Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) will formally launch O/A levels education project in the public institutes after getting approval from Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD).
Talking to APP, Director Colleges FDE, Tariq Masood informed that the directorate submitted the summary to CADD for launching O/A levels classes in the educational institutes and waiting for final approval.
He said there was strong resistance from private sector against launching O/A level studies in these institutes with less fee as the owners are feared of loosing attraction.
Tariq Masood said the directorate has finalised the feasibility report and the O/A level studies, under the pilot project, will be introduced in the two model colleges of F-8/4 and I-10/1 for boys and girls respectively from August.
After the success of the pilot project, O and A level classes would be extended to all FDE institutions within a few years, he said.
He said around 50 students would be accommodated in each college, making two sections.
Tariq Masood said the directorate has discussed the requirements like subjects, teaching material and training of teachers with Cambridge University.
Earlier, a committee formed by the FDE has conducted a survey in its institutions to check O/A level studies’ demand among students.
The committee has observed many of the students are inclined toward getting O/A level education in the federal institutes. He said introduction of O, A level studies was aimed at realising the dream of unified education system in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) and it would facilitate the students who could not afford the course in private schools due to high fee structures. Tariq Masood said students belonging to the middle class could not afford to study these courses in private sector educational institutions. Contrary to this, the public sector educational institutions would not charge more than Rs 6,000 enabling the students of lower class and even middle class to avail the international standard education.
Tariq Masood said that the federal institutes have well qualified teachers to teach O, A level courses and the best teachers among them will be selected and given extensive training. FDE’ teachers are quite capable of teaching these creativity based courses sd only they have to adopt student-centered teaching approach, he said adding, the directorate will hire new teachers too if it is required, he added.
FDE is currently managing 418 schools and colleges for girls and boys having around 8,600 teachers. It would be the first education directorate across the country offering O and A level education to the students of public institutes
Media technology, Internet changing students’ eating habits: A new study by Rochester Institute of Technology is one of the first to analyze how new-media technology including the Internet and smartphones, are changing college students’ eating habits and their relationship to food.
Findings indicate that individuals are more likely to have meals while sitting at the computer than at the kitchen table, and that they use social media as the main avenue to obtain recipe and nutritional information, Telegraph reported.
“I sought to investigate how the explosion of new media is changing traditional notions of meals and how this is transforming human interaction,” notes Madeline Varno, a senior communications major at RIT and principle author of the study.
“As opposed to their parents or grandparents, college students do not see meals as a central activity in and of itself, either for enjoyment or communication. In fact none of the respondents I interviewed even had a kitchen table.”
Varno conducted an extensive survey of college students at RIT, which assessed how meals were prepared and eaten, how students interacted with others during meals and how they obtained information about nutrition, potential food choices and recipes. It also assessed the importance of meals in students’ social lives.
“Eating is now just one of several activities being multitasked at once, all of which generally involve computers and smartphones, including surfing the Web, communicating with friends via Facebook and doing homework,” she continues.
“This does not mean that students are any less social; in fact, they are often interacting with more people than if they were sitting in a dining room, but the method of that socialization is now directly connected to new media.”
Varno also found that people were more likely to ask friends on Facebook or Twitter about recipes than consult a cookbook and often used social media to assess the relevance and validity of food and nutrition information.
“While some respondents expressed concern at the sheer volume of food information available online, they also indicated that the use of Facebook and Twitter to quickly validate data made them feel more informed about making the right choices,” Varno adds.
Varno hopes her results will lead to additional studies with larger sample sizes that could further assess how new media is changing eating habits among the broader population.
