How Free Online Courses Are Changing Traditional Education

Call for Mon Unicode Standard Keyboard design

The Mon Unicode Committee is formed on 12/12/2013, with 7 initial members, from 3 countries. We're welcoming new members to join the committee. Please write to montaxila@gmail.com, mentioning your name and country of resident to be included in the committee. In order to move the initiative fast, we would like to call for a Mon Unicode Standard Keyboard design. We currently have some designs which were done by various designers/programmers. If you've done some design or planned to create one, please send your design to the Mon Unicode Committee. We'll give you full credit as the designer. Thank you!

Thanks for your interests in Mon Unicode Committee

Within a day after I post about Mon Unicode Committee on facebook, Mon Taxila Blog received quite a number of visitors to the Mon Unicode Committee page. Thank you!

For your information, we currently have 6 members (5 from Thailand and 1 from Finland). If you're really interested in joining the committee, please send us a quick email, mention your name and country of resident. We'll list you as a member of the committee.

Mon Standard Keyboard

Thanks to numerous Mon developers, we now have various keyboards, both Unicode and Non-Unicode compliance. The keyboard systems we have also usable in Windows, iOS, Linux, and Android. We have more than enough tools for development of a Mon standard keyboard system.

The problem,though, is more about taking  initiative. As far as I know, we have at least 2 camps: the traditional A1 Mon keyboard (Mon is also in this arena) and UniMon keyboard (Mon Unicode, per se). With the long history of A1 Mon keyboard, more than 80% of current users are in this camp (this writer included). But we also aware of the importance of Unicode and it's future, migration is needed in this case.

Taxila: A World Heritage

Credit: UNESCO

Taxila lies 30 km north-west of Rawalpindi on the Grand Trunk Road. It is one of the most important archaeological sites in Asia. Situated strategically on a branch of the Silk Road that linked China to the West, the city flourished both economically and culturally. Taxila reached its apogee between the 1st and 5th centuries AD. Buddhist monuments were erected throughout the Taxila valley, which was transformed into a religious heartland and a destination for pilgrims from as far afield as Central Asia and China.

 That Taxila was very famous can be deduced from the fact that it is mentioned in several languages. In Sanskrit, the city was called Takshacila (Prince of the Serpent Tribe); in Pali it was known as Takkasila; the Greeks knew the town as Taxila, which the Romans rendered as Taxilla; the Chinese called it Chu-ch'a-shi-lo.

English for Mon

English for Mon by Nai Sumit will be released beginning of January 2014. This book will enable Mon people to understand 3,000 essential English vocabularies and pronounce correctly with IPA (International Phonetic Alphabets).

Mon Taxila's courses are in English. In order to study at Mon Taxila, students need to have a minimum of English equivalent to IELTS bandscore 7 or above. For Mon students, the English for Mon book will certainly help.

Mon Unicode Committee

Due the the universal acceptance of Unicode for character encoding, there is a need for Mon language to be fully integrated and compliance with Unicode. Thai and Myanmar already have their own Unicode character sets, and Mon has an extension within the Myanmar character set. That's a good start, before having our own character set, which is different from Myanmar, linguistically and historically.

In order to make this happen, we need to form a Mon Unicode Committee (MUC), and please express your interest by writing to montaxila@gmail.com. We'll list you in the committee.

Modern education the old school

Welcome to Mon Taxila!