The Centre for Environmental Education & Researchin collaboration with the University Chaplaincy will be organising an Environmental Awareness Programme entitled Do I Care … for the Environment?

Environmental issues and the sustainable use of resources have become an integral part of our society. This brief course will explore the concept of the environment, the principle of sustainability and the role of humans in the environment. Participants will be helped to use the principles of sustainability to critically analyse their lifestyle; examine and clarify their attitudes and values regarding environmental issues. The course is aimed at university students and all those who feel the need to question environmental policy making and who want to develop their environmental responsibility.

This programme will be held every Tuesday and Thursday between 1730hrs and 1930hrs at the Chaplaincy on the following dates:
16 March
18 March
23 March
25 March
13 April
15 April
20 April

For further information please send an email or phone on +356 2340 2341.

Workshop in Design & Technology to B.Ed. Primary Students as part of an ERASMUS Exchange

On 15 February, Lady Dr Sue Dale Tunnicliffe delivered a workshop on Design and Technology as part of the B.Ed. (Hons) primary course at the University of Malta. This workshop was possible due to the ERASMUS staff exchange programme within the Lifelong Learning Programme funded by the European Commission.  The ERASMUS programme allows the University of Malta to sign agreements with Universities across Europe to allow the exchange of students and staff. Within this programme it is possible for students to spend one or two semesters of study in another University. It also offers the possibility for University of Malta lecturers to teach in another University.

Lady Dr Sue Dale Tunnicliffe is a research associate at the Institute of Education, University of London, and in the past also served as an OFSTED inspector (Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) on Design and Technology. Having been a primary teacher for twenty five years Lady Tunnicliffe also has extensive experience in the training of teachers. Through collaboration with Dr Suzanne Gatt from the Department of Primary Education at the University of Malta’s Faculty of Education, Lady Tunnicliffe has, for the past six years, regularly visited Malta to carry out these workshops.

The workshop forms part of a credit for B.Ed. (Hons) primary student teachers on Science and Technology. The activity provided a hands-on experience and involved the students in an actual design-and-make exercise. Students used G-clamps, scissors, wood, glue and other everyday stuff to create models useful for their classroom. The exercise served to help the students understand the process of Design and Technology, and to understand what type of activities they would need to do with children in primary schools. Such examples of practical training help to equip student teachers with skills they would need when they are eventually teaching in schools.

The ERASMUS exchange has also fostered research collaboration between the Institute of Education and the University of Malta, as Lady Tunnicliffe and Dr Suzanne Gatt have already co-authored two research papers focusing on young children’s ideas about animals and plants.

The Physical Oceanography Unit (PO-Unit) of the University of Malta has launched a new competition this year titled IOI-KIDS 2010 Best Project Competition. The same unit has been implementing the IOI-Kids programme for the past few years and this has resulted in a dedicated website - www.ioikids.net - acting as an invaluable awareness and research tool for students for marine-related issues. The competition this year commemorates the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission 50th anniversary.

This competition invites primary and secondary school children to combine their artistic and computer talents in preparing attractive and informative electronic contributions in the form of projects on topics related to the sea. The competition is open to individuals or teams of children and youngsters in two separate age groups: (Age 5-10) and (Age 11-16). The selected original works and projects from 5 young authors will win the local prizes and automatically participate in an international competition. All works will be shared with other kids in Malta and worldwide through the publishing on the IOI-KIDS website dedicated pages, if they are of sufficient quality. The 5 winning submissions will eventually compete internationally  through online voting (50%) and peer selection (50%). The works will appear for online voting on the IOI-KIDS website for a period of one month and voting will be open to anybody linking to the website. Winners will then be announced and invited to a prize-awarding ceremony in December 2010.

The accepted works can cover any topic related to the sea and the coast, and can take the shape of: interesting articles, compilations, events or notes

• exciting and/or unusual incidents
• recent scientific or other discoveries
• conservation issues
• species of plants or animals
• ecosystems or places of interest
• people whose work is connected to the sea, and
• many other imaginative contributions.

Works dealing with the endeavours of the UNESCO/Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission are highly recommended.

The IOI Kids programme aims to collate together marine-related information which is in turn uploaded here. This website is intended to support awareness about the sea amongst our younger generations, and to promote the dissemination of sea-related information and educational material to primary and secondary school students, mainly through the use of a dedicated web environment that presents online lessons, quizzes, interactive games and other interesting articles on the sea in appealing and creative formats.

Deadline for submissions to the competition is the 30 June, 2010. For further information click here or contact us on +356 2340 2843 or send an email to IOI-MOC or to Ms Alicia Said.

The Institute for Sustainable Development of the University of Malta in collaboration with the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering of University College London (UCL) and in collaboration with the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth is pleased to announce once again this year’s International Summer School focused on Spatial Data Management and Geographic Information Systems.

The Summer School’s goals are to present mid-career professionals, undergraduate students and graduates with the essential skills to handle Geographic Information and the knowledge of how best to apply Geographic Information Systems. This year the focus is on spatial data management and handling, with some sessions demonstrating application of GIS. Hands-on sessions will supplement the lecture based sessions, with participants using ArcGIS, SPSS and open source software like PostGIS and Quantum GIS. By the end of the summer school participants should be able to handle, manipulate and evaluate geographic data using different software. The Summer School will also train its participants how to use ArcGIS and Quantum GIS packages for data handling, alongside the SPSS package for statistical analysis. Participants will also learn the database management system PostgreSQL and its application for geographic information PostGIS whilst understanding how GIS can be applied in various analytical scenarios.

The Summer School will be held between 12 and 16 July 2010. It will run for a period of 1 week and participants will be engaged in lectures and practical sessions for 6 hours a day for 5 days at the main University Campus in Msida. This year’s Summer School will assume previous knowledge of GIS and is suitable for participants who are intermediate users of GIS. Participants who wish to learn how to use ArcGIS have the opportunity to attend a preparatory session to be held before the school starts. The teaching faculty this year will consist of Dr Maria Attard (University of Malta), Dr Muki Haklay (University College London), Dr Helena Titheridge (University College London), Dr Claire Ellul (University College London), Dr Catherine Jones (University College London) and Ms Therese Bajada (University of Malta).

Local private companies may benefit from financial assistance to train their employees by undertaking the Summer School through the Training Aid Framework (TAF) programme offered by Malta Employment Training Centre (ETC). More information about this scheme can be obtained by clicking here.

For more information on the summer school click here or contact Ms Stephanie Stellini by email or phone on +356 2340 3403. Acceptance to the School is on a first come first serve basis. Registration deadline is the 28 May 2010.

The University of Malta in collaboration with the Department of Oriental Studies are offering a summer school in Near Eastern Studies from 8 to 26 June 2010. The aim of this course, which is jointly coordinated by Professor Anthony J. Frendo, Head of the Department of Oriental Studies, and Dr Martin R. Zammit, Senior Lecturer in Arabic, is to intorduce participants to the turbulent but dynamic and interesting world of the Near East. After being introduced to the study of the Near East, participants will be dealing with various epochs and topics of this region of the world, such as ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, Phoenicianh-Punic civilisation and the invention of the alphabet, Arab Malta, the Koran, the history of the Arabic and Hebrew languages, and last but not least the discovery and importance of QUmran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Summer School includes thirty-four contact hours of lectures, and sixteen hours of field trips, and purports to give a short but intensive exposure to the Near East from the Archaeological/historial point of view, besides providing a comprehensive overview of the most important languages of the region. The Maltese archipelago is right at the centre of the Mediterranean; and its geopyysical qualities are similar to places like Syria, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine which makes it an ideal place to understand this subject matter.

Click here for full details.

The Institute of Linguistics in collaboration with the Department of Maltese of the University of Malta has the pleasure to announce a call for participation in the International Programme in Maltese Linguistics to be held in Malta between 22-31 March 2010.

The programme, which is being organised through the Foundation for International Studies Ltd at the Old University in Valletta, was offered for the first time in Summer 2009. It comprises of lectures and seminars, as well as a number of visits to historical sites, some with linguistic interest, around Malta and Gozo.

Click here for further details.

A short intensive course in Advanced Life Drawing and Painting will be held at the New Art Room, University Junior College, Msida, from 9 May -  26 June 2010 on Fridays from 1700hrs to 2000hrs and Saturdays from 0900hrs to 1200hrs.

This course is aimed at artists and students who wish to broaden their life drawing and painting skills.

Registration fee is €230. For further information kindly contact the course coordinator, Dr. Louis Laganà on + 356 2590 7387 or by email.

Course Tutors: Dr Louis Laganà  and Mr Lawrence Buttigieg

The Malta Internet Foundation offers an annual prize that favours academic work making a significant contribution to Internet technologies. This year the aim is to address technologies which promote universal access to intelligent, socially-oriented web services.

Usage of the Internet continues to mushroom thanks to the global provision of high-speed data networks, the falling cost of mobile access, the mass appeal of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, and the advent of cloud-computing services like Google docs. Yet intelligent web services remain elusive, even though they promise to herald a new era of web computing. Intelligent web servives are those that might adapt dynamically to user needs, manage complex queries by interacting autonomously with other web servers, or solve problems by reasoning with the content of web pages, as suggested by proponents of the Semantic Web.

The prize in 2010 will be awarded to students submitting work describing or demonstrating systems that profit from use of the Internet and address a need that is particularly relevant to the Maltese context. In addition, submissions will be ranked according to the extent to which they employ advanced technologies to implement intelligent web services, and their potential social impact. The submission should clearly indicate how the work addresses all of these criteria.

The submission must have academic merit as reflected by an official assessment in the context of a recognised university degree course. The two categories of submission are (i) a final year project or (ii) assessed coursework that is a significant component of a course carrying at least 4 ECTS credits.

A cash prize of  €600 will be offered for the best final year project. A second  prize of €400 will be offered for best assessed coursework.

Eligibility
Students reading for a university degree who are resident in Malta.

Submission Procedure
A copy of the final year project report, or of the coursework, together with any software, as submitted towards the award of degree, should be submitted in softcopy on CD indicating clearly which category of submission is intended and contact details of the student, to:
Malta Internet Foundation
c/o IT Services Reception Desk
University Campus
Msida MSD 2080.

Deadlines
Deadline for Submission: 30 June 2010; Announcement of Winners: September 2010
Award of Prize: October 2010
Queries about this initiative should be addressed to info@nic.org.mt with subject line '2010 Prize'.

About the Malta Internet Foundation
The Malta Internet Foundation, also known as NIC(Malta), was officially inaugurated in January 1999 and is responsible for managing the .mt top-level domain for Malta. The mission of the Malta Internet Foundation also includes activities to promote use of the Internet in Malta. The Foundation was responsible for the setting up of the Malta Internet eXchange (MIX) to facilitate local IP traffic between local ISPs. Current activities also include supporting IPv6 and offering annual prizes for outstanding projects on Internet-related themes. The Foundation is a member of the Maltese IPv6 Task Force and, together with University of Malta, coordinates the Malta IPv6 national test-bed (M6ix).

Click here to access the website.

The Communications and Alumni Relations Office has just launched a new Research Website. The purpose of the site is to showcase the research of our academic staff to the general public, the media and also to interested academics and potential project partners from overseas.

Academics are invited to send in anything of interest along the lines of what already appears on the site preferably accompanied by photos. The site currently presents items related to the first semester. However, the idea is for it to be in a continual state of flux with pages and images added on a regular basis.

Initial access is to information pitched at the level a layman would enjoy.  However, further links which should be supplied by the researchers will take the more interested enquirer to detailed information, department websites and, where appropriate, to the personal sites of the contributors.

The site may be accessed at www.um.edu.mt/research or directly from the University of Malta homepage by clicking Research.

Suggestions which may enhance the site are welcome. To submit information send an email to the Communications & Alumni Relations Office
Subject: Showcasing UoM Research. 

 

15 March 2010
http://www.um.edu.mt/newsoncampus/features