Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

08/08/08

Beijing 2008 Olympic Opening Ceremony - A Show You Do Not Want to Miss

Filed under: A Good Day, China News, China Travel — timwang @ 12:03:31 pm

I woke up at 5:00 AM Vancouver time to watch the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony and I am glad I did. It was a magnificent show! Hope the following images will encourage you to watch it later if you have missed it! I have recommended all of my friends to watch it tonight when NBC shows it again.

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-bird-net-overview

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-bird-net-overview

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-five-rings

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-five-rings

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-chinese-painting-scroll

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-chinese-painting-scroll

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-dance-on-people

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-dance-on-people

2008-beijing-olympic-taichi

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-taichi

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-confucius

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-confucius

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-chinese-opera

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-chinese-opera

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-birdnet-by-people

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-birdnet-by-people

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-sining-on-globe

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-sining-on-globe

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-sail

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-sail

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-chinese-word

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-chinese-word

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-traditional-dress

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-traditional-dress

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-fireworks-red

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-fireworks-red

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-welcome-to-beijing

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-welcome-to-beijing

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-the-big-torch

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-the-big-torch

2008-beijing-olympic-opening-ceremony-canada-team

2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony-Canadian-team

05/12/08

China Earthquake

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 01:28:26 pm

A few hours ago, some one left a comment on my blog, that's how I first found out about the earthquake. Here's the original post:
"At that time, i was sleeping in my bedroom.My school were in Chongqing. At first, i thought i were having a dream ,but after a short time, i realized it was an earthquake. It was much noise outside.All the people flooded from the building. I just took a trousers with bare foot and jump out of my bed. Everyone was nervous and anxiety. It looks like the end day of the world. After a few minutes, people remembered calling the friends or families how they were. But they found the cell phone cannt be used. After a long time, may be half an hour, the communication was recovered. You can see nearly every one were calling. Some were afraid, the other were exciting for it was his first time:(. An hour later, people came down, but a few stay outside still. How terrible the noon is!" - 05/12/08 @ 02:44 (Vancouver Time)

This is a rather power earthquake with a magnitude of 7.9! Equivalent to 250+ Nuclear Bombs... The death so far has been over 8,600.

01/01/08

2008 Is An Important Year for the Chinese

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 06:02:03 pm

While many western people are wondering, "what's the big deal of Olympic?", there are 1.2+ billion people (1/6 of the entire world population) busy preparing for the event without any doubt and hesitation in their mind that this is THE most important event of the year - Beijing 2008 Olympic. There were over 30 major cities celebrated 2008 New Year's Eve with great wishes to the coming Olympics. Here are some photos from "the bell" at the:

Beijing New Year 2008 Olympic - China Century Monument Bell

Beijing New Year 2008 Olympic - China Century Monument Bell

Beijing New Year 2008 Olympic Flag

Beijing New Year 2008 Olympic Flag

Beijing Olympic We Are Ready

Beijing Olympic We Are Ready

11/01/07

Olympic 2008 Ticket Price and Beijing Olympic Game Schedule

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 10:56:10 pm

Opening Ceremony 200-5000 yuan ($27-$667), August 8 20:00-23:59
Closing Ceremony 150-3000 yuan ($20-$400), August 24 20:00-23:59
Archery 50-100 yuan ($7-$13), August 9 to August 15
Athletics 50-800 yuan ($7-$107) August 15 to August 24
Badminton 50-500 yuan ($7-$67) August 9 to August 17
Baseball 30-150 yuan ($4-$20) August 13 to August 23
Basketball 50-1000 yuan ($7-$133) August 9 to August 24
Beach Volleyball 50-400 yuan ($7-$53) August 9 to August 22
Boxing 30-400 yuan ($4-$53) August 9 to August 24
Canoe 30-80 yuan ($4-$11) August 18 to August 23
Kayak 30-100 yuan ($4-$13) August 11 to August 14
Mountain Bike 30 yuan ($4) August 22 to August 23
Cycling Road Free ($0) August 9 to August 10 and August 13
Cycling Track 50-100 yuan ($7-$13) August 15 to August 19
Diving 60-500 yuan ($8-$67) August 10 to August 23
Equestrian 40-400 yuan ($5-$53) August 9 to August 20
Fencing 50-100 yuan ($7-$13) August 9 to August 17
Football/Soccer 40-800 yuan ($5-$106) August 6 to August 23
Gymnastics (Artistic) 50-300 yuan ($7-$40) August 9 to August 19
Gymnastics (Rhythmic) 100-400 yuan ($13-$53) August 21 to August 24
Trampoline 50-100 yuan ($7-$13) August 16 to August 19
Handball 30-300 yuan ($4-$40) August 9 to August 24
Hockey 30-150 yuan ($4-$20) August 10 to August 23
Judo 50-200 yuan ($7-$27) August 9 to August 15
Modern Pentathlon 30-200 yuan ($4-$27) August 21 to August 22
Rowing 30-80 yuan ($4-$11) August 9 to August 17
Sailing 120-600 yuan ($16-$80) August 9 to August 21
Shooting 30-50 yuan ($4-$7) August 9 to August 17
Softball 30-120 yuan ($4-$16) August 12 August 21
Swimming 30-800 yuan ($4-107) August 9 to August 21
Synchronized Swimming 60-500 yuan ($8-$67) August 18 to August 23
Table Tennis 50-800 yuan ($7-$107) August 13 to August 23
Taekwondo 50-200 yuan ($7-$27) August 20 to August 23
Tennis 100-600 yuan ($13-$80) August 10 to August 17
Triathlon 50 yuan ($7) August 18 to August 19
Volleyball 50-800 yuan ($7-$107) August 9 to August 24
Water Polo 30-400 yuan ($4-$53) August 10 to August 24
Weightlifting 30-200 yuan ($4-$27) August 9 to August 19
Wrestling 50-200 yuan ($7-$27) August 12 to August 21
Beijing Olympic 2008 Game Schedule and Ticket Price

10/11/07

The Largest Bus in Operation Today - Super Bus in Hangzhou

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 05:15:08 pm

China recently introduced a new giant bus - "The Super Liner" with a capacity of 300 passengers and 25 meters long (13 meters longer than a regular bus). The first operational "super bus" was seen today in Hangzhou, a city very close to Shanghai. It looks like a train running off the track. The bus stations must be half block long as well. I really admire the driver of this one.
Largest Bus Super Bus 25 meters long 300 people
Largest Bus Super Bus 25 meters long 300 people

08/20/07

Mobile English in China for 2008 Olympic

Filed under: Chinese e-Learning Industry, China News — timwang @ 10:26:15 pm

The official language training service provider to the 2008 Olympic - EF announced recently that they are launching the "Mobile English Platform" which aims to deliver multimedia language training contents to mobile devices. Considering the 450+ million mobile phone users in China, plus the enthusiasm of learning English for the 2008 Olympics, this service will certainly penetrate a large crowd.

04/26/07

2008 Beijing Olympic Torch Relay

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 01:28:46 pm

Beijing officials have just revealed the 2008 Olympic Torch design and the planned route of the Olympic Torch Relay. I like the torch design a lot. Both the shape and texture are beautiful. The “Propitious Cloud” texture is a traditional Chinese symbol of peace. I am glad they didn't use any Chinese Dragon or Phoenix symbols which is too much of the old Chinese imperialism. According to the Chinese press, the design was done by Lenovo and the torch implementation was done by the Chinese Space Research Lab.
2008 Beijing Olympic Torch Relay
2008 Beijing Olympic Torch Relay

The Beijing Olympic torch relay, which will travel the longest route and involve the most people in the Olympic history, will display the beautiful Chinese scenery and rich culture to the world, as well as spread the ideas of peace, friendship and harmony. - Jiang Xiaoyu, BOCOG (Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Games).

The Olympic Torch Relay is titled as “Journey of Harmony”. It will begin on March 30th 2008 from Athen, with the lighting of the flame at Olympia. A grand launching ceremony for the torch relay will be held in Beijing on the following day to mark the start, with the flame heading for its first stop Almaty, Kazakhstan, on April 1. A split of the fire will be preserved to accompany the professional mountain climbers to the highest point of earth – Mount Everest at Himalaya.

The entire Olympic Relay will take 130 days traveling 137000 kilometers. The official web site of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Torch Relay is at: http://torchrelay.beijing2008.cn

04/16/07

2008 Beijing Olympic Game Tickets Purchasing Starts

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 02:36:40 am

A press release in regard to the 2008 Olympic tickets was made today by the Beijing Olympic officials (BOCOG). Olympic fans from the world can now register for their tickets purchases starting today. According to the press release, 75% of the overall tickets are reserved for the audiences in China and 25% of the tickets are aiming for the foreigners. There are over 700 million tickets available in total. This means the Beijing Olympic 2008 is expecting for over 175 million visitors around the world.

There will be three phases of the ticket purchasing process. From April to September 2007 is phase 1. October to December 2007 is phase 2 and April to the 2008 Olympic date (august) is phase 3.

Phase 1 is a lottery process, BOCOG is accepting ticket application requests through this ticketing website and designated Bank of China Olympic Ticket Outlets throughout China. Applications for any over-subscribed sessions will enter a random selection. Whether you submit your application early or on the last day, you will have an equal chance of securing tickets.

Phase 2 is “first come first serve” process where fans can purchase ticket through official web sites and banks. 50% of the overall tickets are expected to be sold in this phase.

All remaining tickets will be sold in phase 3 at the competition site or local ticket masters.

The official 2008 Beijing Olympic tickets purchasing information can be found at:

http://www.tickets.beijing2008.cn
you can choose the English version at the top left of the home page.

A tip for North American fans, you might want to try the web site in day time (8:00 AM to 3:00 PM) or the site is extremely slow. And sometimes inaccessible.
Beijing Olympic 2008 Logo

07/04/06

How Serious are the Chinese Soccer Fans?

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 02:28:51 am

Just how serious can a soccer fan be? Well, here are some examples from Chinese soccer fans facing the World Cup: a man saves his TV from his own burning house and rushing to an electricity plug; another one quit his job in order to watch the tournament freely; others make deals with their wives to do all house work during the month so they can follow the games uninterrupted. Here is the full story:

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Beijing soccer fan refused to let the small matter of his house burning down disturb his enjoyment of Tuesday's World Cup match between France and Spain.
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A fire broke out in a hutong in the center of the Chinese capital at 3am local time Wednesday -- kickoff time in Hanover -- and gutted the traditional courtyard dwelling, the Beijing Daily Messenger reported.

"When the neighbors shouted 'fire!', I took my little baby and ran out in my nightclothes," the man's wife told the paper.

"My husband paid no attention to the danger, just grabbed the television and put it under his arm.

"After getting out of the house, he then set about finding an electric socket to plug in and continue watching his game."

The anti-social timing of the matches broadcast from Germany, which is six hours behind China, has forced some Chinese fans to go to great lengths to follow the action.

One man quit his job in Beijing to return to his hometown Chongqing so he could watch the whole tournament uninterrupted.

State news agency Xinhua reported that the 23-year-old's boss at the IT company had offered him a pay rise, but he turned it down flat, saying the World Cup was more important than his job.

The Guangzhou Daily reported that local police were forced to release a thief arrested for stealing a mobile phone when the victim refused to press charges because he did not want to miss the start of a match.

Although there are also many female World Cup fans in China, one man in the southeastern city had to sign a contract with his wife agreeing to do all the housework during the month of the finals so he could watch the matches at night.

Another from Putian, Fujian province, took a less diplomatic approach, Xinhua reported.

When his cheers during the Argentina-Ivory Coast match woke his wife and she switched off the television, he locked her in their bedroom and settled back down to watch the game ignoring her loud protests.

07/03/06

Beijing Earthquake 20 Minutes Ago

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 09:35:35 pm

A friend of mine sent a short msg to my cell phone 30 minutes ago about "an earthquake in BeiJing". She works in Zhong Guan Cun (Silicon Valley of China), Beijing and felt the shake on the 11th floor. It should been around 12:00 PM Beijing Time.

*** UPDATE:

Yep, Confirmed from Google News:

BEIJING - A medium-sized earthquake shook northern China on Tuesday, but no injuries were immediately reported, state television said.

State television said the quake was a magnitude 5.1 and struck around noon in an area of populous Hebei province, which surrounds the capital Beijing. The U.S. Geological Survey put the magnitude at 4.9 and said the epicenter was on the Beijing-Hebei border, about 55 miles south of the capital.

The quake could be felt in Beijing but there were no immediate reports of damage.

06/04/06

Earn Money While Chatting

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 08:25:15 pm

A new career has been surfaced among the Chinese university and college students: chat with some one online and get paid! Just in case you wonder, no pornographic contents allowed in the service. The college students simply voice chat with the clients using standard video conference systems like MSN Messenger or QQ. The clients also have the option of asking the other party to play some online games (chess, MJ, Card Games etc.) along the way. The students who provide these services get paid at an average of 5000 Yuan (CAD $800) per month which is even more than what they could earn after the graduation. What are the clients looking for? Make some friends with the educated people and sometime seeking for some fresh ideas in life, according to the Chinese article... I am still a little skeptical about the service which I believe it can be easily abused and sometime bring dangerous to the service providers...

05/29/06

The Dirtiest City in The World - Lin Fen

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 04:24:45 pm

Every wondered where is the dirtiest city in the world? The answer is Lin Fen, Shan Xi, China. The world bank recently conducted a study over 20 most polluted sites around the globe, 16 of them are in China! And the top 10 are all from Shan Xi province. Lin Fen is a small city (20589 square meters with a population of 4.05 million)in Shan Xi. The city has quite a few heavy industrial factories. A CNN reporter went to the city for the follow up investigation, he only lasted one day and left the city with itchy eyes, chest pain and sour throat! The air and water are heavily polluted in the city. Residents complains that the local government knew about the pollution for long time but never did anything about it.

Dirtiest City Lin Fen

05/22/06

Microsoft Provides Education Training to China Rural Communities

Filed under: New Initiatives, China News, Doing Business in China, Microsoft — timwang @ 09:03:47 pm

Steve Ballmer has signed a memorandum with China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) to help the Chinese government with the economic development in China’s rural areas.

"Microsoft will work closely with MII to reduce the digital divide and increase informatization in China’s rural communities." - Steve Ballmer

In this memorandum, Steve has promised that Microsoft will use technology to provide career training to thousands of educators in non-developed areas and will help the Chinese government to deliver distance education to hundreds thousands of students in the country sides. This echoes the recent polices on making rural development a priority.

Microsoft has also promised to train more than 70,000 software engineers through a combination of classroom instruction and distance learning. This deal seems to be a formal response to the high-profile April visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. The Chinese government has promised to further enforce all government organizations use copy-righted software and strengthening the regulations on software piracy. Not to mention, Lenovo (the Chinese company who acquired IBM personal computer division) just signed a $1.2 billion deal with Microsoft.

04/26/06

Shaolin Temple into High Tech

Filed under: China News, China Travel — timwang @ 10:15:09 pm

The official Shaolin Temple web site (

www.shaolin.org.cn</code>) has been established for some time now. They are still struggling with the English version of it. The site has rich information on Shaolin Kung Fu (Traditional Chinese Martial Arts) and Buddhism. From the site, people can see the past and the present Shaolin Temple. Following the recent visit of the Russia's acting President - Vladimir Putin, Shaolin temple is once again under the flash lights of the international reporters. It's interesting to know that most of the Shaolin monks in the temple has a cell phone and the younger generations are hooked to the net just like other teenagers in China. They communicate to the world through instant messaging and email. Over the last hundreds of years, Shaolin temple has changed rapidly. However, its well known reputation in the Kung Fu world remains the same.

04/20/06

Chinese K12 Teachers Use Blog to Communicate with Parents

Filed under: Cerebration, Chinese e-Learning Industry, China News — timwang @ 11:54:04 pm

There are fair amount of K12 instructors in China use blog to communicate and exchange information with the students' parents.

Today's China has a rapid growing economy where parents are often experiencing lack of communication to their kids and the school. Blogs become the best and most efficient tool for them to learn and understand more about their own children. Parents also use blogs to send their feed backs, questions and concerns to the school and teachers. This helps to avoid Unessasary misunderstandings and assures the transparencies when conflicts occur.

According to a recent report, there are over 60% parents surf on Internet in the major cities of China.

04/15/06

Google's First Name in Foreign Languages

Filed under: China News, Doing Business in China, Google — timwang @ 09:33:35 pm

Google just announced it's Chinese name - 谷歌 in Beijing on April 12. (谷 - gǔ - grain / corn / valley 歌 - gē - song) Together, Google's new Chinese name can be translated as "harvest song" and the Chinese pronounciation is very similiar to "google" in English. This is Google's first name in foreign languages which is purposed for the non-English speaking Chinese surfers. 谷歌.cn had been registered by Google.

This action has sparked a wave of registration of Guge-related domain names. Domain names that has the "guge" combination are all gone as of today.

Google's New Chinese Name

04/05/06

ADSL Speed Increase in Beijing China

Filed under: China News, China Internet — timwang @ 11:35:50 pm

The common speed with ADSL services in China are still 512KB to 1MB per second. However, in order to secure and expand the market, Beijing Telecom has just recently decided to increase the ADSL Internet service speed to 2MBPS. The new speed is twice or somewhere even four times faster than the previous services. All ADSL users in Beijing may apply to upgrade.

This "speed competition" was started by BBN, who has upgraded their customers' ADSL speed form 512K to 1M late in 2004. From doing so, BBN successfully took over 70% of ADSL coverage in Beijing. Beijing Telecom now offers a higher speed and some nice deals such as free installation (used to cost 300 RMB / 45 CAD$), 300-1000 RMB discount on the annual service fee. This is a great start for the Chinese Internet service consumers. It's about time to see some great acceleration on the Internet speed over mainland China.

03/07/06

Electronic 3D Road Maps on Chinese Streets

Filed under: China News, 3D Art — timwang @ 04:56:16 pm

Hang Zhou, a well known beautiful city in southern China, has recently rolled out their electronic commissioners of the streets - 3D road map terminals around the city block. The public pedestrians will be able to explore through a 3D graphic to locate all public facilities (Hospital, Parks, Market Places and Transportation Stations) within 500 meter radius from the terminal.

Hang Zhou 3D Road Map

Hang Zhou 3D Road Map

02/27/06

Internet Accessbility Gaining Importance in China

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 03:03:47 am

There are 60 million disabled people in China. Among them, there are about 9 million blind people. The number of blind people in China is still increasing by 400,000 a year. To help these disable people learning the world wide web is a challenging task. There are still many technical difficulties to over come when it comes to Chinese web page screen readings due to the specific language and the way most of the Chinese web sites are constructed. However, there are several research organizations in China are now dedicated to improve the accessibility issues on Chinese language based web contents. These organizations are sponsored by the CDPF (China Disabled Persons' Federation) and many international corporations.

Accessibility China

02/26/06

China Fully in Control of .CN domain names

Filed under: China News, China Internet — timwang @ 09:17:23 pm

Starting from March 1st 2006, the Chinese government will completely control the distribution of all .CN domain names. This include the four critical domain sublets: COM.CN, AC.CN, GOV.CN, and MIL.CN. Before the date, most Chinese domain registrations relied on DNS (Domain Name Servers) of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in the US. (Fact: ICANN controlled 1,500,000 Chinese domain names and the Chinese DNS servers control the other 1,090,000 domain names)

Starting in March, all of the Chinese government and military organization domain distributions and domain name mapping request will be processed by Chinese DNS. This means the request statistics of the government and military organization web site can be covered and hidden from the US much easier. These web sites and email services are no longer under foreign "surveillance".

02/25/06

Beijing Using High-Tech to Control Public Spitting?

Filed under: China News — timwang @ 11:59:28 pm

Just recently, people in Beijing would find quite a few new "white vans" appearing all over the city streets. These vans look somewhat similar to the television news reporting van, which are equipped with high-end video camera (360 degree surveillance). The people working in the Van are not working for any of the news agencies, nor the intelligence agencies. They are with the city engineering department to catch spitters. Spitting in public is an obvious problem in China, due to the mass amount of smokers, spitting is becoming a quite disgusting issue in most of the Chinese cities. The Beijing government now days are really serious about the matter and equipped the city workers with the new tool - a mobile surveillance camera to catch public spitters. If one get caught, he/she will be ordered to clean the sputum and then pay a fine. I don't know if this is a violation of human right, but it is surely needed IMHO.

surveillance van for spitting

02/22/06

Lenovo - The First Chinese Olympic Sponsor

Filed under: China News, Hardware — timwang @ 10:26:43 pm

Lenovo acquired the personal computer department of IBM in 2005. The 2006 Winter Olympic, Lenovo becomes the first official Olympic sponsor from China. (From: Xinhua Net)

It was a sad moment to watch Canada Men's hockey team lost in the quater finals. Man, the last period... Many friends question if this "SUPER STAR" team actually is the best team to represent Canada. Maybe a team with a bit more "team spirit" would have result a better outcome. All I care is I better get a ticket to the 2010 Olympic game which is HERE - Vancouver!

Lenovo Olympic

02/12/06

Chinese Provincial Ministry of Education are Qualifing Distance Education Providers

Filed under: Chinese e-Learning Industry, China News, Doing Business in China — timwang @ 10:10:38 pm

Jiang Su, one of the best developed coast provinces in China has launched a qualification process over all distance education service providers across the province in the new year. 282 high education DE&T sites were examined and 18 got terminated. The disqualified service providers and the ones are pending for the qualification are not allowed to enroll students and advertise about the service within the province.

It's good to see there is some type of qualification acts being initialized for the over-whelmed and crowded distance education market in China. There are hundreds of high education institutions across the country and almost every single one of them have an independent, self-funded DE&T unit. However, on the other hand, most of the university and colleges don't have any technology aided learning platform for the face to face learnings. Online studies has been driven by pure profit in China for years. But here are the un-answered questions: who should be the agency to provide the qualifications? What evaluation procedures are taken in the process? How to prevent GuanXi (relationship) corruption being factored into the process?

12/17/05

China Internet Speed Increased

Filed under: Chinese e-Learning Industry, China News, China Internet — timwang @ 09:31:39 pm

Hi from Beijing China. Great weather here but a lot colder and drier than Vancouver. It's funny that the cab driver told me that the government of Beijing made a promise to the citizen that they would do their best to improve the air pollution in the city and they even guaranteed 200+ days of blue sky! It looks like their promise has been achieved as if today, 14 days before the year ends. I am sure the Mayor has crossed his fingers for less raining days as well.

Anyway, the biggest change I have experienced besides 100+ high rise buildings popped up beside my residence is that the Internet speed has increased dramatically by my ISP (ChinaNetCom). At a speed of 100Mbps, I can surf the American web sites at a fairly reasonable speed. I can watch most of the new Hollywood movie trailers, voice chat with my friends in Vancouver, Toronto and Amsterdam. Asian sites of course load much faster. I can watch full length movie and TV programs via this Internet connection at a better quality than the non-digital cable services! Will try some bench mark sites in the next few days to collect some first hand data, stay tuned. :)

11/13/05

Online TOEFL in China by 2006

Filed under: New Initiatives, Chinese e-Learning Industry, China News, Language Learning — timwang @ 11:56:07 pm

ETS launched the new version of TOEFL this summer and the first online TOEFL test took place at the end of September. So far the test has been taken place at the Thomson Prometric testing centres across the United States. According to ETS, the online testing environment will be launched in China by May, 2006. This means millions of Chinese scholars will be able to take the test online within China by then.

Web based TOEFL is the first Internet based English qualification and certification process. What's worth to mention is ETS has nicely incorporated the oral testing components into the online testing environment. This is aimed to increase the participants' communication and expression skills. ETS does not differentiate the oral tests from the rest of the exam. Instead, all four (reading, writ in, listening and speaking) topics are evenly balanced together. For example, participants are asked to read an essay and listen to a recording, then to answer the question via voice recording or writing an essay. A standard online TOEFL will take approximately 4 hours.

For the new TOEFL voice testing, instead of a face to face interview, ETS requires participants to record their vocal answers and the voice recordings will be scored by 3 to 6 qualified markers. I am curious to find out the recording technology they are using and how are the file compression effecting the quality of the recording thus may effect the participants' final TOEFL score.

10/23/05

100 Wirless Campuses Across China

Filed under: China News, Doing Business in China — timwang @ 11:12:17 pm

Six universities in Guo Zhou, (Guang Dong Province, China) just launched the first city wide wireless campus network this month. This project is a part of the bigger initiative - 100 university campuses over entire China launch wireless networks by the end of the year 2005. This project is initiated by China Education and Research Network and partially financed by Bank of Beijing, Shanghai PuDong Development Bank and several other financial organizations. This project also involves providing 50,000 specially designed (efficient and highly mobile) laptop computers to all universities across China at fairly low price. The banks will provide mortgage plans to help the institutions and students to finance the purchases.

The initiative is targeting for establishing 500 wireless post-secondary campuses across China by the end of the year 2007.

10/06/05

Open Courseware in China - OOPS

Filed under: Chinese e-Learning Industry, China News, Open Source, Open Source Community — timwang @ 02:53:18 am

OOPS stands for "Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System". This is a huge "Course Translation" project. Open Courseware is not a strange term for Chinese. The China Open Resources for Education (CORE) who has been looking into MIT's Open Courseware for a while. Recently, a large consortium funded by a Taiwanese creative foundation (fantacy.org.tw) has initiated a project which will translate many foreign open coursewares such as MIT's Open Courseware and courses from public health department of Johns Hopkins University into Chinese. This will allow many Chinese academics to be exposed to the first class learning content around the world. This organization now has over 1500 Chinese volunteers to do the translation, publication and web development. This will be the world largest course translation project. There are currently 55 courses completed translation, 305 courses partially online, 920 courses in progress. Over 6000-8000 learners browse the web site each day which sums up to over 120 thousands visitors per month.
Simplified Chinese version (mainland Chinese, Singapore):

www.cocw.net</code>
Traditional Chinese Version (Taiwan region and HK): www.twocw.net</code>

09/29/05

Baidu Beats Google in Delivering Online Map of China. Google VS Baidu

Filed under: China News, Google — timwang @ 09:52:47 pm

Baidu beats Google in delivering detailed online map of Chinese cities. You can now browse through a quite detailed online map database through map.baidu.com. It does not yet have the "Satellite" version but the city maps are quite accurate and impressive. For some reason, Google has not yet attached Chinese maps with their map engine although you can see some detailed satellite images of some major cities in China.

Baidu is one of the leading Chinese search engines. It uses similar spider (bot) driven data collection structure as Google in archiving and indexing online contents. There had been rumors on how baidu “Copied” ideas from Google. From a user’s perspective, there are definitely many similarities between the two search engines. One thing Baidu does and Google doesn’t do is MP3 indexing. It is quite insane how many mp3 songs you can search and download through Baidu MP3 search engine. This has raised some serious concerns over intellectual property and copy rights related issues. Over the last few years, Google has purchased some significant stakes of Baidu. However MP3 searches help Baidu to generate their loyal client communities. So, it’s less likely for Baidu to completely abandon this service in the near future. I am anxious to find out how is Google China going to work with Baidu in the super heated search engine industry.

Google Map VS. Baidu Map

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