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Teachers Without Borders

Mosoko - NRCC Wiki - 0 views

wiki.nrcc.noklab.com/Mosoko

mosoko mobile phones Nairobi Africa development developing nations cell phone wiki audio wiki Nokia

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 09 Apr 09 - Cached
  • 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.
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  • 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

SKNVibes | OAS Ministers of Education highlight the role of teachers in the "Declaratio... - 0 views

www.sknvibes.com/...54521

Suriname education declaration OAS

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 07 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • I hope that following this meeting and the Declaration of Paramaribo, Member States and the Governments that you represent will not only endorse the vision that you have agreed upon, but also will translate that into a working plan to put money behind those plans, to execute those plans,” the OAS official added. He also tanked national representatives on the support they provide to the OAS on these issues.
  • Minister Sapoen said that the meeting was “a very fruitful exchange of information, experiences and practices”. “Don’t let these agreements stay in words. We are currently in the years of writing words, let the coming years be the years of doing,” he added.
  • The Surinamese Minister was elected at the meeting to Chair the Inter-American Committee on Education (CIE, by its Spanish acronym), succeeding Ecuadorian Minister Gloria Vidal. Also elected were Costa Rica and Paraguay, both as Vice Chairs.
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  • The “Declaration of Paramaribo (available here) stressed the importance of teachers in all levels of the educational process. “We reaffirm the key role of the teacher in educational processes and results and recognize that the participation of teachers in efforts to improve the quality of education is important, so as to help ensure that the results are effective and lasting,” the text says.
  • The document also highlights the need for educators “to have access to quality initial preparation and continuing professional development” and acknowledges that “policies to strengthen the teaching profession and opportunities for quality professional development are vital to attract, employ, induct, develop, evaluate, motivate, retain, and recognize teachers so that they become ever better educators.”
  • The Declaration of Paramaribo also emphasizes the importance of expanding access to new technologies in education, and applauded the progresses made by the Inter-American Teacher Education Network (ITEN).
  • the government of the United States announced during the meeting its commitment to further provide resources to strengthen ITEN’s work
  • In Paramaribo, some countries already put forward proposals such as strengthening teacher’s education; establishing diploma or degree equivalencies among countries; strengthening learning of languages; and considering the importance of the role of the family in education and development.
Meghan Flaherty

A Culture Of Teaching Peace - 2 views

www.commondreams.org/...0616-01.htm

peace_education culture_of_peace

shared by Meghan Flaherty on 15 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Teaching peace also places importance on the process of education, i.e. the structure of the classroom, shared power between teacher and student, and a cooperative, co-creative learning process where factors like race, religion, background and learning ability are honored as swaths of fabric in a colorful cultural quil
  • he case of the Program Pendidikan Damai , a peace education program specifically designed for the province of Aceh, Indonesia, is a good example of a culture of teaching peace. In response to the pandemic brutal war between the Free Aceh Movement and the Indonesian military which has caught tens of thousands of civilians in the crossfire, local educators solicited the advice of international non-governmental organizations in creating a curriculum rooted in principles of nonviolence. The curriculum incorporates tenets of Islamic teaching as well as Acehnese culture, and is thus aptly relevant to the students who, frustrated with the level of violence in their cities and countrysides, decided to participate in workshops and trainings to learn how they can be agents of positive change in their communities. The local schools have adopted the curriculum and have begun teaching the lessons during school hours.
  • teaching peace gives students the tools to constructively deal with the problems they encounter on both a personal and global level, and it helps them understand their responsibility for elevating the collective human experience.
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  • Since formal education often leads to future job prospects, a culture of teaching peace ought to offer dynamic examples of careers with a conscience, or choosing a vocation which utilizes their unique gifts and talents and which is ecologically sound, morally upright and globally-minded. Giving evidence that peace is a viable and tangible career option can open doors and broaden students' perspectives.
  • Science teachers can teach peace by promoting environmental awareness and ecological thinking. Foreign language teachers can read and/or translate primary-source texts from the target language which detail experiences in personal, local, national and global peacemaking efforts. Physics classes can learn about the subatomic exchange of matter and energy which binds all humans to one another. Themes of peace and justice can be infused in every content subject so that peace is pervasive in the curriculum.
  • A comprehensive global network of educators promoting peace will create waves of new teachers who are motivated to teach peace
Teachers Without Borders

http://www.ei-ie.org/educationforall/en/newsshow.php?id=1523&theme=educationforall&coun... - 0 views

www.ei-ie.org/...newsshow.php

education Africa development poverty EFA developing nations

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 23 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • The World Social Forum (WSF) is an international event that draws thousands of people to exchange views on globalisation, human rights and workers’ rights. A special focus in this year’s forum has been African issues, in particular developments in Tunisia and Egypt, as well as the lack of action on development and poverty in Africa.
  • Participants agreed that unions in western Africa must pursue their efforts to urge governments to take appropriate political measures for quality education. They expressed their concerns about how it could be that countries with limited natural resources, such as Cape Verde, Mauritius and Tunisia, were among the best performers in education, while the richest countries in the region justified their bad performances with budgetary restraints.
  • “There is no doubt that child labour is part of the daily reality in Africa. Despite the legal tools existing to fight it, including governments signing relevant international conventions, the questions is why nothing appears to be happening?”
Teachers Without Borders

International Leaders in Education Program (ILEP) | IREX - 0 views

www.irex.org/...aders-education-program-ilep-0

education leaders international collaboration exchange teachers teacher development teacher development

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 03 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Teachers Without Borders on 03 Jun 11
     
    The International Leaders in Education Program (ILEP) brings outstanding secondary school teachers from around the globe to the United States to further develop expertise in their subject areas, enhance their teaching skills, and increase their knowledge about the United States. The program also brings US secondary school teachers to the home schools of international alumni to collaboratively develop workshops and share best practices. International alumni are eligible to apply for small grants to implement self-designed projects that benefit their home schools and communities. ILEP is a program of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the US Department of State.
Teachers Without Borders

Education |P6 in Uganda pupils cannot do fractions - report - 2 views

www.monitor.co.ug/...-

education assessment teachers evaluation professional development Uganda

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Although the introduction of Universal Primary Education (UPE) has boosted enrollment in primary schools (Uganda boasts 8.3 million children in primary schools compared to 2.3 million before 1997), numerous pupils continue to perform poorly at one of the most important aspects of basic education.
  • The report stated that, “Few primary six pupils demonstrated skills in other competences of ‘measures.’ Only about a third of the pupils (35.2 per cent) could for example tell the time shown on the clock face and merely 4.1 per cent of the pupils could apply the concept of capacity in real life situations.”The tests sampled pupils in 1,098 schools from all the districts in Uganda between the ages of nine and 15 and over.
  • Findings indicate that the main reason why pupils cannot practically apply what is taught in class is the teachers failure to identify the weakness of the pupils in the various areas of study.
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  • The report says: “the cause of this is failure to use assessment to diagnose pupils’ and to guide teaching and inadequate practice as these pupils do their work. Primary Six pupils, whose teachers had a university degree or Grade III teaching certificate, performed better than those whose head teachers had a Grade V teaching certificate. Pupils with head teachers who reside at school performed poorer than those whose head teachers live outside the school.”
  • Mokurai Cherlin on 29 Jul 11
     
    It is evident that the sources of these problems must be sought in earlier grades, and even in the experiences of Ugandan pre-schoolers. Compare them with what I describe at http://replacingtextbooks.wordpress.com/2011/07/25/higher-mathematics-for-children/ for children in the US. There are excellent materials on fractions online. See http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Open_Education_Resources for links to some sites that have as many as 100,000 e-learning resources available. Even if students do not have computers, teachers who can access these lessons can adapt them for the classroom or for individual practice, and share them with teachers who do not have Web access. On the issue of fractions, see also http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities/TurtleArt/Tutorials/Fractions for an approach that requires no computers, but will be enhanced with software activities fairly soon. If your students have trouble with these exercises, and you can tell us why, we will work with you and them to develop materials that meet their needs. You will also have to tell us if there are circular Ugandan foods that we can use in lessons for children who are not familiar with European/American cakes, pies, and pizza. ^_^ When you have a 4.1% success rate on a particular topic, and thus a 95.9% failure rate, it cannot be said that individual teachers have failed to recognize individual difficulties. This is evidence that the entire curriculum is misdesigned. I assume that this is some part of the holdover colonial education system from before independence, designed originally for European children, with no relation to the prior experi
Teachers Without Borders

Mandarin has the edge in Europe's classrooms - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...article2203207

classrooms mandarin europe Chinese China languages education curriculum

shared by Teachers Without Borders on 19 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Asked at the start of their first Chinese class what motivated them to take up the language, the students of the Institut de la Providence, a secondary school outside Namur in Belgium, give their new teacher varied answers. “It’s a big country,” says one. “I’ve been to China and would like to go back,” ventures another. The two dozen teenagers are part of a pilot project started this autumn in nine Belgian schools to promote Chinese language learning. More broadly, they are among hundreds of thousands of students in the West who are opting to learn Mandarin Chinese, often at the expense of traditional languages such as Spanish or German.
  • China’s rapid economic rise is gradually translating into a greater presence in European and U.S. classrooms, from a very small base as recently as 10 or 15 years ago.
  • From a marginal position 15 years ago, Chinese has imposed itself as the fourth major language behind French, Spanish and German, which, on current trends, it will overtake by the end of the decade.
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  • More often than not, it is a perception that knowledge of Chinese will be a vital asset in tomorrow’s job market that is driving demand, he says.
  • In July, Swedish education minister Jan Björklund floated the idea of every school offering Chinese classes to their students. “Chinese will be much more important, from an economic perspective, than French or Spanish,” he told the Dagens Industri newspaper.
  • Another important factor is the financial support from Beijing, which has stepped up the activities of the Confucius Institutes, a network of cultural diplomacy bodies tasked with increasing china’s “soft power” around the globe.
  • hese institutes are often likened to Germany’s Goethe Institute or the Alliance Française but are considerably more aggressive in pushing Beijing’s worldview and shutting down discussion of any topics regarded as politically sensitive such as tibet or China’s human rights record.
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