The DAY to CARE

Day Care class assistance is the community service I conducted in which I helped assist the class of Ma’am Analiza Rebayla at Fatima-Monfort Day Care Center provides support services in the implementation of early childhood care and development for 5 working days.  The class of Ma’am Rebayla consists of 60 students in total of the morning and afternoon sessions. I was assigned in the morning session due to time conflicts in the afternoon, but I was also able to serve both sessions.

Throughout my service, I was able to help Ma’am Rebayla at various duties including rest and lunch and rest periods, helping children who need help with eating, dressing, taking care of day care equipment and other activities.  I also assisted children and encouraged them to cooperate during class activities.

During the last day of my assistance service, that was on December 14, me together with Ma’am Rabayla, her daughter, niece, and a good neighbor, prepared things and stuffs that will be using on the party the next day. We wrapped gifts containing candies, pencils, toys and other freebies. And since I only served the class for 5 days, I decided to donate plates and spoons to be used in the party and on the other days if necessary.

It wasn’t my first time to assist a teacher to work with children since I was once a volunteer teacher in our local church’s Summer Kindergarten Program last summer of 2010 and 2011, so I really did not find any hard time helping children in their daily routines, instead I enjoyed and had fun, and Ma’am Rebayla was so good and very accommodating that I didn’t feel any uneasiness at all.

Overview of the Guide to the SDMI Portable Device Specification Part1, Version 1.0

The secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) is a working group that develop specifications to secure the distribution of music in digital form worldwide. They associated with worldwide recording, consumer electronics and information technology industries to provide effective way to enable consumers access music, artist and recordings conveniently while protecting intellectual property.

The growing popularity and use of the MP3 format to distribute music digitally, threatened copyright holders and artists, since the MP3 compression technology incorporate no security or authentication features with the files, thus, downloading of digital music has become  easily widespread. The Portable Device Specification guide released by SDMI was opted to be the industry’s answer to the widely popular MP3 digital music file format.

The Guide to the SDMI Portable Device Specification Part1, Version 1.0 provides an overview of the contents and benefits of SDMI agreed upon by SDMI member companies. The guide contains set of voluntary principles intended to provide a positive consumer experience while facilitating secure environment for distribution of digital music and its related contents that protects the rights of the artists.

Specification for portable devices is the first achievement of SDMI. The guide discussed the two phases of SDMI’s implementation of its digital rights architecture. The phase 1 includes the implementation of secure digital watermarking scheme and tracking system.  Through this, music is tagged with secure watermark (that is hard to remove from the source audio) without damaging it. SDMI’s Portable music players then incorporate these technologies to support both secured and unsecured formats. The phase 2 will ensure that the SDMI complaint players would not play not authorized SDMI tagged music for that device.  This means that even if the files were tagged, the device would not play it if it is not authorized to be played on it. The screening technology of SDMI will do this job. It will detect a signal that indicates a software upgrade for the portable device is necessary to play Phase 2 encoded music.  The purpose of this screening technology is to provide a mechanism to detect illegitimately distributed music. Upgrading to phase 2 technology is voluntary, but only those upgraded applications can import, play, or transfer releases coded with the Phase 2 specifications.  Moreover, contents that are distributed using phase 2 technology will not be played or imported if they are illegitimately or illegally distributed.

There are debates related to this technology, but the SDMI is continuing to work to achieve broader range of digital music applications (beyond portable devices).

You can download the guide here 
More Information here.

Helvetica: the universal font

 

            Most of the people don’t pay much attention or just not that aware on small things that actually bring or give impact to the society or to the environment we live in. To tell you the truth, I do consider myself one of them. To support that decree, just recently on our multimedia class, our facilitator advised us to watch a documentary film titled “Helvetica”, a typeface. What I thought that time was that the film would be another Steve Jobs kind of drama that would only showcase the evolution of a font and the success of its developer. And that thought didn’t give me any interest to watch it. And also considering the fact that the film was called a documentary, which registered on my vocabulary as synonymous with the term “boring”, was not that exciting to hear. However, I’m ashamed to realize that I made a wrong judgment on the film particularly on its subject.

            Helvetica, as what I mentioned earlier is a kind of font that made the world more appealing than it was before. Well, for those people like me who are not that keen observant, the Helvetica font face is just around announcing, leading, guiding, showing, directing us since the year of its birth. You will find Helvetica posing with the models on billboards, moving together with the cars, helping Nestle, Oral-B and any other products / companies to reach their peak. In short, Helvetica is the reason why effective commercialization existed.

            Isn’t it amazing to know this thing gained a reputation so great than the reputation a prominent person is keeping? And isn’t it interesting to realize that it is just a font? So how this font did achieved the status she is enjoying now? As what I learned on the documentary, Helvetica font is just a very simple font and a serious one. A font that never showed any emotions or expressions…a font that never designed to stand among the others and be famous…a font created for sole reason, to be straightforward. This is the reason why most of the companies all over the world prefer to use Helvetica font family on their logos and printout product advertisements. According to them, this font never outshines the product or the company it represents.

            I also read an article on the web wherein I found out that the known font “Arial” is an impostor of Helvetica. That means Helvetica created first before Arial. Since Helvetica is not downloadable for free, Arial set up its way to stardom. This is the reason why for youngsters on this generation (I’m raising my left hand!) are more familiar with Arial than Helvetica. For those who can’t afford to buy a license for Helvetica, they use Arial as an alternative. Well, the differences of Arial from Helvetica aren’t noticeable. Just like what I did on this article! I used both Arial and Helvetica... did you notice?

            Helvetica, to sum up all, is a universal font. Universal not because most of the people use it, universal because you can see and encounter it everyday and everywhere. Helvetica proved that simplicity is truly beauty. Well, after viewing the film, now I can say that typography isn’t boring at all.

PHILNITS

 

ABOUT PhilNITS:

The Philippine National I.T. Standards (PhilNITS) Foundation, Inc. formerly known as the Japanese I.T. Standards Exams of the Philippines (JITSE-Phil) Foundation, Inc., is a non-stock, non-profit, non-government organization that is implementing an I.T Certification Program from I.T. standards adopted from Japan, with the support of the Department of Trade & industry (DTI) of the Philippines and the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry (METI) of Japan. JITSE-Phil Foundation was registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission on April 10,2002 and set up its first office at the Penthouse of the Prince Bldg, in Rada Street, Legazpi Village Makati city.

PhilNITS Vision:

To make the Philippines an Industry Leader in IT and IT-enabled services

Mission

To attain excellence in Information Technology through the development of Certified I.T. Professionals adhering to recognized world standards

To develop our country’s human resource to sustain the I.T. industry

To accelerate economic development through the massive deployment here and abroad of our highly trained knowledge workers

Objectives

To establish an internationally recognized and accepted standard with which to measure the competency level of IT Engineers/Professionals in the country and have it adopted and implemented nationwide by Industry, Government and Academe in their selection process

To develop a workforce of Certified IT Professionals that are qualified and eligible for work not only in Japanese companies here and abroad but also in multinational companies anywhere in the world.
To help in establishing a strong middle class of qualified Filipino IT Professionals in the Academe, the Industry and Government, with good and moral work ethics, who will bring the country out of the quagmire of poverty.

To establish world leadership in I. T.