The modern trends in

this IT age inspired the

AC Bitola to start with

the first ever

computing project.

This project contains

series of six workshops

during the three

months period which

will take place at the

American Educational

Center. For the needs

of the project, through application process, a group of twelve high school students from Bitola

were selected. The students will have the chance to participate in all the workshops organized

during the following three months. This project’s goal is to reach the high school students and

inspire them to effectively use the Internet as a source of creativity and new ideas, and most of

all, make them aware of the possibilities for e-learning available to them. The first workshop

from this project happened on

March 12th and was aimed to

give the participants an idea of

what is included in the field of

Internet technologies and which

media, applications and tools

are the ones most frequently

used. During the first workshop

“Basics of Internet

Technologies” Ana Dajovska, AC

Bitola Staff and a Business

Informatics Master student,

gave an overview of the best

online apps and tools and talked

more about the development

path of Internet technologies. After the introductory session, the participants got a chance to

name their favorite Internet tools, which putted in a www.wordle.net panel, generated the

conclusion about the most frequently used Internet sites and tools by them. At the very end of

the presentation, Ana gave the participants their first task connected with discovering Web 1.0,

2.0 and 3.0.

The AC Bitola sincerely hopes that the

interest shown by the AC members and high

school students will be a great inspiration

with a productive overcome from every

workshop during “The Computing project”

and is truly looking forward to the second

workshop themed “Blogs and Blogging

Community” which will take place on March

24th at the American Educational Center.

FULL ALBUM

On March 24th at the American Educational Center the participants of “The Computing project” met for

the second time. This second workshop was especially dedicated to understanding the importance of

Blogs, their usage and how everyone can get involved in the blogging community. Ana Dajovska, AC

Bitola Staff and Business Informatics master student, started the workshop with a short introduction of

the history of Blogs and a written story on how Blogs are used in real life. Ana introduced the

participants to the most popular blogging sites and showed examples of blogs built on those sites.

Taking in consideration the fast lifestyle we all practice, Microblogging was introduced as one especially

efficient way of expressing individual opinion via short posts on the two most frequently used

microblogging sites: Twitter and Tumblr. After learning the most important roles of the Blogs as a way to

connect with people, expressing opinion and exchanging information, the practical part of the workshop

followed. Every participant got a task to start their own blog and during this process Ana explained the

most important elements when creating one. After successfully finished first task, the participants were

divided in two teams and got their homework connected with Microblogging and finding a useful tip or

app which they think would be the best to use for the AC Bitola’s Twitter profile. The winning solution

resulting from the second task will be applied on the actual ACB Twitter profile:

https://twitter.com/#!/ACMBitola

“This new world of geographical togetherness has been brought about, to a great extent, by man's scientific and

technological genius. Man has been able to dwarf distance, place time in chains and carve highways through the

stratosphere. Through our scientific genius, we have made the world a neighborhood…”- Martin Luther King, Jr.

As part of “The Computing

project” the “Conferencing with

AC Belgrade” event took place

on April 4th at the American

Corner Bitola. Videoconferences

and their importance in learning

more about the possibilities to

connect trough videos and be

included in different learning

experiences such as DVC

conferences, Co.Nx sessions or

joining a talk via “ooVoo” or

“Skype” were the main goals of the

workshop. During this event, the participant had an amazing opportunity to meet the AC Belgrade

Coordinators Sandra Nikolic and Branka Stojicevic. The video conferencing system and how it works was

planned to be introduced to the participants, and the AC Bitola and AC Belgrade connected through the

Digital Videoconferencing System in live broadcasting. After this test connection, in order to see other

connecting possibilities, the conference continued on Skype, where Sandra and Branka presented the AC

Belgrade and their programs via presentation on Sky Drive. To make this conference more exclusive,

through this video conference the participants of “The

Computing project” got an opportunity to take a look at the

“Little school of design” which was happening at the AC

Belgrade at the same time as the video conference. After

the stunning meeting with AC Belgrade, the basics

elements of videoconferencing were presented, and Ana

Dajovska, AC Bitola Staff and a Business Informatics master

student, initiated a brainstorming session where the high

school students gave their ideas of how videoconferences

can be used. By seeing the benefits of videoconferencing,

the main ways to get involved and use this technology, the

necessary tools, as well as the H.323 Standard for Videoconferencing systems, the participants were

amazed by the functionality of this concept of video collaboration and were immediately motivated to

take part in it. In conclusion, this workshop besides being a good opportunity to introduce the teenagers

to the various usages of the Internet as a tool was also a great way to cooperate an d enhance video

collaboration with the AC Belgrade, and the AC Bitola would like to thank them for their effort and

immediate response to AC Bitola’s invitation!

The fourth workshop of “The Computing project” took place on May 2nd at the American Corner Bitola.

This time the nine high school students who are part of this

project had the opportunity to learn more about video and

photo editing software. Camtasia Visual Studio and Photoshop

were the two programs that were presented to the students. The

workshop started

with an

introduction to

Camtasia Visual

studio and Goran

Dajovski,

Technical faculty graduate, talked more about the

program, the editing options it offers, and showed

numerous practical examples on how to use it. After the

first part, Zoran Malakovski, Technical faculty student,

continued to the photo editing session and guided the participants through the Photoshop learning

experience. Zoran’s precision in editing photos amazed the participants and everyone enjoyed in

learning more about the options and usage of this program. Practical examples were shown together

with tutorial videos which contributed this workshop to be a great learning experience for everyone

present. The interesting topic of the workshop initiated numerous questions about Camtasia Visual

studio and Photoshop, and the options they offer compared to other software available nowadays.

The fifth workshop of “The Computing project” dedicated to searching the available data bases and using

various internet resources was divided in

three stages. The first part took place on

April 17th when the AC Bitola had the honor

to host the representatives from the Library

of Congress, and the World digital Library.

After this astonishing presentation, the

participants of “The Computing project”

shared their impressions on the ooVoo

meeting which took place on May 6th. During

this session the participants were given

different links from useful Internet resources

by the AC Staff Ana Dajovska. On the ooVoo

session the Twitter apps the participants found

were showed as part of the completed tasks by

the two teams. To round this workshop, the

participants gathered at

the Corner on

May 11th in

order to

approach the Corner’s eLibraryUSA account and to check the

resources available to them on www.elibraryusa.state.gov to which

they can access from the Corner. For this session, the participants of the

project also requested an introduction to the

amazing website for making interesting

presentations- www.prezi.com, and Ana Dajovska,

AC Staff gave a short twenty minutes tutorial on

how to use Prezi. Also, the new editing options

offered by Prezi will be used as an introduction to

the last workshop of “The Computing project” which

will take place on May 31st where the participants

will have the chance to hear and learn more about

the phenomenon of Cloud Computing.

The two months project aimed to efficient usage of the

Internet technology for youth was rounded on the

Saturday afternoon on June 2nd at the American

Educational Center. The final workshop named as “Cloud

Computing” was dedicated to learning about the new

cloud computing applications and software, and the

certificates awarding ceremony. At the beginning of the

workshop the participants were invited to the Prezi

meeting via their e-mail addresses and everyone was

following the presentation from their own desktop

computer. Ana Dajovska, AC Staff and Business

Informatics Master Student, talked more about the Cloud

computing phenomenon as something that paints the

future of IT and as a future way for online collaboration.

As a pre-presentation activity, just to sense the cloud

computing usage and the collaboration possibilities it

offers, the ten participants of the project were jointly

editing a Prezi in which they put their impressions and

shared their opinion about the project which can be

found HERE. Introduction to cloud computing concept of

Google and efficient usage of the possibilities offered by

Google Drive was the core topic of the presentation. By

explaining the difference between

the public and private cloud

computing, as well as the different

cloud computing platforms offered

by the companies who invest in this

software were also mentioned.

Different apps for photo and video

editing, data storage, online

collaboration and much more were

displayed and the participants had

the opportunity to dive into the sea

of cloud apps on the Internet. After

the workshop, the certificates

awarding ceremony took its turn

and everyone present received

their certificate, evaluation form,

EdUSA promotional materials and a

Individual sessions on how to use Prezi concerning some details and instructions. – at the AC Bitola

small gift by the Corner. Ten students ages 14-17 finished the project and were part of the first initiative

of this kind at the American Corner Bitola. To end the project in flying colors, Team 1 comppiled by Stefan

B., Nevena, Angela, Nikola and Stefan D., found a Tweeter app as part of their task which will be applied

on AC Bitola’s Twitter profile. At the

very end, the AC Bitola would like to

thank Angela Gorgievska, Stefan

Baltov, Nevena Todorovska, Stefan

Dzalev, Katerina Kolevska, Tomislav

Matlievski, Andrijana Jovanovska,

Mihail Krstevski, Georgie Femic and

Nikola Gelov for their interest,

innovativeness and contribution to

“The Computing project”.

The AC Bitola is eagerly looking

forward to the new season of this

project in the Fall 2012, when the

number of participants for the

project will be tripled.