Current Situation of MTEC/AVT as of May 13

Dear former participants of MTEC & AVT,
Hello, this is Tom Maekawa, Chief Instructor of MTEC, JICE Okinawa Office in OIC.

How are you doing? I’m sorry that I’ve not written you for a long time.
But I certainly heard or read how hard you’ve been working in respective countries. I’ve been glad and proud of you.

It is needless to say that the dissemination of the Internet has shortened the distance between us, MTEC/AVT family in the world.
For an example, an incident which occurred somewhere in the world several minutes ago can travel all over the world in a moment via an e-mail, e blog, facebook, Picasa or Youtube. And the technology enables us to discuss it with someone in the world.

Now, let me make an important announcement about the continuity of MTEC/AVT.

Some of you may already know, but here are the situation of MTEC/AVT as of today.

-JICE Okinawa Office (the administrative office of MTEC/AVT) will be closed on December 31st, 2011.
-Most employees under JICE such as training coordinators, administrative staff, part of MTEC staff will be transferred to JICA/OIC.
-Due to the close of the office, JICE will not take part in bidding for MTEC training in and after this fiscal year (2011) -For the fiscal year 2011, the number of MTEC training courses will be decreased from 4 to 2, namely “Digital Video Production” and “IEC”
courses.
-JICA/OIC is planning to have bidding for “digital video course” and “IEC course” probably in July.
-NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai, meaning Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Japan’s national public broadcasting organization) has been showing its interest in operating DVP and IEC courses.
-NHK has asked JICE to work together as a JV, but JICE has shown reluctance about the idea.
-NHK may recruit some MTEC staff to implement the training courses.
-Some dealings may be starting soon.

Let me confirm that JICE made a decision NOT to operate any training courses in JICA OIC. And NHK may start headhunting of MTEC staff, since NHK is interested in implementation of DVP and IEC courses.

That is all for now. I feel sorry if I made you worried, but I promise that I will inform you our situation if I get to know anything further.

Bye for now,
Maekawa

Learning with interns

MTEC had three interns from Meio University.



It was the first opportunity for them to learn presentation skills and make a presentation material.

Working with Video on Blogger

I've been giving an extra-curriculum session on Blogger as reported in the previous post. Today's topic is video on Blogger.

First, let's upload an AVI file I shot. Actually this is a message video from your BIG BROTHER TOM. Here we go!

Here is a message to new bloggers from our big brother Tom.

Next, let's embed a video clip from Youtube. I'm quite sure you all know this person too!


I hope you now know how to handle video for Blogger... Good job!

Party! Party!

Well, our dear PARTY GUYS, or Party Masters, organized the very first outing of this fiscal year yesterday, May 22. Acturally, it was a 'surprise' birthday party for Lesly(Honduras-May 14), Davis(Panama-May 17) and Nong(Thailand-May 24).

They had a good time at "Rio", one of MTEC popular places in downtown Naha.

Of course, Kumadai Inseis, other MTEC family, joined.


All photos were contributed by Chiho. Arigato!

Information of MTEC JFY2009

Here are the list of MTEC training courses planned in Japan's fiscal year 2009 (April 2009 - March 2010).

Here is the legend:
X. Name of the training course
Designated dates of arrival - departure of Japan
Nominated countries (numbers, basically 1)

1. Digital Video Production for Dissemination and Enlightenment
May 12 - August 28
Botswana, Myanmar, Solomon Islands, El Salvador(2), Honduras(2),
Panama(2), Kenya, and Bhutan (2)

2. Media Strategy for Community Enlightenment
August 25 - December 18
Bhutan(2), Nepal(2), Sri Lanka(2), Solomon Islands, El Salvador(2),
Botswana, and Ethiopia

3. Information, Education and Communication (IEC) in Health Sector (A)
September 1 - December 16
Pakistan(2), Dominican Republic(2), Honduras(2), Ghana(2),
Kenya(2), and Myanmar

4. Information, Education and Communication (IEC) in Health Sector (B)
January 12 - April 22
China, Martial Islands, Guatemala, Mexico, Jordan,
Yemen, Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, and Niger

Please understand that:
1. These countries are already fixed, so cannot be changed,
2. First contact should be made to the "J" office of your country, in case
you want to send your colleague to MTEC or to add your country from next year.

Med students visiting us

A group of med students of the University of the Ryukyus visited our institute.
Though the visit was very short and we didn't have time to exchange, we wish the best of luck in their future. Some of them may have an opportunity to work in Africa.

259. Sorry for my lazyness...

Hi all!

I am sorry that it seems difficult for me these days to update this blog.
Because...
1) There are three courses conducted in MTEC now,
2) Two of them are at the final stage and I am involved in one of them,
and
3) I need to prepare for my own course starting in next month.

Sorry for laziness.
I wish other instructors help me with this, since they are also authorized in this blog, but none of them have interests to post article...

Please stay with me with a little patience!

258. Useful Youtube clips for the Bloggers

In Youtube, there are some really useful video clips for us.
http://jp.youtube.com/user/BloggerHelp

How to create a blog with Blogger


Adding a Google Gadget to your blog


Creating A Graphical Header For Your Blogger Blog

248. News from Home

The coronation ceremony was conducted in Bhutan.
Here is our Bhutanese participant Kashav and the paper reporting it.
Sorry for Kashav since he is missing the celebration in his home country.

May everyone in Bhutan stay blessed!!

243. Something to remind your time in MTEC...?

Just a short video and sound of cicada.
I got an idea when I was waiting for a PC boot.

217. Lecturing out

Not only in MTEC, but in other training courses...MTEC instructors' coverage is wide.
This week, Nishimura san and I had classes in other training courses.


I (nana) had another session on Presentation Skills on June 9 (afternoon) for "Conservation and Sutainable Management of Mangrove Ecosystems" and "Management and Conservation of Coral Reef Ecosystem in Asia Pacific Region" Courses.


Then, Nishimura san started another session on Basic Photography today, for Coral Reefs Course.


Shooting exercise

Fun to be out of classroom, isn't it? :)


Here is a previous post on the similar topic.
13. MTEC instructor lecturing to JICA Fiji by Uramoto san
134. Dobroe Utro! MTEC lecture in Russian? by nana

174. Busy instructor... out of MTEC

The MTEC instructors are almost always busy. In and out MTEC, they provide lectures and trainings.
This time, the trainees from BAPPENAS (Badan Perencanaan dan Pembangunan Nasional or National Development Agency of Indonesia) came to our institute for 1.5 days sesssion with Uramoto san. Specialist of project magagement (I believe...), he provided them with the session.

171. "Kiribati" and "Kyrgyztan" - First countries to host

In more than 20 years history, MTEC (or ex-AVT) has hosted 767 participants from 76 countries. I think this is many enough, but still there are unknown countries where we have never met anybody from yet.

This time, in 07amt course, there are two countries that we host for the first time.
Kiribati and Kyrgyztan.

From Kiribati, we have Temarawa Tebao. Kiribati is an island nation on the Pacific. Click on this if you want to know more about Kiribati.

And from Kyrgyztan, we have Sundeev Dmitri and Alipova Kanykey (left to right). Click on this if you want to know more about Kyrgyztan.

139. Very small visitors

A group of about 25 children visited out institute. They had a session to understand the world (the concept of nations and international cooperation, etc.), then visited MTEC studio.
Each of them made self introduction in English, then MTEC participants made introduction in Nihongo (Japanese language) in turn.

138. MTEC Big brother returns.

The big brother of MTEC, aka Chief Instructor of MTEC, has returned from China. On August 22, Maekawa san met Digital Video Production 2007 Course participants for the first time.

And as our family members in the world know it already (and we got some e-mails of concern), an aircraft of China Airline got exploded and burned soon after all passengers disembarkation. It was the following day of that incident when Maekasa san returned. He took a couple of photos of the craft, so that we can show it to you.




The cause of this has been reported as "mismaintenance".
We hope the cause is detected properly, and the lesson is utilied for the future.

134. Dobroe Utro! MTEC lecture in Russian?

MTEC staffs travel domestic and international. These days, Mr. Maekawa, our chief, has been in China.
And here is another example of lecturing by MTEC.

MTEC-HQ was invited to present a lecture on "Presentation Skills" in Tokyo. Actually it was a training pfferred by Ministry of Finance, Japan. And the participants are from Central Asia and the Caucasia.

The lecture was presented in a little different way from the ordinary ones.
Lecture was given in Nihongo (Japanese), and translated into Russian.
The lecture material was prepared in English.
Very multilingual lecture, it was.

Both the trainees and myself were nervous at the first sight, but getting friendly soon after. It was a pity that the lecturer has no chance to see if the lecture was efficient enough, because their presentation will be held at the end of this month.
How I wish to go to Tokyo to attend the presentation!
Well, anyway, let me wish for the good luck in your presentation!

Here, I would like to past one souvenir photo taken from the airplane from Okinawa to Tokyo. Mt. Fuji, the highest mountain of Japan with 3776m, could be viewed.

132. Visit Parents in the Office

Most shools in Japan are now in the summer vacation. These days, it has been a kind of trend that elementary schools encourage pupils to visit their parents in their office.

On this program, June of 12-year-old, son of the staffs' came to MTEC to see who his mother is workng for and how his mother works.

The boy's mother says:
Basically it is good to have my own child stay in the office, but it really makes me feel nervous.

June could see how the training is conducted, and experienced a little of instructor's role.

Anyway, the boy had a good time with you all. Thanks for being nice to him.

129. Meeting youth

Our institute has been hosting high school students. It is one of the school programs to visit offices to see the world.
The students usually make tour in OIC, and they sometimes come to MTEC lab to make exchanges.
The photo above is the students from Nishihara High School. Each of them introduced themselves in English, and MTEC parcitipants did it in Nihonto/English....sure??
Here are the photos of exchange made with Naha High School students. Each student stayed for a while with one participant to be introduced with the project being done then.

The lady is Kaai san, who has been working for the project.

Hey, boy, do you understand what Paul has been developing?

Coincidently, the boy had been intrested in photography, so he was really pleased to meet Rosli(Malaysia) who let him try SLR camera for the first time in his life!!!

113. Aerobics class

One of the ways to stay healthy is enjoying sports.
The participants here are encouraged to enjoy Aerobics on every Wednesday.



These are some shots from the class.
It is really refreshing to be there after the technical training, I believe.

After dancing, the muscle tuning follows.
Why don't you join the class next week?

The photographer here was Fumiyo san, our assistant in MTEC.

111. Rainy season set in

Japan Meteorological Agency announced that Okinawa area has set in rainy season yesterday (May 16, 2007).
On the weather chart of this morning, we can see the white object is extented across Japan.
This is the rain cloud causing the rainy season. Usually it lasts 1.5 months followed by typhoon (cycrone) season.

For the detailed information, visit the website of Japan Meteorological Agency.