GAC Assignment filmed by new AlphaMax Communication unit

The Global Assessment Certificate (GAC) 2014 Class did their second  assignment for the GAC 006 class — Business, Science and Social Science 1: Communication  Skills, on the 11th November.

GAC 2014 Class

Michael Grauwde and Vivian Zheng

This  assessment event was a group role play.

The aim of  the assessment event was for the group to negotiate and come to a consensus at the end of ten minutes.  The group consisted of 5 members, and every member had to agree on what was decided:  They were to imagine that they were about to be frozen and would not be brought back to life until the year 3000 A.D.  They had to rank 10 items about society that they believed would change the most.  Each person had to justify their top five rankings and try to persuade others why they chose this ranking.  At the end, the group had to reach an agreement on a ranking.

Jason Hoppie (GAC Valedictorian, Class of 2013) and Kirk Clarke

The assessment event was video-graphed by the AlphaMax Academy's Communication unit.  The unit is currently engaged in several projects that will be aired in December.  The communication unit is new in the AlphaMax Academy and is currently taught by Mr. Kirk Clarke, a Caribbean Media trainer with many years of experience in Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, other Caribbean countries, and north America.

Written by Vivian Zheng

Three new species found in Australian Rainforest

Reuters  
31 October 2013

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Scientists have discovered three new species of animals in a rainforest 'lost world' in Australia, protected for millions of years by almost impenetrable stacks of granite boulders.

The new animals are a leaf-tail gecko, a golden-coloured skink and a boulder-dwelling frog living in the unique rocky rainforest in Cape Melville, some 1,500 km (900 miles) north west of Brisbane, Australia's third most populous city.

'They just look completely distinct, so as soon as you see them you think 'Wow, that thing is definitely new',' Conrad Hoskin of James Cook University, who led the expedition with the U.S. National Geographic Society, told Reuters by telephone.

The Melville range is rugged and precipitous, and almost unreachable as millions of granite boulders the size of 'cars and houses' are piled hundreds of metres high, with a boulder-strewn rainforest on its plateau.

All three new species hide among the labyrinth of the rocky rainforest with the leaf-tail gecko, which is 20 cm (8 inches) long, emerging at night to hunt on rocks and trees.

The Cape Melville shade skink is active during the day, chasing insects across the mossy boulders, while the blotched boulder frog lives in the cool, moist crevasses of the boulder fields during the dry season.

The frog only emerges during the summer wet season to breed in the rain and feed on insects among the surface rocks.

'We tend to think of Australia as pretty well explored,' Dr Hoskin said. 'This discovery just shows there's truly remote, unexplored areas in Australia, so it's very exciting.'

Hoskin and his team flew in to the rainforest plateau by helicopter, and plan to return in a few months to continue the search for new species, including snails, spiders and small mammals.

The far-flung rainforest is a unique ecosystem, able to keep away fire and lock moisture between the boulders, helping rare rainforest species to survive for millions of years.

(Reporting by Thuy Ong; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

© Copyright 2013 Reuters