Wedding Ceremony in Sudan

The Wedding in Sudan has its own distinction in terms of customs and practices.

For the person intending to marry the prospective bride, he should be able to pay the bride wealth in terms of cattle in the south and money in the north. The two sides of the families discuss the various clauses of marriage and come to a common agreement.  

The wedding ceremony is held with the sermon and then the mentioning of the marriage conditions in front of the guests and along with minimum two witnesses and the guardian of the bride. The sermon is recited by some elderly person.

 The Sudanese dress up mostly in eastern clothes though they do have their own traditional identification, in the form of Sudanese sarai or toab, women have more bright and fancy colored clothes.  http://www.lady.sd/news/?article=4504 

                    

The wedding preparations are elaborate and the bride adorns henna designs on her hands.

                       

Food savored in these occasions is varied. Some of their specialties are Shorba which is soup of lamb bones, chopped beef with tomato stuffing called maschi, salad with parmesan cheese called Salata Ma Jibna, Flava Beans, Green Hamburgers, ladies fingers-okra, Green leaf vegetable,ground meat balls, lentil soup etc. The celebration is marked with the folk music and traditional songs.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:*&q=sudanese%20food%20and%20cuisine&safe=on&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

 The Wedding concludes the bride then goes to her new home in a vehicle usually a car nowadays accompanies by the relatives of her husband. The couples are blessed by the elders of the family where the two take blessings from them with lots of wishes for prayer and well being in the matrimonial life.

After the reception hosted by the bride's side, another reception is hosted by the groom's side. The climatic and landscape diversity in Sudan is contrasting and their cultural values reflect a great deal of importance in their core values.

                                  

Why We Still Need Libraries and Librarians

Given the literacy and comprehension a challenge facing schools in this time especially those presented by the new information landscape we need libraries and librarians now more than before. Unfortunately, there are many leaders who not understanding these challenges or the role librarians might play in helping teachers and schools to meet their needs. When this lack of understanding combines with budget deficit, we will face a drastic reduction in force across the continent.

Search engines like Google really are remarkable, but they do not offer reliable information in all cases. Without training in search logic, many users wander about drowning in data that may be distorted, inaccurate, irrelevant or biased in which may lead to un desirable results especially in the field of science and research.

Teacher librarians can play a crucial and central role in equipping all teachers and students with the information skills to transform the new resources into a benefit.

Because many schools pay woefully little attention to professional development, staff is often ill-equipped to handle the rapidly changing agenda of the Information Age with skill and assurance. Given the comprehension crisis in the USA, the teacher librarian should become the most skilled teacher of those skills in the building and pass them forward so that they will be practiced by all the teachers.

Note the article "Power Reading and the School Library" first published in the February 2005 issue of Library Media Connection at http://fno.org/sum05/powerread.html

As schools are pressured to go digital, the teacher librarian can help to balance that movement by collecting and displaying resources that appeal to all of the senses - historical artifacts, for example, that might be held in a student's hands and bring the realities of early settlement to life in ways a Web page cannot equal.

Preferences of Male and Female Students Technology Student Association

The small body of professional literature concerning lack of women in technology education and factors keeping females out has been modest but useful. The effects of gender bias in technology education is very clear in today’s world in a way that affecting the women preferences.  Research reveals major differences in career preferences between males and females, women prefer fields that involve people and living things, such as law, medicine, and biological sciences, while men prefer fields that deal with the inanimate, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and engineering.

In the article I found very interesting statistics about the women preferences and the field that most dominated by the women are the following:

    1. Use a software-editing program to edit a music video.
    2. Use a computer software program to design a CD cover.
    3. Design a model of an amusement park.
    4. Design a school mascot image to print on t-shirts.
    5. Design a "theme" restaurant in an existing building.
               

Table 1. Students Enrolled in North Carolina Technology Education Courses 2004-2005

Course                          Males           Females          Ratio

Exploring Technology Systems         30258            18446          1.64:1

Fundamentals of Technology           11107             1594          6.97:1

Manufacturing Systems                 853               27           31.59:1

Principles of Technology I           1943              547           3.55:1

Principles of Technology II           395               49           8.06:1

I found very interesting video about this issue and how girls is sometime just not like to involve in this types of espaciallity, for me as a women who grew in a third world country can understand that where men represent any and every thing in the community but I do not understand or digest that to happened even in USA.

  In contrast, field of technology education evolved from a historically male-dominated industrial arts curriculum, so males picked the following five items as their top choices:
    1. Build a rocket.
    2. Construct an electric vehicle that moves on a magnetic track.
    3. Perform simple car maintenance tasks on a car engine.
    4. Program a robotic arm.
    5. Design a model airplane that will glide the greatest distance.

Table 2.

 Percent of Women in Technical Occupations 2005

Occupation                      Percent

Construction manager                  6.4

Engineering manager                   5.9

Aerospace engineer                   11.3

Chemical engineer                    15.8

Civil engineer                       11.7

Computer hardware engineer           12.7

Electrical and electronics engineer   7.9

Mechanical engineer                   5.8

  Kitts, Charles R. Haynie, W. J. (2010). Preferences of male and female students for tsa competitive events. Technology and Engineering Teacher, 70, 19-26

The Role of Technology in Removing Dictators

I am gust wandering of what is going on right now in the Middle East countries. As we all know and since the beginning of this year many people in the Middle East start to raise voices against the current regimes in order to make change in their countries. Most of these movements were started by small group of people who tried to organize some kind of demonstration by using handheld devices or PCs to communicate with each others in the city or the neighborhood where they live because meeting and gathering is prohibited in these countries by the state laws.
     

            

But as soon as people get the email, face book, twitter, wiki and other communication means to contact with each others, they found the means and ways of how to flood in the streets, topple dictators and end corruption in a way they can`t achieve it without these tools. People start to notify each other’s and ignited the demonstration gradually by sending some video and photo to the activists and media outside their countries in order to spread them to the other people abroad because the public media is stopped in these countries. People know the way to twitter each other’s even when the internet was shut down by the governments. This is just an example of what we can do these handheld technology in our today`s world.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7xIDQKSW4s0wvgnUCQrhvZOVUo0wG__AMb9UB-vgr-Y1rKHhO635SyXfU1aUU8LIjaRe6ZhQIqh3L8V6F3PjrqdWBN7jS6iKcAFfdUc3pwedL_FXB_HoeQueQyMZw6TTcYGGPMNHdQ34/s1600/egypt4.jpg

   

         

The Republic of Sudan

The Republic of Sudan

The republic of Sudan is located in the northeast of Africa. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the red sea the northeast, Eretria and to the east, Kenya and Uganda to the southeast, the Republic of Congo and the Republic of central Africa to the southwest, Chad to the west and Libya to the northwest.

        It considered the largest country in Africa and Middle East.  Sudan has a total area of 2,505,800 sq km (967,500 sq mi). The population of Sudan is about 44,000,000 the most densely settled area is at the juncture of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. It is about a quarter of the size of the United States (2,505,800 sq km), making it the 10^th largest country in the world according to the World Fact book. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/su.htmlThe world's longest river, the river Nile, divides the country between east and west sides.

Sudan is considered one of the biggest multicultural countries in the world. This country consists of about 83 tribes which differ in everything in their cultures, and spite of all these differences they used to live safe and friendly life.

 I found this video very interesting about Sudanese multi-culture and I want to share it with you.  Sudan went through political conflict sice mid the last centuray which let the country to fall apart last january. http://www.peacedirect.org/peacebuilders/sudan/?gclid=CJmp_5TI9KcCFQtPgwodNi9Oag

Can Information and Communications Technology Contribute to Poverty Reduction

            Information and technology can help poor people by finding access to education, health, local government and international institutions and organizations which may help them to reduce the level of poverty.

            This article is about rural area in general and rural Indian in specific where people like farmers and nomads is being exploited by the companies and entrepreneurs. Some people tried to help these people by connecting them to the world around them by any means of technology in order to keep them updated about the prices of their productions and the local and international circumstances around them. The introduced different types of communication technology one of them for example, Dairy Information System Kiosk (DISK) software developed by the Centre for Electronic Governance at the Indian Institute of management, they introduce telemedicine which helped in diminish the cost of long travel. Also information communication technology helps people to communicate better and easy with their governments instead of travelling long distance to reach them. The very important thing for poor people is microfinance to reduce the poverty level, by introducing ICT poor people can have access to microfinance, Smart Cards and software systems providing loan tracking and financial management.       

           

            The only thing that I would like to know is the potential risks of this type of projects. In many cases the target person does not benefit from the final effort of the project.  Personally I grew up in a developing country and I worked with two developmental projects, in both of them the last beneficiary is not the rural person.

Being a Curriculum Specialist

Before I read this article my understanding for curriculum specialist is to develop curriculum according to a grade level or certificate level. But after a read it I found out it is more than that, being a curriculum specialist as the author said (are experienced educators who are trained on both the curriculum and the overall EbD (Engineering by Design)  program and are able to offer that insight, as well as classroom experiences, to teachers across the country.)

To be an engineer by design you have to be a qualified in understanding the principles of education, engineering, design and application.  Curriculum specialist is kind of leadership in the community and in other way we can consider them as a future maker because by the way or another they will shape our further by making our decision maker and affecting the learner`s minds and thinking, therefore this specialty became one of the most demanding one in today`s in our employer market


meade, shelli. (2010). Being a curriculum specialist. Technology and Engineering Teacher , 70(10), 36-8.

Digital Class Roon Pedagogy

After I read this article I found out that there no something ideal or something that we can conclude our findings from using technology in the classroom. The outcome of this innovation depends on many factors which include for example, the classroom size, the age of the learners, their level of education, and the skill which they learning at that time, and the other attractive methods around them and so on. For example in my situation in DLI many military students is  distracting their learning by using their tablet PC with things other than the target language in the classroom e.g. opening English language sites which will affect their time of learning, in the same time is very hard for the teachers to get them back in the track.

Other thing some learners are technology oriented, the other ones can get lost easily by using advance technology so we have to be very careful and to use the appropriate technology as learning tool with the appropriate learner.

http://fno.org/jan2011/modes.html
Jamie, McKenzie. "Digital Classroom Pedagogy 101." from now on 3/January 2011: 1. Web. 8 Mar 2011. <http://fno.org/jan2011/modes.html>.