Changing concept: the Microsoft way

Quek with the participants

Held at East West University premises, the workshop was the first of any such educational workshops, by Microsoft Bangladesh Ltd. in Bangladesh, according to sources.

About fifty participants attended the 2-day workshop from the various public and the private sectors universities of Bangladesh.

"At first we did not get much response from the institutions we officially contacted," said Imran Al-Amin, education program manager, Microsoft Bangladesh Ltd., while talking about the response and participants of the workshop.

"We started receiving calls from Monday evening and through out the night with most institutions requesting over 9 to 10 faculties from each of their departments," said Amin.

Feroz Mahmud, country manager of Microsoft Bangladesh formally inaugurated the workshop on April 26. Edmund Quek and Stanley Tan, the .NET and Developers Group, Microsoft Asia Pacific conducted the workshop. K.M. Imran Al-Amin, Education Program Manager, Microsoft Bangladesh Ltd. coordinated the workshop.

"The objective of the workshop was to inform interested faculty members from Computer Science, Computer Engineering and IT-Related departments about .NET," said Edmund Quek while talking to Star-Tech.

"It is also an essential tool to Microsoft for developing applications for the Windows platform for windows desktop applications, ASP.NET Web Applications, Web services or Smart Device based programs such as for SmartPhones or PocketPCs," he said.

Quek also said that through this technology, interested faculties can produce graduates who can meet the demands of industry.

"Through this workshop we shared information, resources and best practices that will enable the teachers to adopt the technology into their own teaching curricula as easily as possible," said Quek.

The 1st day was spent at introductory level discussions about .Net while the 2nd day was used to develop practical training.

"People understand more and are able to remember lessons easier when they get a practical training besides theory and that is we provided a whole day for practical programming," said Quek.

Quek commended the skills and knowledge of the participants at the workshop.

"The Faculties were very interested in learning new concepts and from what I can understand through such personnel, Bangladesh has skilled academic institutions, which if efficiently utilized can prepare Bangladeshi Information and Communicational Technology to the existing global level," he said.

Feedback forms were distributed to the participants and the overall response from the forms will determine potential future workshops.

"We may have a 5 day training workshop within the next 6 to 9 months," said Imran Al-Amin.

Bangladesh is the 10th country to have had the '.Net Curriculum Workshop' after a list of other countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Sri Lanka.

"We will have other workshops of this caliber in the future which may just change the teaching methods, curriculum and update concepts in numerous fields of study of our nation," said Al-Amin.