Thursday 24 July 2014

Junior Cert Students Will Study Coding

Ruairi Quinn Minister of Education

COMPUTER coding courses in secondary schools will begin this September, as part of the revised secondary cycle.

The Department of Education confirmed to the Herald that the subjects of Communications and Information Technologies (ICTs) are being introduced as short courses.

These programs include coding and programming as well as digital media.



 
Reform

Department of Education Minister Ruairi Quinn also said that "it has launched a new digital strategy for the schools."

As part of the strategy is analyzing opportunities in curriculum reform.

Teachers and principals are currently being surveyed about the use of ICT in learning and teaching in schools across Ireland. The study will be completed shortly.


The department said the new changes and the strategy is not limited to secondary schools, but also to primary schools.

A spokeswoman also said the changes were not only happening in the secondary cycle.

"In the upper cycle, the National Curriculum Council is working on a review of a significant number of Leaving Certificate subjects," he said.

He added that the integration of computer issues was a "priority" for the Government and its development was considered "critical".

Internet economy of Ireland is set to more than double its value in 2020 to just over € 21 billion, with up to 79,000 new jobs to be added, according to a recent study by the UPC.

However, while schools have the option to enter the coding, the two teacher unions second level, ASTI and TUI, have banned its members to cooperate with him and other short courses offered, due to the dispute over reform Junior Cycle.

Jobs

According to the latest figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, at present there are 80,000 people working in the areas of information and communication.

Top Jobs for the future include project management of the number one IT and software development and testing ranking the top five.

Other short courses are also introducing next September are the language and Chinese culture and artistic representation.

Thursday 17 July 2014

How To Monetize Your WordPress Blog

WordPress is one of the systems most popular content management (CMS), due to its ease of use and flexibility. One of the many uses for WordPress is electronic commerce, where the software is set up to sell products and services. In this article we look at several ways to earn income using your blog, sometimes known as "monetization."


Sell advertising: An easy way to earn income on your site is to sell advertising. This could be in the form of banners, text links and articles. As an example, I have written several articles in my travel blog on income tax. I contacted the company that produces software for income tax and pay for a text link on my site. Another company wanted an article about hostels. A third company wanted to advertise casinos.

 

Use Adsense: An easy way to get revenue out of your website by using Google Adsense. With Adsense you can determine the type and style of the ads to fit your blog. This is a type of advertising known as pay-per-click, which means that when a user clicks on an ad, you just make money. If you have lots of people coming to your site, clicks can add up quickly.




Another way to use the content on your site (and again with Adsense) is to create a Youtube channel and publish such content on your blog. One of the options available to you as a user is Youtube monetizes their channel with Adsense ads on their videos. Like Adsense on your blog, overlap Adsense ads on their videos. Using the videos on your blog that creates an opportunity to generate income, because if people click on the ads on the videos to earn income from that besides Adsense ads on your blog.

Create and sell your own products: A great way to make money with your site is to create and sell digital products. These can be in the form of videos, audio recordings, books, and a combination of the three to create a membership site.

One way that can work is where you build a sales process, which starts with a squeeze page. The purpose of the landing page is twofold, to win the email of your prospect and to give that person something in return, which could be a report, video, audio, a combination of them, a coupon, free trial or something else of value to the prospect.

After the prospect enrolls receive a confirmation email asking if they want to join your list. Once confirmed, receive another email with instructions on how to use your offer. This process is known as double opt-in and is recommended to reduce spam complaints.

After that, the prospect goes to your sales pages of the site you are presented with the main menu. You can configure the process, so if shopping perspective they offer, which is then pointed to another list, but this is only for paying customers. Now you have two lists and you use different forms of marketing for everyone.

Creating a membership site can be a complex process. In previous articles I have written about the process of building an online business and the program I used was OptimizePress, which was used for squeeze pages, sales pages, download pages and blog entries. Not the best for blog posts, however. Using other issue is a better option. One way to keep both OptimizePress and blog is to create two separate installations of WordPress. For example, you must install OptimizePress in the root directory and the blog in a subdirectory of the same domain and then link the two facilities linked within OptimizePress.



Conclusion

As you can see, there are many different ways to monetize your blog. For more information, check out the various links in this article. Of these, the associated software offers a number of courses in Internet marketing to get you up to speed.

Sunday 6 July 2014

Google Offering Free Coding Courses To Women And Minorities

The website offers a unique underrepresented in the world of technology opportunity.



In an effort to increase diversity in the tech world, Google is offering three months free coding courses for women and minorities through a partnership with the School Code and Techmakers women.

The company continues to implement initiatives to level the playing field for underrepresented groups, following a report in May that revealed their employees are 70 percent white and 60 percent male. Just 2 percent of Google's workforce is Black and 3 percent are Latino; 30 percent are women.

"The situation is clear: we have a long way to go in order to create a community of diverse, open and inclusive technology," writes Gregg Pollack, executive director of the School Code. "And while there is not any silver bullet, we are very pleased to work with Google on this piece of the educational puzzle."

Google is not a problem when it comes to the lack of diversity. In the tech community, about 1 in 14 high-tech workers are Black or Latino, according to the latest census data.

The Learning Opportunity School Code, introduced by Google, is intended for those who are already in the technology community who are interested in advancing your skills via online tools of the School Code. Voucher codes are being distributed to those attending the developer conference I / O Google.
Those interested in applying for the initiative


Wednesday 2 July 2014

Twitter’s Revolving Door Spins Again

 Recent Changes Leadership suggest that Twitter is struggling to find its footing

SAN FRANCISCO - The CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo, has replaced almost all of the key executives of the company in recent months and has had trouble finding a way to get more people to use the service.



The head of operations? Gone. The product manager? Out. The senior engineer? I fired.

On Tuesday, Mr. Costolo again turned the revolving door, bringing in Anthony J. Noto, Goldman Sachs banker star who helped sell Twitter shares its initial offering last fall, as the CFO of the company microblogging.

While Mr. Noto is respected on Wall Street, which probably will not be much help with the fundamental problem of Twitter: how to make a niche service, with its quirky acronym RT and MT and the endless stream of messages text of 140 characters, something that appeals to the masses.




Twitter had 255 million monthly users worldwide in March, down 5.8 percent from late December. Analysts had expected to see more than 260 million. Growth late last year was even slower.

That disappointed investors who bought shares after the initial public offering of the company, in the belief that Twitter has the potential to become as big as Facebook, which has five times more users.

"How to convince my mom that she has to use Twitter? Facebook is obvious. Everyone likes to share photos and messages to their friends," said Richard Greenfield, a media analyst at BTIG Research. "If you want to reach everyone in the world as Facebook does, the product is going to have to change quite significantly."

Continued instability in the executive suite, a hallmark of the company throughout its eight-year existence, suggests that Twitter is struggling to find its footing as competition stiffens Facebook.

"It's unusual to have this kind of shuffle management and billing as soon for a public company," said Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets Internet. "Simply highlight there is still a lot of risk management here. Would not do all these shuffles if they were perfectly jelling".
Continue reading the main story

Twitter declined to comment beyond its securities filing announcing the leadership change.

One thing Twitter has come good so far: It has become a household name.

The great strength of Twitter is to unite people around events, either to follow updates of news and eyewitness reports during a tragedy like bombing in the Boston Marathon in 2013, or to commune with millions electronically other Super Bowl fans every winter as the game develops.

The company has worked with the media, television networks and advertisers to make their mark everywhere at the time.

The resulting publicity - remember the selfie Ellen DeGeneres tweeted when it hosted the Oscars this spring?
- Apply a large influx of new users to check out the service