is the correct user.
The second is the “Speaker Identification”. This speaker identification is the process of identifying a single people among a group of “n” people. This process is somehow complicated since the machine is required to identify which registered user provides given information at that time. It means that there are multiple users who have been registered to that machine so each should be identified and being accepted and use the machine.
There are several advantages of having this knowledge of speaker recognition, but here I am going to site on the most three important.
Speaker recognition for security purposes; for keeping our machine safe we have to put some restriction in such a way that only permitted users will have the access to the machine and not otherwise. This is much better comparing with the use of password and PIN which can easily get lost and sometimes people can still and get access to the machine easily something which is very hard for the case of voice recognition.
The speaker recognition also helps much in control of the restricted services such as banking by telephone, information services and also in voice dialing together with security control of confidential information whereby the required identification is voice. Another thing which is very important in the speaker recognition is in the military services where the machine can be commanded only by the voice of the commander by only talking into the microphone for example “shoot” then the machine start shooting. So this technique of speaker recognition can make people to do multiple works at a time.
The mechanisms on how this system works is somehow complicated since it involves the complex mathematics. But anyway I am going to give just a brief on how the system works. Actually the speaker speaks to the microphone and then the voice is converted to analogy speech signals which is then converted to digital signals and stored as binary words. So the machine can simply identify voice of a speaker by comparing the stored voice and the current voice already in the machine.
Though the speaker recognition system seems to be a better solution for the case of security purposes but still there are some failures which normally people are facing. Most people are facing many problem in this technology, but the three of them are the most common, first is failing to determine the correct unit of recognition i.e. exactly words/phrase, the second is the boundaries of these units for example the voice pitch-high/low and pronunciation of words. The third one is variation in units of speech whereby many people are failing to produce the same voice as the one used in the registration process.
Otherwise the speaker recognition technique is so good and it can improve the security of our properties.
Speaker Recognition can be simply defined as automatic recognizing who is speaking based on his/her voice. Here the machine is treated in such a way that it can understand the voice of one people or a certain group of people and being able to identify them from any other people.
There are mainly two classes of speaker recognition which are very often used.
The first one is “Speaker Verification”. This speaker verification is the process of accepting or rejecting the voice of the user/speaker, this is the simpler one since the machine/computer is just verifies the single user if he/she is the correct user.
The second is the “Speaker Identification”. This speaker identification is the process of identifying a single people among a group of “n” people. This process is somehow complicated since the machine is required to identify which registered user provides given information at that time. It means that there are multiple users who have been registered to that machine so each should be identified and being accepted and use the machine.
There are several advantages of having this knowledge of speaker recognition, but here I am going to site on the most three important.
Speaker recognition for security purposes; for keeping our machine safe we have to put some restriction in such a way that only permitted users will have the access to the machine and not otherwise. This is much better comparing with the use of password and PIN which can easily get lost and sometimes people can still and get access to the machine easily something which is very hard for the case of voice recognition.
The speaker recognition also helps much in control of the restricted services such as banking by telephone, information services and also in voice dialing together with security control of confidential information whereby the required identification is voice. Another thing which is very important in the speaker recognition is in the military services where the machine can be commanded only by the voice of the commander by only talking into the microphone for example “shoot” then the machine start shooting. So this technique of speaker recognition can make people to do multiple works at a time.
The mechanisms on how this system works is somehow complicated since it involves the complex mathematics. But anyway I am going to give just a brief on how the system works. Actually the speaker speaks to the microphone and then the voice is converted to analogy speech signals which is then converted to digital signals and stored as binary words. So the machine can simply identify voice of a speaker by comparing the stored voice and the current voice already in the machine.
Though the speaker recognition system seems to be a better solution for the case of security purposes but still there are some failures which normally people are facing. Most people are facing many problem in this technology, but the three of them are the most common, first is failing to determine the correct unit of recognition i.e. exactly words/phrase, the second is the boundaries of these units for example the voice pitch-high/low and pronunciation of words. The third one is variation in units of speech whereby many people are failing to produce the same voice as the one used in the registration process.
Otherwise the speaker recognition technique is so good and it can improve the security of our properties.
AUTOMATIC ESSAY ASSESSMENT.
Automatic essay assessment;
Automatic essay assessment is the process of evaluating the essay work by using the electronic machine like computers. A computer itself have no ability to do all these instead there is a special software which is purposely for marking and evaluating essay work.
After some years of study, the researchers made a research on how they can improve and simplify the essay work so that the essay work can be marked accurately and being graded according to the nature of the work. So the researchers made a project which was able to measure the total number of words as well as the length of the essay.
The intentions of these researchers were lying on mainly four things; to avoid plagiarism, to improve marking consistency, to analyze learning outcome/evaluation and to determine the grade.
The first one was to avoid plagiarisms among the learners. Marking the essay work manually is quite difficult for the markers to identify if the work has been copied from somebody else or not. So the automatic essay assessment is the better solution in fighting with plagiarism.
The second importance of this automatic essay assessment is to improve the marking consistency. This helps both teachers and learners to be in the safe position i.e. for the case of teachers/markers no biers can be made to students for example giving different grades to the essays of the same quality. Also students should be very creative so as to avoid cheating which will lead them to the low grade. So this is the challenge to both students and teachers since the process looks the qualities of the student’s work and not comparison of the essay with others.
The third thing which is important is to make the evaluation, this automatic essay assessment automatically check the essay work, mark it and the fourth one is to provide the grades according to the nature of the essay given.
Although the automatic essay assessment has got many advantages, but still there are some failures which accompanied by this system. Well in some cases the system can lead into misunderstanding among the learners since if the teacher/marker of the essay work fails to analyze things to be checked during marking process the machine/ computer will produce grades which are irrelevant.
Lastly, the system can only be applicable to the connected people, which mean it can only be used in very few institutions simply because the system won’t work in stand alone computer, the computer should be connected to the internet.
Automatic essay assessment is the process of evaluating the essay work by using the electronic machine like computers. A computer itself have no ability to do all these instead there is a special software which is purposely for marking and evaluating essay work.
After some years of study, the researchers made a research on how they can improve and simplify the essay work so that the essay work can be marked accurately and being graded according to the nature of the work. So the researchers made a project which was able to measure the total number of words as well as the length of the essay.
The intentions of these researchers were lying on mainly four things; to avoid plagiarism, to improve marking consistency, to analyze learning outcome/evaluation and to determine the grade.
The first one was to avoid plagiarisms among the learners. Marking the essay work manually is quite difficult for the markers to identify if the work has been copied from somebody else or not. So the automatic essay assessment is the better solution in fighting with plagiarism.
The second importance of this automatic essay assessment is to improve the marking consistency. This helps both teachers and learners to be in the safe position i.e. for the case of teachers/markers no biers can be made to students for example giving different grades to the essays of the same quality. Also students should be very creative so as to avoid cheating which will lead them to the low grade. So this is the challenge to both students and teachers since the process looks the qualities of the student’s work and not comparison of the essay with others.
The third thing which is important is to make the evaluation, this automatic essay assessment automatically check the essay work, mark it and the fourth one is to provide the grades according to the nature of the essay given.
Although the automatic essay assessment has got many advantages, but still there are some failures which accompanied by this system. Well in some cases the system can lead into misunderstanding among the learners since if the teacher/marker of the essay work fails to analyze things to be checked during marking process the machine/ computer will produce grades which are irrelevant.
Lastly, the system can only be applicable to the connected people, which mean it can only be used in very few institutions simply because the system won’t work in stand alone computer, the computer should be connected to the internet.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
CRYPTOGRAPHY.
Cryptography;This is the system of hiding texts. A science of encrypting and decrypting information in the form of text is the one so called cryptography. This topic is very important since it can be used in the security purposes for example in the provision of data confidentiality, integrity and electronic signatures.
The very interesting thing in this topic is about “Enigma”; this enigma is a type of cryptographic machine developed and used by Germany during the war especially in the World War II. The Germany military force used this machine to encrypt whatever the conversations they made with their troops so that no one else can understand whatever they were planning to do. By this technique they advanced a lot until the British scientist man Alan Touring came out with the machine which decrypted the codes made by this enigma machine.
In fact the discussion on this topic was good and it was very understandable to me. Since then I was able to know the common types of cryptography and the importance of them. There are several ways of classifying cryptography but in our discussion we sited on the two common types of cryptography based on number of keys employed for encrypting and decrypting namely “Secret key Cryptography” and the “Public Key Cryptography”.The secret key Cryptograph is the one which is common to us since the key used for encrypting is the same as the one used for decrypting for example in our daily life we use the same key for closing and opening things the same applied for this matter of locking and unlocking.
The interesting one is this is the public key cryptography were different keys are used for locking and unlocking the data. It is somehow difficult to make the imagination on how one key can be used for locking and another key used for unlocking data. In normal situation is difficult but for the case of computer it is quite easy. What is done here is that the data can be unlocked by a dedicated person only and no reply can be done since the key for unlocking can not be used for locking.
Although the cryptograph is very important to our life especially in the security purposes but there are some challenges which face the situation of hiding the data and information. Crackers are the worriers of the cryptograph, they tend to break the codes and read whatever is written. Also in other side to perform this thing it needs a skilled person whereby the connected people take the advantage.
Monday, 16 March 2009
Research Field in Computer Science.
Today I have started my Diary (Learning Review) on the Research Field of computer Science and I wish to finish it at the end of this semester i.e from today 16Th March 2009 up to around June 2009. I know that it is going to be a tough activity but I have to commit myself and consider this diary as my closest friend to which everything I do should be shared with my diary.
I promise to share with you all the points of view I got from different books and different authors which will lead me to improve my education level especially in this field of Computer Science. You! who viewing this blog I wish you will never laugh at me when I do foolish things, instead you will put a comment which will help me in correcting the mistakes I have made.
I will make sure that whatever I do is profitable to me and the majority who visit this blog. In this research I will base much in the part called "Speaker Recognition". From this speaker recognition you are expecting to have answered questions like "What is Speaker Recognition? Why this speaker recognition? Where to apply this thing? How to use this thing ? and other questions which will be answered as we proceed.
I promise to share with you all the points of view I got from different books and different authors which will lead me to improve my education level especially in this field of Computer Science. You! who viewing this blog I wish you will never laugh at me when I do foolish things, instead you will put a comment which will help me in correcting the mistakes I have made.
I will make sure that whatever I do is profitable to me and the majority who visit this blog. In this research I will base much in the part called "Speaker Recognition". From this speaker recognition you are expecting to have answered questions like "What is Speaker Recognition? Why this speaker recognition? Where to apply this thing? How to use this thing ? and other questions which will be answered as we proceed.
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