Generally the presentation was good; they extracted and presented well their topic with the help of the Prof. Matti Tedre who outlined and put more emphasis on concept and examples of software engineering.

The presentation relies on the following outlines; the concept of software engineering and its history, importance of software engineering, types of software and how it works. They also explained on the some challenges and criticism on software engineering.

Contents of the topic:

Software engineering is the systematic advance/approach to the design, construction, develop and maintenance of machine/computer programs. IN 1950s the programming language such as FORTRAN and COBOL started to emerge and its gradual increase caused a software crisis in 1963-1968. The crisis resulted to the formation of software engineering in 1968 -1970 where the first software engineering conference in 1968 by NATO.

On their presentation they explained the reasons of having software engineering such as to overcome software crisis and to create software of high quality, cheaper, and maintainable and that will be easy to deliver them at time.

On learning the types of software the following were discussed;
o Retail software (the type of software that is sold off the shelves on retails stores usually they are accompanied with manual instructions on how to use.
o Original Equipment Manufacturer software; this kind of software is sold in bulk. Example of these are Microsoft CD that for hardware such as printer, computers etc.
o Shareware software; this is the kind of software that is freely downloaded from the internet and you suppose to use in a limited of time.
o Freeware software which is a free download and free to use but only for personal use.

After discussing on the types of the software we learnt on the software development process such as water fall model and cyclic model. Professor Matti Tedre complemented a lot the differences between these two model and why do these days they the water fall model in not much in practical.

I also appreciated to know the tools of software engineering; tools that provide automated support for software process system. Examples of these tools include Aided Software Engineering tools for providing the automated support for development of software (computer code). Its CASE functions include analysis, design, and programming; such as from the design of flow diagrams and structure charts to the maintenance phase.

After that I enjoyed another part of presentation where various methodologies that are used in software engineering. These include Objects oriented programming (OOP) which uses data structure to design application and computer program. Another is Rapid application development (RAD) an example of type of software development life cycle which uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping.

They also explained on Scrum (all at once approach to software engineering) where different people with experience work together so as to manage complex work. The last methodology that they discussed was Team software process which refers to a defined operational process structure that is planned to help teams of managers and engineers to organize and generate large-scale software projects.

Before conclusion presenter explained some challenges of software engineering such as delivery challenges, legacy system challenges which was explained and the questions and answers session improved understanding of some concept.

Conclusion:
The lesson was good and well organized following the good flow. I think this was also one of the good presentations as it needed no much energy to understand the cont

I was very much impressed with the presentation on this topic. They organized and presented well materials concerning programming and compiling.

Their presentation was guided by the following outlines;-Concept and history of Programming, Concept of Compiler, types of Programming Language, importance of Programming Language, things to consider in selection of Programming Language, and threats of Programming Language.

Contents of the topic:

On their presentation they started to make review of some terminologies like software, hardware, program and programming language. Actually what I understood here is that their intention was to show how software works to link hardware to perform some programs (intended task).

Programming Language is an artificial language that is used to write a sequence of instructions that can be run in the computer. Computer understands 0s and 1s therefore in order for the machine to understand it must have the intermediate device to change from the language that is been written by the programmer (source code) to that which can be understood by the computer.

Compiler is a program that converts source code (programming language) to machine code/language. Machine Language is the representation of computer program which is actually read and interpreted by the computer.

On here I was very happy to know the difference between source code, byte code and machine code/language. Source code is the language written by programmer (programming language such as Java), byte code is the language which machine independent and machine code are machine dependent such as they differ from one type of machine to another.

On the history of compiler and programming they explained that software for early computers were primary written in assembly language, higher level programming language were not inverted. The increase in cost of writing a compiler led to creativity of thinking on how they can reuse software on different kind of CPUs. The very limited memory capacity of early computers also created many technical problems when implementing a compiler.

Moreover I came to know that by the end of the 1950's, machine-independent programming languages were first proposed. The first compiler was written by Grace Hopper, in 1952 for the A – O programming language. I was very much interested to here on the great job that was done by this woman.

After then they explained on different stages on development of programming language from the first generation, second, third, fourth and fifth language. A language translator is a type of system software that translates a program written in a second, third or higher generation language into machine language. Interpreters translate source code instructions into machine language and executes it one statement at a time. They also outlined the two common types of error in computer such as Syntax (grammar rules) and Semantics (meaning of command).

Computer programming languages are divided into three types such as Machine languages (Directly understand by the computer), Assembly languages, Higher-level languages (such as Java).

Computer generations in refers to the different stages of computer development such as from the time where computer were only able to process and execute a single program to the present where computer can do multitasking and using parallel processing as well. Where even the language is interactive (User and computer communicate with each other directly during the writing and running program). The use of high level languages such as BASIC, PASCAL, FORTRAN, C/C++, JAVA etc has made programming to become more interesting carrier and more easier.

Although there are many programming languages I came to know that selection of language highly depends upon the nature of activity and availability of the simplest language to solve the desired task or problems.

Before coming to end the presenter pinpointed some challenges that faces programming and Compiler for example currently the programming languages are challenging on learning in such a way they need as they contain many functions, not only that but also it needs skilled programmer to run or debugging the difficult programs.

Conclusion:

Presentation on Programming and Compiler was among the interesting topics although the contents that they covered were a bit large since many concepts were integrated that made bit challenges to synthesizing all the concepts.

I was very much impressed with the clearance of misconception of terminologies such as machine code, source code and byte code which was given by Professor Matti Tedre the facilitator not only that but also the clearance that a compiler is for changing source code to byte code and there are other tools for changing from machine code to source code.

During the same presentation also presenters tried to give participants awareness on differentiating between assembler and Compiler as they might all be translators..

Their presentation was explained on what fingerprint recognition is, its history, classification of fingerprint recognition, fingerprint visibility, advantages and disadvantages of fingerprint recognition and the challenges that faces the technology.

Fingerprint recognition is one of the biometric methods that uses fingerprint to uniquely identify the person. Fingerprints of each individual are different from another. For this matter it also refers to an automated method of verifying two or more human fingerprints. A fingerprint is the impression left upon any surface with which the finger comes in contact under pressure.

Fingerprint recognition is very much preferred due to the fact that no two individuals can have the same fingerprint, also fingerprint patterns of an individual remains unchanged for entire life unless chemical burning has done to the surface of skin. Injuries on finger have not seen to be able to cause the fingerprint to change as long as the finger recovers its skin. Limited variety in patterns allows systematic classification of an individuals fingerprints.

There are three types of common patterns of fingerprints that are used for identification these are loops (65%), whorls (30%), and arches (5%).

Although fingerprints can be seen with naked eyes in some objects but it requires machines to be seen in some of the objects like glass it requires some complicated methods plus chemicals to see them.

The processes of taking fingerprints are done in two ways such as the offline sensing (ink technique) in which a finger in pressed to ink then to the paper which is then going to be scanned and live scan sensing which requires digital scanning devices.

Both of the methods has strengths and weakness example offline sensing has advantage that can produce rolled image which as well carries more information although in other way if not properly pressed it can capture only few information that will not be enough for identification. In other side live scan sensing is easy to learn and use but requires more attention on use such as cleaning the area where finger com in contact with lens.

Advantages of fingerprint is that since they do not change naturally they can be good identification and for security purpose, it can be applied to Modern computers, cars, automatic doors, the method its reliability is superior compared to other biometric method. Fingerprints identification is strong than the DNA analysis.

The main disadvantages of fingerprints is that if someone use chemical methods to burn their fingers it will be impossible to be more identified since the new prints will be different to the former one.

Challenges

The challenges on fingerprints technology is that finger prints are stored in the database can be easily determined by hackers. Finger print has still no way to work with burned finger or if fingers are chopped off.

Generally their discussion was impressive and they managed very well to answer the questions and clear droughts that the class was having with the help of lecturer Prof. Matti. They also contextualized by giving the examples that are within such as the use of fingerprint in cense, during election and in getting passport.

The presentation on Iris recognition was good. The presenters used demonstration on explaining how the process is done and made people to be more interested. I was among the person who was eager to know how iris recognition is done.

Iris is the part of the eye that controls the size of pupil which is responsible for regulating the amount of light that enters the eye so as to have clear vision or form a quality image. Irises of an individual are unique and structurally distinct although genetically seem to be identical.

Therefore iris recognition is just a process that employs the use of iris in analyzing and identifying people. According to ophthalmologist Frank Barch who investgated and found the iris of human are not identical hence to be able to use for individual identification. In 1985, Dr .Leonard Flom and Aran Safira projected that no two iris are a like and further Dr. John Daugman developed this finding to prepare the automated identification of human using Iris.

I learnt that the process of iris recognition resembles that of finger print since it require first the irises images of an individual to be captured and stored in the database. Also as you can get the quality iris images you are also sure to easily use for identification. Poor/ noisy images can lead to ambiguity in identification. In order to get quality images quality digital camera to take pictures and stores in database with other information of an individual as what is done in finger print.

To perform recognition, the statistical independence test is carried out. The test measures and compares the distance between two irises. The amount of different between two iris codes Harming Distance is used as test of statistical independence between two iris codes. If harming distance is less than one third of the bytes in the iris code are different, the iris code fail the test of numerical/statistical significance, signifying that iris code are from the same iris.

Advantages of iris recognition include; it have minimum error rate, ensures maximum security if well analyzed, identification of a persons who have limited use of hands or arms if you compare with finger print. It also can be used in border control to identify the people who are interring or leaving whatever they are having crimes or not.

Also iris recognition has various disadvantages, first they require high quality digital devices (camera and scanner), second it needs to have qualified operator since have small target, moreover they system require high investment cost and maintenance.

Challenges of iris recognition are that if an individual changes the eyes then definitely he has also changed/lost the identification. Environmental conditions hinters the process of getting quality images. Since the method is expensive although it is easy to use.

Conclusion;

To insure maximum security iris recognition method should also be employed. As It we should be al least familiar with these technologies as they provide us with awareness on how IT can be used to help the society.

The topic was presented by Edward Coelestin and Dastan Josephat. Generally the topic was well presented. The tried to share well the responsibilities between them.

Introduction.

Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science works on how to make computer imitate the intelligence of human thinking and behaviors. Computer Intelligence fosters on how to develop machines that can be able to show intelligence like a human being such as the ability of learning, understanding capability, reasoning and thinking capacity.
.

On the history of Computer intelligence I was much interested on how the idea of Computer intelligence was developed by Turing Test and the Chinese box showing how computer intelligence can be discussed.

Artificial intelligence is characterized by some features like with significant demonstrations in machine learning, intelligent tutoring, case-based reasoning, multi-agent planning, scheduling, uncertain reasoning, data mining, natural language understanding and translation, vision, virtual reality, games, and other topics.

Some examples of where artificial intelligence is seen include in; Machine translator, Automatic essay assessment, Electronic sensor e.g. weapons, drugs etc that is used in Air ports, railway stations and harbors, robots in industries and security aspect, and black box in air plane which is used to record all phenomena.

Artificial intelligence can be apllied in many areas including in sports and games, domestric activities ie robotic activities like clearning, washing etc,in supermarket, in security as well as scientific experimentation and industrial activities especially where there is high safety risk.

On using Artificial intelligence has helped very much in simplifying work, to increase the efficiency and accuracy and also to improve support to effective communication and interaction (natural language understanding and transilation).

Well, desipite the advantages that Artificial intellegence it has some limitation such as it expensive, it requires highly skilled expert and needs skilled person for implementation.

Things of interest in this presentation:

• Is how the Turing test was done and its interesting thenomena in testing on the intelligence of a computer.


• How the idea of a Chinese language box can be used as an argument on computer intelligence.

Their presentation was very good and interesting; they also showed good organization and presentation of the materials together with showing good explanation on the questions that were asked.

Contents of the presentation:
On their presentation they based on the following guidelines

• Computer Graphics and Rendering Concepts and its history.
  
• Technologies applied in the field
  
• Application of Computer Graphics and Rendering
  
• Advantages and disadvantages of Computer Graphics and Rendering
  
• Challenges facing Computer Graphics and Rendering industry
  
• Expectation of the technology.

History of computer graphics and Rendering; The history of computer graphics records the effort made from early ages of the 1960s for the intention of using a making computer more interactive by the use of graphical user interface as in 1963 the program which ever utilized a complete GUI was created by Ivan Sutherland. The incorporation of the computer graphics in film industry lead to the increase of demand of CG (Computer graphics) and rendering.

Computer graphic is a computer based mathematical representation of a geometric object such as a building, a vehicle, a tree or any object including humans. Models (2D image or 3D object) are made that resemble actual thing and can be represented as vector image (images that use algorithms and mathematical function to represent its shape and size) or Raster/Bitmap image (images displayed based on pixels).

Coloring and texturing (process of building a surface’s detail and indicating how that surface will react to light) is among the things to consider in computer graphics and rendering. Moreover animation is another important concept in computer graphics and rendering.

On their presentation they explicitly explained the general Computer Graphics designing steps such as starts from Pre Designing, Modeling, Texturing, Animating and hence rendering (a process of converting vector images to raster images).

One of technology applied in the field is the Graphic API (Application Program Interface that provides the low-level functions to access graphics hardware directly. Examples of GAPI are Open GL that is used to access graphics directly and DirectX/Direct3D.

Open graphics language (OGL) is a hardware independent making to be suitable for all kinds of Platforms and all graphics hardware and also it is system independent to allow to be used in any System such as Win32, X-Win, and Mac.

We learnt on what OGL can do such as draw basic primitives (point, line, and polygon), do matrices, Z-Buffer, lighting and Shading on drawn 2D or 3D shapes, mapping textures, pixel operation and GPU computation.

Advantages of Computer graphics and rendering include;

• In engineering field it minimizes the production cost since design can be done by computers.


• It is used in filming industries to make quality and complex movies.


• It is used in gaming it allows real objects to be designed and programmed so that gaming becomes more interesting


• In medicine simulation of body organs helps the process of studying the body easier.

• It takes time (more time is waste).


• It is difficulty to understand for normal user since has complex application.


• It requires powerful computer machines for fast rendering.


• It replaces fires some actors from work since a programmed machine can work on behalf of actors.

• How software like may can be used in 3D design.


• Getting exposed to how open GL works.


• Getting tips on how Movies like Terminator 3 applies 3D design.


• Getting the concept on how those robots are being programmed.

Their presentation was guided by the following guide lines; Introduction (Concept of parallel computing), Forms of parallel computing, Importance of parallel computing and Challenges of parallel computing.

CPU is an integrated electronic device which interprets instructions to the computer, performs the logical and arithmetic processing operations, manipulation and causes the input and output operations to occur. CPU is sometimes refereed to as the computer main brain where all the logical and arithmetical functions are processed to accept input and also give output. Simply I can say the fault of CPU can cause the whole computer system not to function.

Parallel computing is a form of computation in which many tasks are carried out simultaneously. Therefore software is programmed in parallel computation in order to be run using multiple CPUs so as to faster the processing of data. In parallel computing a problem is broken into discrete parts that can be solved in parallel. Each part is further broken down to a series of instruction. Instructions from each part are executed simultaneously on different CPUs.

Idea of parallel computing;- On 1947 a Hungarian American mathematician John Von Neumann, he asked himself that, if a single computer solve a problem in ten seconds, can ten computers solve it in one second? The idea was to determine whether the increase in number of CPU in a computer is direct proportion to the capability of processing power. In his idea he recognized the need of parallelism in computers so as to solve problems that took long run.

The following are some of the forms of parallel computing;-

• Bit level parallelism-the amount of information the processor can execute.


• Instruction level parallelism-How many of the operations in a computer program can be performed simultaneously. e. g below:
  
• Data parallelism- distributing the data across different computing nodes.


• Task parallelism-distribute task across different computing node..

Generally the presentation was good. They managed to answer the raised question with the help of The Lecturer who in details clarified the areas that the class was not clear. The presenters managed to show their mutual cooperation during their presentation.

Introduction

On their presentation they concentrated on the types of software visualization, Importance of software visualization, advantages of program/software visualization and disadvantages of it. They also outlined the challenges of software/program visualization and the ways to overcome.

Program is a set of executions instructions or commands that are set to perform or solves a particular problem or perform a defined activity. Examples of programs include; Microsoft word program for document processing, Adobe Photoshop program for image manipulation.

Software is a set of logical instruction that commands/tells the machine what to do. It includes program software (specific for certain task), application software, system software such as BIOS and computer utilities.

Visualization is the action of making visible/observable to the eyes/mind or imagination what the software is functioning in compiling and execution of data. Program/software visualization consists of producing animated views of program executions.

There basically two types of software/program visualization they include the visualization of a single component in which the source codes and quality is observed during the process of generation or maintenance. Another type of visualization deals with visualization of the whole system to help in flaw discovery ie identify the parts of the machine which are not functioning or preventing the machine not to function well.

There significance importance of program/software visualization is to help to simplify the work of programming for the fact that is easy to understand and identify the flaws. Also it helps programmers and other learners to understand programs more easily how they works that can bring Specification of user explanations. Moreover it improves performance, support visible more comprehensible.

Disadvantages of software/program visualization include the following;o Getting of necessary data (codes) for visualization.

Presenters: Innocent Kihaka and Said H. Said

The topic was prepared and presented by Innocent Kihaka and Said H. Said. The presentation was very good, they extracted well materials relating to the topic and their way of presentation involved much the participations of the audience. On their presentation they discussed the concept of usability engineering and human computer interaction, the significance importance of the topic, how can it be achieved and the challenge..

Presenters: Innocent Kihaka and Said H. Said

The topic was prepared and presented by Innocent Kihaka and Said H. Said. The presentation was very good, they extracted well materials relating to the topic and their way of presentation involved much the participations of the audience. On their presentation they discussed the concept of usability engineering and human computer interaction, the significance importance of the topic, how can it be achieved and the challenge..

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

On 24th April, 2009, Bahati Sanga and Austin Godfrey presented the topic on Educational technology. Their presentation was based on how Technology can be used in simplify learning process. Generally the presentation was good.

On their finding they explained that Educational technology is the study and ethical practice on improving learning and performance through the employment of proper technology.

Through their presentation I came to know that educational technology is nothing if it can’t go hand with hand in developing human knowledge and skills. Any technological advancement should go hand with hand with skills advancement of the human manpower (resources).

Characteristics of educational technology include input, process and output so as to create a good outcome for the intended knowledge. Input includes material and none materials such as machines that can help to simplify the work and make it more efficient. It also refers to the skills of teaching and learning that will be employed to make the process to be more effectively and take more short time. Process refers to how those machines are being used to systemize and ensure the proper presentation of learning concepts in simpler way. The Output shows how the intended objectives have been achieved as well as expecting to have more positive changes as outcome of implementation of good output.

Educational technology is the application of scientific knowledge to education and training; it also includes the organization of learning conditions, realizing goals of education and facilitating learning through overcoming the environment difficulties.

The major objectives of educational technology include the following:-
(a).To analyze the characteristic of the learner.
(b).To arranges contents in psychological and logical sequence order.
(c).The {Some of the Societies}

The challenges of educational technology includes the following-
(a). High investment cost such as purchasing the technological devices.
(b). High running and administration cost.
(c). Low literacy rate to teachers in application of educational technological devices.
(d). Unfavorable condition for installment and application of technological devices to some environment.

Some international associations have been making their effort in ensuring that education learning is simplified to the possible stage. These organizations have been making their effort to make that learners meet their needs to have education in simpler way. The organizations includes the Association for Education Communication and Technology(AECT); an academic and professional association and Association for Leaning Technology(ALT).All of them their aims were:-
(i).To brings together people with the interest in the use of learning technology.
(ii).Contribute to the development of policy of educational technology.
(iii).To spread good practice in the use of learning technology.
(iv). To support their members on advancement in using educational technology.

Conclusion:

Educational technology is very important for the life of the present and coming word and its strength in making learning more easily. The challenges that exist are just a room for innovation and improvement of educational technology.

Recommendation:

I education system all the stake holders should work hand in hand to make sure that educational technology is highly employed in learning in our schools and learning institutions. Proper doze should be given to teachers and other who will be using before those devices are sends for use. For example just buying computers for schools without ensuring sustainability of those computers economically and without giving proper training to teachers on how to use those computers as learning tool as well as teaching tool will not simplify the teaching/learning process.

Teachers and society at large should not fear at technology that can be implemented in making learning simpler rather than emulating and making proper use while making the action researches on the weakness that those devices could be having for the aim of making them more interactive.

DATA MINING:

This topic was presented by Mr. Joshua Shendu and Mr. Remmy Kaaro on Friday, 17th of April 2009.

Generally the presentation was good. They managed to answer the raised question with the help of The Lecturer who in details clarified the areas that the class was not clear. The presenters managed to show their mutual cooperation during their presentation.

Contents of the topic:
Data is a collection of raw facts such as numbers, pictures, symbols, video clips, voice, etc that has no meaning; not processed.

Mining can be defined as the process of extracting the useful minerals in the earth’s crust. Therefore relating to the computer IT field, data mining is the process of extracting the hidden useful information from the large amount of data. In information technology in computers data are accepts the storage of millions and millions of data, these data are presented in various forms such as pictures, numbers, voice etc. therefore data mining also refers to collection, analysis, synthesis and interpretation of message that is being carried by those data.

Human have been manually extracting information from large collection of data, this work has been making the work to be very difficult and tedious. Due to the increase of data that led to the work to be more difficulty to still proceed to do manually, the need of having machine(computers) that can simplify this work has come where now computers collect, analyze and organize data to get information more easily.

Due to the strength of such output computer programmers have been working to develop the software specifically for data mining. Data mining software is a software developed for analyzing, processing, and managing data. This software allows users to analyze in multi-dimension more easily and in a short time.

The stages of data mining;

There are three common stages in data mining:-
(a). Data Exploration ; This refers to seeking, discovery and gathering of possible data that can be a part of related findings that you are seeking for.
(b).Model building and validation; this stages refers to the details examining of explored data and predicting its applicability and efficiency if the are to be chosen as part of solution. It also includes the decision of what have been agreed and checking its validity and reliability for the use.
(c). Deployment: On this stage the selected data/information or model is now subjected to use. Also there is still the checking of the efficiency of its performance.

Advantages of data mining includes:-
(i). It is used in research to simplify the work of analysis of data.
(ii). It is used in large institutions such universities, banks, supermarket etc to simplify work.
(iii). It reduces hallow effects for example that the whole seller company wants to give offers to the best 10 buyers fro the period of 2 years; data mining can retrieve and get the answer in a short period of time

Disadvantages of data mining include the following:-
(a). Security in case of this it need a very highly security to protect the data.
(b).May leads to lose the information if proper mining is not done.
(c).Misuse of information; some times I happens the people who participate in mining can lead to misuse of information that they got.
(d).Privacy issues; generally almost every human need privacy to some issues therefore if no confidentiality data mining can lead to disclosure of such privacy.
(e). Data mining require skilled person to do the work efficiently.

Conclusion: Data mining is a good topic and people especially IT professional should understand well how to use as it will help to simplify their work as well as ensuring the efficiency. But in other side professional ethics should be adhered when performing data mining so as to keep the information securely (do not disclosure any information).

This text gives my evaluation on the presentation that was given by Reuben Minael and Benjamini Mkwese on Monday 6th, April, 2009. The presentation was very good. They showed mutual cooperation in their presentation. They managed to explore all the necessary points that were to be discussed in the topic. They also prepared good questions that they used to lead their presentation.

Contents of Presentation:
In this presentation I learnt on the concept of speaker recognition. How is it being used, its importance and where is more used.

Speaker recognition is the process of automatically recognizing who is speaking basing on the voice memory that a computer has. It is called speaker since the input sound will be the voice of speaker (through speaking).

Speaker recognition is used in various aspects such as:-
(a).For security purposes.
(b).Help in control of access to restricted services.
(c).In military operations

I learnt that in order to use speaker recognition there are some important steps or classes such as Speaker Verification and Speaker Identification. A machine has to make a thoroughly input of voice that will be used fro recognition, then the voice is stored by the machine which will be using as reference whenever the prompted voice used to access the site/service.

How Speaker recognition works:

I learnt that the most important part how to collect and keep in memory the required voice. When a user use his/her voice to command or login in a system, the voice is changed from analogue to digital and then the computer makes some comparison and verification if the voice that is prompted to the one which is stored in the computer. Then if the voice is recognized then the computer/machine allows accessibility and if not then the computer/machine denies the accessibility in the system.

Beside that importance of voice recognition, there are some challenges that encounter speaker recognitions. They include;-
(i). The determination of what are correct units to be recognized
(ii).Finding the boundaries of these units in the signal (allowed limit of error).
(iii). Variability in units of speech such as sometimes the speech differ in different accessions.

I have also learnt that the use of speaker recognition have contributed much in the current technology that is used as speaker recognition that has allowed even those who are blind to communicate with computer using their voice.
• It has also helped the development of voice recognition and convention that is used to change the voice to different languages such as allowing the computer to process and give the voice in various languages.
• I hope that if this technology will be developed will help a lot in communication and learning various concepts.

Introduction:

This presentation was presented by Zavery Nyambalafu and Rose Mchaka on Manday 6th April, 2009.



The presentation was well planed as well as the coverage was having almost everything important tips for automatic essay assessment. They well managed to keep time and answer well the questions that rouse during their presentation.



Content of presentation:

Automatic essay assessment is the action of employing an electronic machine (computer) in making assessment and evaluation of essays. The essay must be in electronic form (soft copy) during the process. Even though the essay may be written in hard copy, it must be converted into soft copy using special machines such as scanner and the like.

Automatic essay assessment started in early 1960’s when the researchers tried to make machine that will be dealing with automatic essay assessment.

The aims of Automatic Essay Assessment:
The aim of this project was to try to reduce tiresome to especially teachers who were supposed to mark a lot of work that were written by their students, to read and give the fair marks to each students without any biasness of any kind.

Through the use the machine teachers could improve the following:-

• Consistence in marking students work.


• To help the teacher in identifying those who plagiarize.


• To provide individualized feedback to the students.


• To help teachers in analyzing learning outcomes.


• Helps them in making grades.

• Create atmosphere of critical thinking.


• Helps to provide students a real feedback on their learning.


• It helps to reduce halo effect that teachers might be basing on.


• It helps students have a good comparison with others.

Challenges:

Beside how good is, automatics essay assessment software has some challenges such as:-

• Since it is a program, it depends on how much criteria are set by the programmer; such as if few criteria are set may lead to less efficiency.


• The software is expensive to buy.


• If may reduce interaction between teachers and students works hence teachers not to learn from their students.


• It also needs the highly qualified personnel to handle the machine.


• The text should be readable by the machine.

In addition the instructor tried to suggest that even though there will be a machine for working such a kind of assessment, teachers should not totally depend on the machine.

On this brief notes I will give my view on how good is the classroom presentation on Cryptography that was presented by Izadin Abdallah and Joseph Uhemba that was done on Monday 30th March 2009.

On my perception the presentation was well prepared and had almost all the main contents that were supposed to be presented on that topic. They also showed cooperation during their presentation, none of the two were idle during presentation hence showing that the work were also prepared together and almost all of them had competence in that topic. They also managed to keep time together with giving responses to questions asked by the class members.

Through their presentation I learnt on the concept of Cryptography, its history, the types of Cryptography, importance of Cryptography and the challenges that one face on crypto graphing.

I learnt that cryptography is the art presenting writings in coded form that will not be understood by anyone who was not intended to as well as decoding them. Simply it can be said is the study of hiding information.

I have learnt that the origin of the word cryptography is from the two Greek words “Kriptos” which means hidden and “graphen” which means writing. The Egyptians were among of the founder of this cryptography knowledge. Germans also used cryptography in hidden their strategies in the Second World War helped them a lot before their technology were captured by the British Soldiers.

Importance of cryptography includes security, confidentiality and integrity. Cryptography is used in encrypting and decrypting data in computer network. In this time computer network has been one of the most areas where cryptography is more applicable.

There are two components of cryptography such as Algorithm and a key. Cryptography can be classified into two main categories such as the secret key system (symmetric system) and the public key system (asymmetric system). The difference of these two categories is that the secret key system both encryption and decryption uses the single key while in the public key system there are different keys on encryption and decryption such as there are many keys for encryption and only a single key for decryption. Therefore public key is more used that secret key although it is slower compared to secret system.

I also lent that cryptography is importance in the insurance of secure storage and transfer of data/information in the networks. Cryptography is used in e-banking, military, communication companies and more other.

The Instructor Prof. Matti realized that there were confusion on the use of the terminologies; hackers and crackers, he clarified the difference between hackers and crackers and was well understood and everyone was comfortable.

He also got time to give details on the difference between public keys and secret keys. I enjoyed a lot on both presentation of my fellow students and clarification done by the professor.