PEOI's September 2004 Newsletter

Greetings to all PEOI volunteers:

Welcome back! Hope you had a nice summer vacation.
It is now time to go back to serious business. There
is a lot to do at PEOI. But fortunately, there are excellent
volunteers to do the work. As you can see below the pace
of new volunteers joining PEOI continued to be very strong
even in these slow summer months. Most notable is the fact
that the proportion of new volunteers staying and registering
at PEOI has considerably increased from about one third in
the previous years, to over three quarters now. This suggests
that PEOI is less of an unknown, and people who
come to PEOI are already committed to join. The work completed
does not, however, accelerate. It is suspected that PEOI
still does not offer clarity as to what has to be done and how.
To this end, a volunteers management system has been under
construction (see below).

Five new courses that have been started.
They are bound to be major additions to PEOI course
offering. The following authors deserve our respect and admiration:
- "Basics of Urbanism" by zora djordjevic-dancevic (faculty #231)
from Serbia;
- "Introduction to Social Security" by MADHAVA Rao,
(faculty #270) from India;
- "HTML Fundamentals" by Ahmed Ebeid (faculty #253) from Egypt;
- "Management Communications" by Devi Akella (faculty #262) from India;
- "Computer Networks" by Bhaskar Choubey (faculty #263) from
India, currently in doctoral program at Oxford University, UK;

As before, this newsletter will cover
- presentation of new volunteers,
- review of statistics,
- major recent work completed,
- what PEOI is working on now.

NEW VOLUNTEERS WELCOME

We are all delighted to have the following new volunteers among us
seven new staff volunteers in July:

Maria Canete (staff #135) from Argentina, Spanish Translator
Jeannette Cruz (staff #141) from United States, Volunteer
Alice Dugan (staff #136) from Philippines, Narrator for ESL course
Martin Hilario Mapolon (staff #138) from Philippines, Faculty
DeAndrae Satcher (staff #139) from United States, web design assistant
fanny syariful alam (staff #137) from Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian team
Jairo Zacarias (staff #140) from United States, Spanish translator

eleven new staff volunteersin August:

James Anderson (staff #152) from United States, ESL Support
Allyson Brown (staff #148) from United States, ESL author
Darcy Christianson (staff #151) from United States, ESL teacher/course designer
Raman Dhiman (staff #144) from India, virtual illustrator for ESL
Bertrand Gunawan (staff #142) from Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian Transalator
Ramon Ignacio (staff #145) from Philippines, Country Representative
Ndongmo Lilian (staff #147) from Cameroon, French translation
Michelle Parks (staff #146) from United States, ESL Course Structure Team Leader
Jaishri Prakash (staff #149) from India, Volunteer Staff
akino tahir (staff #143) from Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesian team
Maritna Traore (staff #150) from France, French translator

23 faculty/authors/editors/translators in July

Anar Akhmedov (faculty #241) from Azerbaijan, Russian Translator
Ana Ballesteros (faculty #246) from Spain, Spanish Translator
Marie-Noelle de Chadarevian (faculty #237) from Lebanon, French Translator
zora djordjevic-dancevic (faculty #231) from Yugoslavia, Course Author
Ahmed Ebeid (faculty #253) from Egypt, Course Author
Rima Fattouh (faculty #239) from Lebanon, Arabic Translator
Olga Garcia Morilla (faculty #232) from Spain, Spanish Translator
Karime Garza (faculty #243) from Mexico, Spanish Translator
Jaime Gracia (faculty #238) from United States, Author
Wendy Griffin (faculty #233) from United States, Author
Jana Hammermueller (faculty #236) from Germany, German Translator
Jenny Izaguirre (faculty #240) from Venezuela, Author
Martha Jeans (faculty #251) from United States, French Translator
Alla Kareva (faculty #247) from Russia, Russian Translator
John Lambert (faculty #245) from United States, Author
Marina Orlova (faculty #250) from Canada, Russian Translator
Padma Shankar (faculty #234) from India, Faculty
Viktoria Skripkina (faculty #244) from Russia, Russian Translator
Sidi Soueina (faculty #242) from United States, Author
Subramaniam Sundaram (faculty #252) from India, Author
Daniel Valcarce Fdez (faculty #249) from Spain, Author
Billy Wibisono (faculty #235) from Iran, Author
Liu yong (faculty #248) from China, Chinese Translator

17 faculty/authors/editors/translators in August:

Devi Akella (faculty #262) from India, Author
AMITAVA BASU (faculty #260) from India, Author
Bhaskar Choubey (faculty #263) from India, Author
Ka Ming Fong (faculty #271) from China, Author
soudeh ghaffari (faculty #266) from Iran, Author
Sanja MacGillivray (faculty #265) from Canada, Serbian translator
Gertrude Obi (faculty #268) from United States, Translator
Eka Orr (faculty #259) from Indonesia, Translator
Eleni Papadopoulou (faculty #257) from Greece, Translator
Bina Rai (faculty #255) from United Kingdom, ESL Author
Sumitra Rajagopalan (faculty #269) from India, Author
MADHAVA Rao (faculty #270) from India, Author
Pierre-Alain Richardot (faculty #264) from France, French Translator
Kristine Salazar (faculty #258) from Philippines, ESL Author
Samir Sayed (faculty #256) from Egypt, Arabic Translator
t shajan (faculty #267) from India, Author
Yan Zhang (faculty #272) from China, Chinese Translator

3 board members in August

Cauvery Handa (board #30) from India,
Guilherme Rodrigues (board #29) from Brazil,
Peter Wells (board #26) from United Kingdom working in Romania,

If you have news about yourself that you would like to share with
PEOI volunteer community, please, do not hesitate to let me know.

REVIEW OF STATISTICS

With these new registrations in July and August, PEOI has 398 registered
volunteers from 55 countries, but a large proportion are inactive.
Completing a volunteers management system is made all the more imperative.

In July 2004, 47 new students registered at PEOI, compared to 20 a
year ago; in August there were 34 new students, compare to 26 a year ago.
This brings the total student registrations to 995.

You can see the break down of student statistics in "Statistics" part of "Students"
section. Likewise you can see breakdown of volunteers and information
about individual volunteers in "Volunteers recognized" part of "Support".

MAJOR WORK RECENTLY COMPLETED

- zora djordjevic-dancevic (faculty #231)has completed
chapters 1 and 2 of her course in Basics of Urbanism with
impressive drawings and pictures worth your visit to the course.
- Devi Akella (faculty #262) has drafted outlines for most of his
chapters of HTML Fundamentals.
- Thomas Lehwing has completed the translation of Chapter 2 of
Financial Analysis into Spanish.
- Yanan Zhang (translator #62) is making good progress translating
Microeconomics.
- Alice Dugan (staff #136) from Philippines, studying at
University of Akron, has created audio files for ESL level 1 course.

Please recognize the following outstanding four
individuals who have accepted to serve as coordinators
of their respective programs:
- Caroline Bellec as coordinator of ESL project has energized
the team and organized the work in separate groups;
- Heni Soelistyowati is coordinator of Bahasa Indonesian translation, and has
started the translation of the general text;
- Alla Kareva is coordinator of Russian translation team; translation
of courses into Russian has started anew;
- Maria Elena Vidal continues to serve as Spanish
programs coordinator and offers many useful ideas.
You can see their respective backgrounds with the help of the
"Volunteers recognized" procedure in "Support"

WHAT PEOI IS WORKING ON NOW

The major work that is now going on at PEOI is the installation of
a volunteer management system. It has been more time consuming and
complex than expected. But several of its components are now installed,
and start to be tested, with improvements made possible from suggestions
(such those of Sandrine Cortet). The volunteers management system is
important because it will provide information to all about
- who is doing what
- what needs to be done
- when is the work to be completed
- where is the work done
- how is the work done
- and what has been done by whom

You can see the system in the "Volunteers" section, access to which appears
in English PEOI welcome (or home) page once you are logged in. The two major
new procedures are "Set up project" and "Select tasks". You are invited
to take a look at them and forward your criticism, comments and
suggestions. The procedures for "Registration", "Statistics" and
"Volunteers listing" existed from before (but will soon also go through
an overhaul).

A by-product of the development of the volunteer management system is
the creation of two new procedures. "Edit pages" allows translation,
correction and improvement of general text pages. "Edit procedures" allows
to do the same for the hidden text files used in procedures. These two
procedures will make it possible to eliminate errors or omissions
in text in all languages. It will also make it possible to add new
languages quickly and accurately. The Bahasa Indonesian team has been
kind enough to test the procedures. Your comments are also welcome
(if you can find access to these procedures).

Another development at PEOI is its navigational system which has been
criticized by many. You can see the different directions explored by
switching the "banner" setting on the bottom of the English PEOI welcome
page after you are logged in. When trying out these different
templates, keep in mind that many links are not yet operational
(especially in banners 2 and 3). However, the two new procedures
"Edit pages" and "Edit procedures" can be easily found in the
"Volunteers" section using banners 4 or 5. Please give me your
advice as to which banner you prefer so that I can concentrate on
making improvements in that one.

Other current developments:

New individuals and organizations continue to build relationships with
PEOI. One is the CampusSource from Germany, which offers learning
management system (as open source) and which will offer CampusContent
at http://www.campuscontent.de (similar to PEOI) starting in January.
(Thanks to Miguel Arce for giving me the contact to Professor Kaderali.)
Diane Beckler will be promoting PEOI among the retired scientists at
Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. If you are aware of similar organizations
or groups, please put PEOI in contact with them.

PEOI has started bidding on education delivery projects. One was
tendered by NASDAQ for teaching the general public in the use of securities
trading. Another one involved delivering training to law enforcement
personnel for drug trafficking and criminology by a UN agency. (Thanks to
Ken Barden for alertly passing on information about the listing.) If you
come across such announcements for educational projects that PEOI could
handle, please let me know.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Thanks for helping build this organization. We are making good
progress. Stay with us, we need you.

John