Skip to main content

Home/ Teachers Without Borders/ Group items tagged access

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Teachers Without Borders

Benin's progress in education: Expanding access and narrowing the gender gap ... - 0 views

  •  
    In 1990, Benin had one of the world's lowest primary and secondary school enrolment rates, with enormous gender, socioeconomic and regional disparities in access to education. Since then, initial access to primary education has been approaching universality. The gender gap has narrowed substantially, and has in some regions been eliminated.
Teachers Without Borders

Mosoko - NRCC Wiki - 0 views

  • Two recent examples show how mobile phones can improve peoples' access to information in developing economies. Robert Jensen studied the effect of the growth in mobile phone use in fishing villages in the Indian state of Kerala. As cellular coverage grew from nothing to 100% from 1997 to 2000, the fish market became more efficient: fishermen knew where that days' catch would fetch a good price, price fluctuations between villages diminished, and fewer fish were discarded at the end of each day. A second example shows how markets for agricultural goods -- accessed via phone -- aided farmers in East Africa. The Kenyan Agricultural Commodity Exchange makes nationwide prices available through text messages. Prior to the Exchange, the main source of pricing information was the middleman to whom the farmers were selling -- people who were motivated to buy the commodity as cheaply as possible. Armed with better pricing information, farmers can now sell their goods for prices closer to market rates.
  • Billions of people have mobile phones but only a small fraction of those people have access to the Web. We are focusing on three main types of services that are widespread on the Web, but are absent in developing regions: classified advertising, social networks, and information sharing through Wikis. In all three service aspects, we seek to provide an intuitive and dynamic infrastructure for user-generated content. Craigslist, in the US, and similar free classified services in other developed countries have created marketplaces for exchanging goods and services where none existed before. Their web-based access cannot be brought to developing countries in the near future. Instead, what if we could assist people in forming similar types of connections using only their mobile phones?
  • Short-term goals: Focus on one domain: apartment listings. Build a prototype and deploy it for a month in Nairobi for free.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Provide more powerful interfaces to users who do have Internet access. These interfaces will be both through standard computer web browsers and through customized applications that run on higher-end phones. Currently, the vast majority of phones in developing regions are not capable of running customized applications (e.g. Java). Use speech recognition to improve matching process.
  • This project seeks to develop an "audio wiki" -- an open platform (like Wikipedia) that people can freely access and contribute to, but rather than using a desktop computer, they use a cell phone. This means that all content will be spoken rather than written, and there are a host of interesting challenges in user interfaces, speech recognition, and audio processing that need to be tackled.
Teachers Without Borders

Consequences of Inaccessible Water in Haiti - Pulitzer Center Untold Stories - 0 views

  • Water has been identified as a top priority for aid to Haiti as it struggles to recover. The consequences of not having access to water extend beyond dehydration. Thirst drives people to water sources they would not have considered before - sources contaminated with human waste, garbage, and industrial byproducts. Using this water leads to diseases like cholera and dysentery, which spread rapidly through communities. Aid efforts must place a priority on bringing safe water to Haiti as soon as possible if the country is to quickly move beyond the immediate crisis to long-term recovery efforts.
  • Providing water to Haiti has been troublesome for decades. According to the World Health Organization, only 58% of Haitians had sustainable access to clean water in 2006.
  • Steve Solomon, author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization, suggests in a New York Times editorial that Haiti focus on local water networks with flexible piping that can be buried and repaired easily.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The tragedy in Haiti has brought to light the consequences of not having access to clean water. Across the globe, 1.1 billion people do not have access to reliable, clean water and 2.6 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation.
Konrad Glogowski

Toward Universal Learning: What Every Child Should Learn | Brookings Institution - 1 views

  •  
    In the run-up to 2015 and beyond, the global education community must work together to improve learning and propose practical actions to deliver and measure progress. In response, UNESCO through its Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at the Brookings Institution have co-convened the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF). The project's main objective is to shift the focus of global education debates from access to access plus learning. Based on input from technical working groups and global consultations, the task force will make recommendations to help countries and international organizations measure and improve learning outcomes for children and youth worldwide.
Teachers Without Borders

New UN atlas shows access to secondary education still a challenge for girls - 0 views

  •  
    New UN atlas shows access to secondary education still a challenge for girls
Teachers Without Borders

Thailand takes first steps on long road to inclusive mainstream education | Global deve... - 0 views

  • Cultural barriers continue to deny disabled children access to schools, but progress on inclusive education is finally gathering
  • The strict hierarchy of Thai society means the drive for inclusive education needs strong commitment from both politicians and school leaders. In the past decade, there has been significant political progress in moves to implement a system that ensures children with disabilities have access to mainstream schools. However, with cultural barriers and resistance from some headteachers, the journey towards fully inclusive education has only just begun.
  • Some headteachers Lennon spoke to were amenable to the concept of inclusive education, but didn't feel they had the resources or training to implement it effectively. Others, with decades of experience of working in special schools, felt this institutional model was more suitable.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • However, many headteachers in Vorapanya's study cited the Buddhist belief in the need for compassion as a reason they support inclusive education. Meanprasat private school in Bangkok, which combines western-style "child-centric" learning with a Buddhist ethos of moral ethics and regular meditation, is recognised as a national leader in integrated educational practices. In total, 130 of its 1,300 students are disabled. The school's philosophy is that children with disabilities "should have the chance to mix with society and be accepted by it". More than 5,000 teachers visit the school annually and attend workshops held to help spread good practice.
  • Nanthaporn (Nuey) Nanthamongkol, a six-year-old girl with Down's syndrome, was due to be sent to a distant boarding school before he intervened. "Without our work, Nuey would have been separated from her parents, sent to a school 80km away," says Lennon. "For kids with Down's syndrome, this is the worst possible thing you could do."
  • State schools, however, which have much less funding, have been described by Vorapanya as having "woefully insufficient resources" to implement inclusive education properly. Headteachers have complained that while schools can now access a minimum of 2,000 baht (approximately £41) funding for each disabled child, this is not enough to cover the required resources or training expenses. Another problem is that this funding can only be given if the child has been officially certified with a disability. Teachers have reported that some parents do not want this social stigma or are fearful that this certification will lead to discrimination.Despite the significant challenges, Lennon is optimistic. "We are making great strides," he says. "If we keep doing good, the results will surely follow."
Tiffany Hoefer

accesselearning Tutorial: Overview - 0 views

  •  
    This free tutorial is comprised of 10 modules that offer information, instructional techniques, and practice labs on how to make the most common needs in distance education accessible for individuals with disabilities, and enhance the usability of online materials for all students.
Teachers Without Borders

ReliefWeb » P&I » Education Insights: Making education inclusive for all - 1 views

  • Educational inclusion relates to all children accessing and meaningfully participating in quality education, in ways that are responsive to their individual needs. The terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘inclusive education’ are often used in relation to children with disabilities and/or special needs and emerged partly out of debates to reduce their segregation from mainstream schooling.In recent years, these terms have been used by the Education for All (EFA) movement in relation to all children who are marginalised and excluded from basic education, not just in terms of initial access to schooling, but access to rights within schooling processes. United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) identifies inclusion as “…a process of addressing and responding to the diversity of needs of all learners through increasing participation in learning, cultures and communities, and reducing exclusion within and from education.”
  • According to UNESCO, inclusion “…involves changes and modifications in content, approaches, structures and strategies, with a common vision which covers all children of the appropriate age range and a conviction that it is the responsibility of the regular system to educate all children.”  
Teachers Without Borders

India: The Open Defecation Paradox - Pulitzer Center Untold Stories - 0 views

  • Open defecation—humans defecating outside—is the ugly stepsister of clean water scarcity, which we commemorate on World Water Day. Two-and-half billion people lack access to even simple pit toilets, which is three times as many people as lack access to clean drinking water and results in two million preventable deaths per year, mostly of children under five from intestinal diseases.
  • Jack Sim, the self-described “evangelist of toilets,” from the World Toilet Organization, theorizes that’s because “every politician wants to be photographed standing next to a new well, but no one wants to be photographed standing next to a new toilet.” And without some portion of the powers that be to drive a story, coverage becomes scarce.
  • India has the largest number of open defecators in the world, over 600 million of them. At a certain level, this fact is inescapable. Within a hundred yards of our five star hotel in New Delhi, we could find expanses of human feces—we could find them because we could smell them. Touring Delhi slum clusters with local activists, we traversed neighborhoods where 5,000 people share 20 public toilets, which is nearly the same as having no toilets, resulting in even vaster expanses of human feces. But in urban areas, open defecation can also be invisible in the way poor people can quickly become invisible.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • For example, NGOs can produce statistics indicating that more households in India have cell phones and television than access to toilets. But for rural people to want to put in toilets, they have to be informed.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Ghana: Pay Attention to Water and Sanitation in Schools - 0 views

  • Indeed, there is consensus that no strategy for poverty reduction and development can ignore humanity's need for water and sanitation.
  • While there are specific MDGs relating to water and sanitation, it is an indisputable fact that the achievement of all other MDGs are dependent on access to clean water and improved sanitation facilities.
  • At Ashaiman alone, 2,015 children, each bearing a plastic drinking cup, formed a 2,015-people queue to remind duty bearers of the 2015 deadline for the meeting of the MDGs on water and sanitation.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The joining of the queue by the school children underscored the fact that many a child does not have access to clean water, safe sanitation and hygiene facilities. Thus, they made this legitimate call: "'Please Give Us Basic Sanitation & Clean Water NOW' because as you all know, the child cannot wait."
  • Today, it is estimated that 4,000 children across the globe die everyday because they have no access to safe sanitation and clean water. Besides, a total of 2.5 billion people across the world still have to wait in queues for their turn to exercise their right to use a safe and dignified toilet.
Meghan Flaherty

Beijing Declaration - 0 views

  • goals of equality, development and peace for all women everywhere in the interest of all humanity
  • the status of women has advanced in some important respects in the past decade but that progress has been uneven, inequalities between women and men have persisted and major obstacles remain, with serious consequences for the well-being of all people
  • Women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Equal rights, opportunities and access to resources, equal sharing of responsibilities for the family by men and women, and a harmonious partnership between them are critical to their well-being and that of their families as well as to the consolidation of democracy
  • Local, national, regional and global peace is attainable and is inextricably linked with the advancement of women, who are a fundamental force for leadership, conflict resolution and the promotion of lasting peace at all levels
  • Promote people-centred sustainable development, including sustained economic growth, through the provision of basic education, life-long education, literacy and training, and primary health care for girls and women
  • Take positive steps to ensure peace for the advancement of women and,recognizing the leading role that women have played in the peace movement,work actively towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and support negotiations on the conclusion, without delay, of a universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty which contributes to nuclear disarmament and the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in all its aspects
  • Prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls
  • Ensure equal access to and equal treatment of women and men in education and health care and enhance women's sexual and reproductive health as well as education
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Rwanda: More Than Building Schools - Access to Affordable Sanitary Pads ... - 1 views

  • How can countries encourage girls to attend school? Is the answer providing free textbooks or building schools closer to their homes? While these are important pieces of the puzzle, there is another issue that influences whether girls attend school: menstruation.
  • According to the United Nations Children's Fund, one in 10 African girls stays home during menses or drops out of school. In many cases, girls do not have access to affordable sanitary pads, and social taboos against discussing menstruation compound the problem.
  • Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) in 2007 to address this problem. SHE works in Rwanda with its she28 campaign to develop an affordable and eco-friendly pad made from banana stem fibers so that girls can attend school unimpeded by worries over their menses.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Not only is SHE working to help girls attend school during menses, but also the group is taking a market-based approach to boost local businesses in Rwanda. SHE plans to sell its more-affordable pads to local entrepreneurs, focusing on women sellers.
  • However, after talking to local girls, the SHE staff realized that the girls wanted health and hygiene education as well. In response, SHE has trained more than 50 community health and hygiene education workers, reaching some 5,000 Rwandans, according to Camacho.
  • SHE's work in Rwanda shows that a comprehensive approach is needed to expand women and girls' educational opportunities. "Women and girls are often left behind because of some of these silent issues," Camacho explains. "We need to approach women and girls' education in a holistic way."
  •  
    Would SHE be interested in getting its health and hygiene education materials into the Sugar Labs program for Replacing Textbooks, as a Free OER to be provided with OLPC XO laptops as Rwanda rolls them out? We would be interested in whatever they have in Kinyarwanda, French, or English, and would then offer them for translation to be used in other countries.
Konrad Glogowski

Educators in Exile - 0 views

  •  
    Much of the literature surrounding education in emergencies focuses on the impact of armed conflict on children. Surprisingly little focuses explicitly on teachers, and yet it is commonly acknowledged that the biggest influences on the education a child receives are the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their teacher. Through field research from Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, the study examines the role and status of teachers in emergencies. It identifies the issues refugee teachers face and makes recommendations on how policy can better address their particular needs and protect their rights, and thus improve access to and quality of education to populations affected by an emergency. The research findings also include data on South Sudan and the status of teachers returning there from exile.
Teachers Without Borders

Enabling Education Network - EENET - 0 views

  •  
    EENET is an inclusive education information-sharing network, open to everyone. We help a wide range of people to access information and we encourage critical thinking, innovation and conversations on issues of inclusion, equity and rights in education.
Teachers Without Borders

INEE Toolkit - Pocket Guide to Inclusive Education - 0 views

  •  
    Pocket Guide to Inclusive Education With the input of many INEE members, INEE's Task Team on Inclusive Education and Disability developed this tool as a quick reference guide to help practitioners make sure that education in emergencies is accessible and inclusive for everyone, particularly those who have been traditionally excluded from education. This guide is aimed at anyone working to provide, manage or support education services in emergencies and complements the INEE Minimum Standards. It outlines useful principles for an inclusive education approach in emergencies and provides advice for planning, implementing and monitoring. The guide also looks at the issue of resistance to inclusion, and highlights ways in which organisations can support their emergency staff to develop more inclusive education responses. For more information on this tool, please visit www.ineesite.org/inclusion or email network@ineesite.org.
Tiffany Hoefer

Classroom Guide: Top Ten Tips for Assessing Project-Based Learning | Edutopia - 0 views

  •  
    Free guide and downloads to improve how teacher's assess project based learning. Requires free registration with edutopia to access pdf document.s
Teachers Without Borders

Bulgaria: Teachers in Berlin at 'End of Tether' over German-illiterate Roma Kids - Novi... - 0 views

  •  
    Since Romania and Bulgaria's accession to the EU, more and more Roma have flocked to Germany, many of whom send their children to school without any knowledge of the language, the Berliner Umschau states. The teachers at the Hermann Schulz primary school in Berlin-Reinickendorf have sent a letter to the authorities to complain about the matter. In one of the classes at the school, 20% of the children are Roma with no knowledge of German. The teachers have complained that they are no longer capable of catering to the needs of the entire classes and are finding it impossible to teach the curriculum.
1 - 20 of 102 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page