Again the man who wants offer the truth to the people is fought in every way possible. Leaving Dubai TV after an amazing 4 year run, where as he says he was never censored, which in my opinion is a very brave thing from Dubai TV. But then he had to leave, and after months of speculation we see him announcing on DREAM TV in the talk show “Al3ashera Masa’an” with Mona Elshazly that he is heading to London to continue producing “Qalam Rasas” for Al-Libiyah channel.
No one was enthusiastic about Al-Libiyah, yet the people wanted to listen to Hamdi Qandeel in any possible way, even if it was audio files being downloaded via the internet. But the show did start on Al-Libiyah and although there was always technical problems with the sound and color, but people watched, a huge number of audience the new born channel would never ever have dreamed of.
But problems keep following Hamdi, for unusual reasons the General Manager of Al-Libiyah channel was jailed for couple of days for reasons related to Hezbollah (don’t ask me am as clueless as you are), and since that day “Qalam Rasas” never aired. Only five episodes were aired since the comeback in March. We later knew that Al-Libiyah channel which was a private channel, was nationalized by the president of Libya Muammar Al-Qathafi.
And here the same Mona Elshazly announcing this on her show “Al3ashera Masa’an” “10 O’clock”:
Now I have been hearing that a deal is in the making between him and Al-Manar channel, funny enough, that is the TV channel of Hezbollah. Will the deal work out? Will it get cancelled few weeks later? Who knows? we shall wait and watch.
Here is the last episode of Qalam Rasas on Al-Libiyah for those who missed it:
Since the rise of the internet I always heard of projects of online universities, virtual universities, online only universities and even FREE online universities. But every time the end result was disappointing, with some of those projects either ridiculously very expensive, not accredited or the project simply gets cancelled for funding issues.
So that is why when I heard about the UOP “University of the People” I was not that shocked, and I just thought it will be the same old story, big idea with disappointing implementation. And don’t get me wrong it still might lead to that result, who knows? But this time this feels a bit different.
Few years ago many universities made their course materials available online for free, video lectures, audio lectures, slides, notes and even assignments. The leading university who took this bold move was MIT “Massachusetts Institute of Technology”. Many other universities followed MIT’s lead such as Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, Yale, Washington and many more.
The University of the People is a non-profit university, its main goal is to give the chance of higher education to all people around the world for free or very low prices. The university is mostly comprised of volunteers, professors, librarians, master level students, computer programmers and professionals.
The university is still not accredited, but this is normal as it is just starting and it needs to follow number of rules and get evaluated to be able to get accredited. The university is going to be offering two undergraduate degrees, a BA in Business Administration and a BSc in Computer Science. More bachelors degrees and masters degrees such as MBA is expected to be added in later stages.
The university is accepting now applications from students around the world, but in the start they will only accept 300 students, the plan is to reach to 10 thousand enrollments within 5 years. The fees are minimal, for enrollment it will range between $15 to $50, and for exams between $10 to $100, it all depends on where you are living.
On the 24th of April 2009 the UOP started accepting enrollment applications, and on 14th of May 2009 a new website will be launched. 30th of June 2009 the enrollment deadline for the fall semester. 20th of July 2009 the notice of acceptance to UOP orientation courses. 9th of September 2009 the Fall Semester starts.
At the moment the best way to contact the university is via email, although they provide a phone number but you will have to be very very very lucky to get a human to talk to you, 99% of the time you will be forwarded to voice mail. You should get a quick reply to your email during the weekdays.
One reason a lot of people are optimistic for this to work is that the peer-to-peer learning experience actually exists online, according to a survey by the Sloan Consortium (a nonprofit group devoted to integrating online learning into mainstream higher education) around 4 million students in USA took an online course in 2007. The founder of UOP sensed the power of peer to peer learning while working on www.cramster.com which is an online study community that offers help for students on their college homework and assignments.
Of course if the right tools are available and the community is well built and the professionals are there to help, this could be a dream come true, this could revolutionize online education. But for this to fully succeed a lot of factors should work together perfectly to reach to the kind of success this kind of idea deserves. Many people who are eager to study and get higher education will be happy to hear this news, people who missed out on education, this could be their second chance. This could change lives, we just have to wait and see.
On my clock it was 2:49 AM when I felt the tremors in my room, I was reading my favorite blogs and I felt the bed shaking and then I looked at the mirrors in front of me and they were shaking, although these kind of tremors became more normal during the past few years, yet I still do freak out and panic whenever they happen because I keep wondering if this could be the BIG one.
As usual I quickly went to the USGS website to check what happened but it was still not reported, then I checked twitter where I found couple of people asking the same question I had, DID YOU FEEL IT?
Again the man who wants offer the truth to the people is fought in every way possible. Leaving Dubai TV after an amazing 4 year run, where as he says he was never censored, which in my opinion is a very brave thing from Dubai TV. But then he had to leave, and after months of speculation we see him announcing on DREAM TV in the talk show “Al3ashera Masa’an” with Mona Elshazly that he is heading to London to continue producing “Qalam Rasas” for Al-Libiyah channel.
