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“THE COMPUTING PROJECT”

NEWSLETTER

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THE COMPUTING PROJECT: “INTRODUCTION TO ICT”

OCTOBER 6TH 2012

During the fall of 2012 the AC Bitola continues

with having “The Computing project” as one of

its regular programs. After the successful end of

the first session of this project during the spring

of 2012, the six workshops, of which this project

is consisted of, will once again take place at the

American Corner Bitola and the American

Educational Center. This time, twenty-two new

participants, adults and high school students, and

the eight participants from first session will be

included in the project. During this first

workshop of “The Computing project”, Ana

Dajovska, AC Staff and Business Informatics

Master student, explained to the thirty participants more about the goal of the project and the

workshops during which they will

have the opportunity to hear and

learn more about how to create

blogs, usage of eLibraryUSA and

other data basis, online conferences,

video and photo editing and the

phenomenon of cloud computing.

The first tasks for the project were

moderated by last year’s

participants, KaterinaKolevska and

AndrijanaJovanovska, both high

school students, who facilitated the

Wordle.net practice and the task on

finding Web 2.0., based on their previous experience and

knowledge they gathered during the first session of “The

Computing Project”. =>FULL ALBUM

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THE COMPUTING PROJECT: “BLOGS AND BLOGGING COMMUNITY”

OCTOBER 20TH

In the month of October the AC Bitola

opened the second season of “The

Computing project”. The second workshop

took place on October 20th at the

American Educational Center. The regular

participants of the project had the

opportunity to learn more about blogs and

the massive blogging community. After

the presentation about blogging and micro

blogging given by Ana Dajovska, AC Staff

and Business Informatics master student,

the participants used the equipped rooms

of the American Educational Center and

worked on creation of their own blogs on

Blogger. During this practical exercise,

eight of the last season’s participants of

“The Computing Project” moderated this

part of the workshop and exchanged their

knowledge and skills gathered from the

first session of the project. After having

amazing time with the twenty-three, out

of twenty seven, participants who were

able to visit the workshop and after

asking many questions, the

attendees promised to work on their

task to develop the blogs they

created and to find a strategy for

enhancing the AC Bitola’s Twitter

profile until the next workshop.

FULL ALBUM

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THE COMPUTING PROJECT: “PHOTO & VIDEO EDITING”

NOVEMBER 17TH

On the Saturday afternoon on

November 17th twenty-two

of the regular participants of

the Computing project

attended the “Photo and

Video editing” workshop

with Stefan Dzalev and

Stefan Baltov, participants of

the first session of “The

Computing project”. The

workshop started with a

presentation about

“Camtasia”, a video editing

program, where Stefan

Baltov explained more about

the tools and actions for editing a video which trained the participants how to successfully edit

their videos and make their own. After the outstanding

learning session with Stefan Baltov the participants were

surprised with a Skype talk directly form the Scholarship

EXPO in Skopje, during which Ana Dajovska, AC Bitola

Staff, firstly explained more about the importance of

video nowadays, especially through the phenomenon of

crowd accelerated innovation, and then presented the

Saturday program from the Scholarhip Expo Fair 2012.

After the short Skype talk with Ana, the participants

continued with their photo editing session at the Corner

together with Stefan Dzalev. This session was

dedicated to learning more about the Piccasa

program for photo editing, and Stefan Dzalev as an

amazingly successful amateur photographer offered

great review of the program and its tools. At the

end, the participants got a task to try all of the

explained features and tools of Campasia and

Picassa.=> FULL ALBUM

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THE COMPUTING PROJECT: “CONFERENCING WITH AC BELGRADE”

NOVEMBER 23RD

The participants of The Computing Project during

the session on November 23rd enjoyed the virtual

visit of the American Corner Belgrade. Directly

from the American Educational Center in Bitola, the

participants met Sandra Nikolic, AC Belgrade

Coordinator, who did an amazing presentation about

the internet tools used by the AC Belgrade in their

process of working and the ways they connect and

collaborate with the members, and the events they

have at the Corner. Many tools and applications as

Google Docs, the social bookmarking site Delicious,

the library tool Library Thing and the social media aggregator HootSuite were just part of the

explained tools. After having the session about the Internet technology with Ms. Nikolic, an

amazingly interesting part of this meeting started when the participants met the members of the

Youth Club at the American Corner Belgrade. American Educational Center Bitola during the

Skype session with Belgrade also hosted a parallel event with its youngest members, the

Children’s Club, so they also had an opportunity to visit the Youth Club in AC Belgrade.

Surprised by the around forty people that sent their greetings to AC Belgrade, Sandra even took

everyone at the Adult Hour in AC Belgrade so they also enjoyed their virtual visit of Bitola’s

American Educational Center. This

visit was rounded with questions

and words of gratefulness and

appreciation of the great workshop

that Ms. Nikolic gave for the

participants of The Computing

Project.

After the thrilling workshop, a

twenty minutes long introduction to

the innovative site for making

amazing

presentation,www.prezi.com follow

ed during which Ana Dajovska, AC

Bitola Staff, explained the tools and

options for making a successful

Prezi.

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In the following two weeks until

the end of this project on

December 8th, the AC Bitola

together with the participants of

The Computing Project are looking

forward to the Data Bases sessions,

the workshop “Social Media for

Business” which will be done by

PetarSavic from AC Novi Sad, and

the Cloud Computing session with

which this project will be

rounded.=> FULL ALBUM

THE COMPUTING PROJECT: “PUBLIC DATA BASES AND INTERNET RESOURCES”

NOVEMBER 24- 29TH

Right after the conference with the AC Belgrade, “The Computing project” continued with its

regular sessions. The workshop about “Data bases and Internet resources” happened in the time

frame starting from Saturday,

November 24th until 29th

November. Because of the busy

schedule of the participants the

sessions on Saturday were split

in more parts during which either

in individual or joint meetings

every member of the project got

the opportunity to learn more

about the public data bases.

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The www.eLibraryUSA.state.govdatabase to which the AC Bitola has its exclusive approach,

searching through www.educause.edu, looking atwww.librarything.com and other online

resources were just some of the web- sites presented during the workshop by the AC Bitola Staff

Ana Dajovska.

The participants who were not able to attend the Saturday’s workshop had the opportunity to

tune in at the virtual meetings on www.ooVoo.com during the whole week from 26- 29th

November and talk to AC Staff Ana Dajovska more about the data bases.=> FULL ALBUM

>

ooVoo session with FilipJoshevski

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THE COMPUTING PROJECT: “SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS”PRESENTATION BY PETARSAVIC

FROM AC NOVI SAD

DECEMBER 1ST

The month of December began with

a virtual visit to AC Novi Sad.

PetarSavic from AC Novi Sad held

the outstanding presentation “Social

media for Business” for the

participants of “The Computing

Project” on December 1st at the

American Educational Center

Bitola. The Skype meeting started

with a short introduction about

Petar’s work and experience with

the Social media. The participants

carefully listened to the advices and

recommendations on different apps,

programs, and sites given by Mr. Savic. During this event, “The Computing Project” participants

got the opportunity to learn more about Livestream, Linkedin, social bookmarking, Flickr and

the apps offered by Google. Working on a plan on how to connect all social media for individual

or a company’s use was also a great lesson offered by Mr. Savic. His amazing experience in

working as part of the team which works on the multimedia campaign of the EXIT Festival in

Novi Sad has been a great opportunity for all the present participants to have a sneak peak in the

experience and knowledge presented by Mr. Savic.

During this meeting, Mr. Savic transferred the talk on Google+ for the needs of the meeting. By

sharing his screen through the Google+ Hang Out option, Mr. Savic presented the book

“Definitive Guide to Social Marketing” which as Petar stated, “is a great and complete guide for

you to learn how to connect the social media you use”. The topics of using of mobile phones

today, cloud computing and building the digital profile either of an individual or business were

also part of the talk.

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Mr. Savic invited the

participants of “The

Computing project” to

post further questions on

the project’s Facebook

group and talk to him

about everything they

want to know about social

media. To round the

workshop, Mr. Savic gave

a task to everyone to

follow the popularity of

their Facebook posts

during the week of 3- 7th

December, make a

schedule and detect the

results. => FULL ALBUM

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THE COMPUTING PROJECT: “CLOUD COMPUTING” WORKSHOP WITH ANA DAJOVSKA, AC

BITOLA STAFF

DECEMBER 15TH

The final session of “The

Computing Project” took place at

the American Educational center

on December 15th. During this

last session the participants got a

chance to hear and learn more

about one relatively new

phenomenon in internet

technology, cloud computing.

This workshop started with an

introduction about this trend in

internet technology, its usage, its

path of development, the

different types of cloud

computing and its acceleration

and importance in changing the

business ecosystem.

Next, the participants did the www.wordle.net exercise during which they needed to attend a

brainstorming session and to give their association about cloud computing represents. This exercise

showed that most of the participant have heard and are using some of the Google and Dropbox services.

After this, Ana Dajovska, AC Sfaff and a Business informatics Master student, talked more about

different apps and tools that participants can use. Ana talked more about the different types of cloud

services, the current trends in this area and the application of cloud computing in the life of the

individuals and businesses. Many of the private

and public clouds were mentioned by Ana, after

which the four members of the moderators’

team talked more about the public cloud

computing tools which can be used by every

participant of “The Computing Project”. First,

Mihail Krstevski talked more about the Google

Drive and how it can be used. After this,

Nevena Todorovska talked about SkyDrive and

iCloud services and Angela Gorgievska finished

up with the presentation of cloud computing

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tools with Dropbox. Another interesting gadget was presented to the participants at the end of the

workshop by Nikola Gelov who talked more about the electronic book readers by Amazon- Amazon

Kindles.

After more than one and a half hour long workshop, the certificates awarding ceremony started. This

last part of the workshop marked the end of the second session of “The Computing Project” during

which twenty four people finished their process of learning more about the Internet technology. Sixteen

new participants and the eight participants who were included as moderators in the workshop of the

project were more than happy to receive their certificates, small gifts that the Corner prepared for them

and at the end they evaluated the project. This great experience was completed with sincere words of

gratitude to AC Bitola Staff Ana Dajovska and to the participants as well.

This amazingly productive session of the project was supported with the creation of the two online

documents: The Computing project blog (http://tcpacbitola.blogspot.com/) and The Computing project

Newsletter. => FULL ALBUM

All presenters from the last session

Certificates awarding ceremony

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“THE COMPUTING PROJECT”

Summary

The second session of “The Computing Project” which started on October 6th

and ended on

December 15th

is an innovative initiative of the American Corner Bitola which tends to

informally educate the interested participants about the new trends in internet technology.

Through this process, the AC Bitola forms a team of people who have successfully completed

the project and are able to transfer their knowledge to the participants of the future session of this

project. In the second session, differently from the first session that included only high school

students, in the project participated people from different age groups and professional

backgrounds.

During the three months long project, and the seven workshops on different topics, this second

session of the project was supported by the AC Belgrade and AC Novi Sad with the

presentations provided by their staff members. Taken from here, AC Bitola expressed its

gratitude to these two Corners in Serbia, and awarded them with Certificates of Appreciation and

Gratitude.

AC Bitola would like to thank the eight moderators: Stefan Dzalev, Stefan Baltov, Nevena

Todorovska, Mihail Krstevski, Angela Gorgievska, Katerina Kolevska, Nikola Gelov and

Andrijana Jovanovska for their commitment to transfer the gathered knowledge from the first

session of “The Computing Project” to the participants of the second session.

The AC Bitola is looking forward to the next session of “The Computing project” which will be

announced in March 2013!

For further information please visit the official “The Computing project” Blog:

http://tcpacbitola.blogspot.com/ and the AC Bitola Facebook Fan page:

https://www.facebook.com/AmericanCornerBitola.

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Evaluation of

“THE COMPUTING PROJECT” At the last workshop the participants got a task to fill evaluation forms about the project, and

here are the results: Question

Not satisfied

So & So

Very Satisfied

Are you satisfied by the concept of the project? / 100%

Have you learned everything you expected? / 23% 77%

Are you satisfied with the practical knowledge you

gathered? / 7% 93%

Did you like Ana’s presentations? / 100%

Did you like Stefan & Stefan’s presentation? / 100%

Did you like Sandra’s presentation? / 7% 93%

Did you like Petar’s presentation? / 100%

Would you recommend the project to your friends? / 100%

Comments by the participants:

“Everything was great”

“It was an amazing experience that helped me a lot both personally and professionally”

“It was perfect”

“I have learned many new things about the computers”

“The computing project is super”

“I love you all! I cannot live without American Corner”

“We had an amazing time, learning amazing things. Thank you very much and you

definitely deserve recommendations. ”

“lovely, fantastic, amazing, practical”