76. Birthdays in December Uramoto san and Fumiyo san

Though I wrote "Last birthday boy(s)" in the article #59, there are two more in the year; Uramoto san and Fumiyo san.

Uramoto san's birthday is December 9.
We had a party for Uramoto san, but lazy me, mtec-hq, did not post any photo.

Fumiyo san's birthday is today, December 22.
There is no festive party for her, but I already presented something small with my big heart.

Please formive me, if I forgot or forget your birthday. (And I would be happier if you tell me yours.)

Like 24 hours time in a day, the birthday has been gifted equally to anyone. It is the special day for you. Your Mom had a pain of delivery, but a big joy to meet you.

75. Still feeping empty...

It will be one week since we had our closing ceremony.
We have a winter sky today, gray clouds stay low, wind is chilly, etc.

We have not cleared the environment of the video course participants yet.
A computer course ended yesterday and the participants left OIC.
Many of our friends are gone now.

74. Closing Ceremony... and the Award Goes to...

Yesterday, December 15, was the last day of the training. Yes, the closing ceremony was offerred. It was just like all the other ceremonies, except for the award of the final production was announced.

It went to.....

"Yes For Earth"

Congratulations to Group1!


I will post the pictures later.
I am lazy as you all know, and I can be lazier when I am tired.

73. We proudly offerred the presentation.

Today has come to offer the presentation of our final products.

Group1: "Yes for Earth"
Group2: "Little Actions, Big Results"
Group3: "Think Green"

72. Jambo! Kenya!

It is Kenya's Independence Day. We have Mark Kamau from Kenya, good reason to celebrate. Omedeto!

71. Bon Voyage, Maekawa san!

The training course on Digital Video Production had Formative Evaluation yesterday.
Three groups made presentation, then the audience had questionnaires for them.

The presentation was followed by a farewell party to Maekawa san, aka Miguell san.
He is heading to China today, so it was the last day for our trainees to meet Maekawa. We really miss him.

70. Days of Final Production

Busy, busy, busy.....

69. Warm welcome to new MTEC members!

A short term country-focusedtraining course for Lao PDR started today.

The training is titled "IEC (Information Education Communication) Management for Health Activities". The two participants are from Center for Information and Education for Health (CIEH) under the Ministry of Health of Lao PDR.

68. These outstanding jackets...oops...instructors!

Today, maybe just by chance, Kiyuna san, Tokumura san, and Maekawa san (from left to right) were wearing the photographer's jackets. MTEC instructors bought it together several years ago. There are many pockets as you can see.
When they showed up in Multimedia Lab, most participants looked envious. Alright, shall we buy one for each, just like out T-shirt?



Today in the afternoon, it got stormy weather like above. According to American Fareast Network, there was "tornado alert" over Okinawa Island.
As to our Final Production, we had a presentation of Proposal. Each group presented their plan to the fellow participants and MTEC staffs, followed by hot & hot Q/A session.

67. Observation tour to mainland Japan

Already back from, though, we made our Observation tour to mainland Japan from Nov. 12 - 17.

66. Final Production.....Here we go!

Though I think the current participants arrived in Okinawa just yesterday, we already started the final production today! (Can you believe it?)
This time, the theme of production is fixed: Actions in OIC for environment conservation.

Here are our teams and instructors for each group.

Group 1: Simon(Eritrea), Gul(Pakistan), Bryan(Philippines), Kellys(Zambia), and Uramoro.

Group 2: Foncho(El Salvador), Vinesh(Fiji), Mud(Jamaica), Nid(Thailand), and Nakama.

Group 3: Nestor(Colombia), Mark(Kenya), Emma(Peru), Desil(Sri Lanka), and Tokumura.

65. DVD Authoring

Two days were spent on DVD Authoing.
The lecture and exercises were presented by Kiyuna san. Because the participants made their menu screens with Adobe Photoshop, they fortunately (maybe...) had an opportunity to learn it.

After exporting video data to DVD, each of them had to check if DVD was successfully made with DPD player. Densil san, looks nervous when checking his, but he did it!!
By the way, they learned to use Adobe Encore to produce their DVDs.

64. Presentation of Production 2

Finally we are here today.
The main skill that we planned for our participants was "Validation skill".
Based on the comments given to the video produced in Production 1, the participants made validation.

63. Dinner out, again!

During Production Exercise 2, most of the class and the instructors had a dinner out for change.
The venue was a Turkish restaurant nearby, named "Kerebek" meaning "butterfly" in Turkish language.

Brandy(Japan), Mark(Kenya), and Nid(Thailand) from the left.

Nestor(Colombia), Foncho(El Salvador), Fumiyo(Japan) and Uramoto(Japan).

Simon(Eritrea), Emma(Peru), Ichiro(Son of MTEC chief instructor Maekawa:Japan).

Bryan(Philippines), Simon(Eritrea), Emma(Peru).

62. Production Exercise 2

Since October 18, MTEC participants have been tackling with Production Exercise 2. It is,
based on the comments given by the coursemates and the instructors, a training subject they revise their videos produced at Production Exercise 1.

61. Softball games and BBQ

Softball games were held in OIC.


Usually, the participants make some joint team across the training courses, but MTEC made an entry as an individual team as MTEC.


Because some of the participants had never played it, Uramoto san and Maekawa san had a lecture on its rules and practice.


The game was held on October 28(Saturday), 2006.


Of cousre, MTEC played in our T-shirt.

I guess it was the very first batting for Nestor(Colombia). Was it??

There was BBQ offerred after that.

60. Can we show us off?

I have no idea if something like this has ever occurred in MTEC (or AVT).
This is us!



The current training group, Digital Video Production, the entire staffs (instructors, assistant and coordinator) are here.


The T-shirt was illustrated by Nestor san (Colombia). In the discussion, many ideas were presented, and Nestor san did the final touch to Kiyuna san's idea. We are all proud of it.

59. Last but not least... Last birthday boy(s)!

Oops, I feel terribly sorry for Nestor (Colombia) san and Maekawa (Ryukyu) san, because I did not post an article on their birthdays.
Nestor san celebrated his birthday on October 21st, and Maekawa san on 23rd.
We had a joint gathering for two of them on 20th.

Out of twelve participants, five have their birthday during their stay in Okinawa. To my surprise, there was no birthday with the previous group! Does it depend on the course leader?? I'm just kidding :) Nestor san's birthday is the last one.

58. Independence Day of Zambia

Today, October 24 is the Independence Day of Zambia.
Now in our training group, there is Mr. Mukkuma Godwin, aka Kellys, from Zambia.

We, all staffs and participants, would like to congratulate the Day for the people of Zambia.
As writing this article, I personally think of my ex-participants from Zambia, especially Nervious. (How are you doing, Nervious?)






At the lobby of our institute, as you can see here, the flag of Zambia has been placed to announce the day to everyone. Also, some photos and information (geographical and other general data) of the country are presented.

57. Animation for Video... what a fun, what a labor!

Special lecture was carried out on October 16 (Mon.) and 17 (Tue.). The topic for the video course was "Animation for video", and we were honored to be lectured by one of up-and-coming animators in Japan. What was more, we could lecture out at a studio in Okinawa Prefectural University of Art!!

Oct. 16 (1st day)
-Introduction to an animation
-Types of an animation
-Prodecures to ptoduce a clay animation
-Hands-on experience (right to say this way?) to make a clay animation
-Group discussion

The topic for the group production was "Glbal Warming". Our 12 participants were separated into 3 groups.

Oct. 17 (2nd day)
-Group production
-Shooting & editing of a clay animation
-Presentation

Mr. Matayoshi commented "You did well for the first time."
Our participants commented "It was a good experience", or "I did not have an idea that producing an animation is such hard".

56. We are MTEC!

There has been a very big international event in Okinawa: The 4th Worldwide Uchinanchu Festival.

Upon a request, MTEC participated in the event as a media creation team.
We took some typical photos of Okinawa to be used as a background. Then a photo taken at the festival venue would be merged with it, then a montage would be made by Adobe Photoshop. Thanks to the participants, it went successful.
Here shows a sample by our photo and Shurijo Castle. Do you like it?



I should mention that we, MTEC, have made a team T-shirt, and we all put it on there.

P.S. Our photo with wearing it is now ready on the article 60.

55. Streamng Video II

Today, we had a practical in MTEC Studio.
Namely, we set up video streaming environment for real transmission.

54. Streaming Video I

The subject of Streaming Video started today. The instructors are Maekawa san and Kiyuna san. As you may imagine, they are making very good combination to present this subject :D



The participants had lecture and hands on.

53. Bula! Fiji Day!

October 10 is Fiji Day, the Independence Day from Britain.
Congratulations to all Fijians.
Our current group has one Fijian, Vinesh san, so we had a country presentation by him. It was nice for us all to celebrate together and learn some about Fiji.

At the same time, I remember some ex-Fijian participant, in and out of MTEC, like Susu san (2005), Sangita san(2003) and so on.

53. Proudly presenting our Products!

Production Exercise 1 is over.

As is usual after each production exercise, we held a presentation session.


But unusual thing this time was, we set up a studio set to broadcast the session.
It was Maekawa san's idea, and the participants, especially Simon(Eritorea) and Mud(Jamaica), were happy with the idea.


We had Emma (Peru) as the MC.

52. Country & Job report presentation started.

Though there has been no requirement for our participants to prepare any paper or electronic document to introduce each participant and his/her country, we have had requests from them to have the session to introduce him/herself.

Then we have decided to have a volunteer based session to introduce the participant's country and job. MTEC has considered it would be useful for our future relationship, in terms of assistance and cooperation.

So far, Emma (Peru), Nestor (Colombia), and Kellys (Zambia) presented. Each presentation has been really informative. I am sure we are lucky to have this opportunity to learn about our participants' countries.

51. Training these days...

After "Flash animation for video production" w/Kiyuna san,
the training proceeded to
1. Instructional Design w/Tokumura san
2. Script Writing w/Uramoto san
3. Production Exercise 1 w/Uramoto san & Kiyuna san



Yes, the participants finally started "video production"!
The topics are:
Nestor-Room, Bryan-Feel@home, Mark-Security,
Foncho-Management of money in OIC, Emma-OIC's Swimming Pool,
Simon-Language problem for new OIC participants,
Vinesh-Communication problem due to time difference,
Mud-My time at OIC, Kellys-Services offered at Front desk B,
Gul-Language is the first, Nid-Never forget..., and
Densil-How to take an international Call

50. Happy Birthday, Densil san!

This is Mr. Weerasooriya Log Gamagalalage Densil (we call him simply "Densil san") from Sri Lanka. Today, September 26, is his birthday.
In our group, the birthday person offers sweets to friends. I find it interesting, since we do not have that custom here in Japan (I guess so). So Densil san has sweets container in his hands.
Always smiling gently, Densil san is like a philosopher.

49. Here is our Birthday Girl!

Nid san from Thailand is our birthday girl today. Her (official) name is Ms. Poopha Rabiab, but we call her "Nid san".

We had a birthday party in our special place (our studio in fact). This time, it was a joint party with Densil san's. His birthday is 26th, only a week after, so we made them together.
Mr. Maekawa, our beloved Chief Instructor, entertained us as usual with his performance of magic. Most of us got cheated...fascinated with it. We all like his magic.

Lastly, we took a group photo. It was nice to have everyone gathered like this.
Let me wish best of luck to you all!