Lately, I have been interacting with some major project leaders. These are people who are confident about their projects. They generally avoid discussing these projects with others, for fear of having their ideas stolen. But they still needed a trustworthy advisor... And finally they decided that it would be Nnenna. After some "maximum security clearance" considerations and "highly classified" discussions, I noticed:...
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There is a quote that says "Everything that is rare is expensive". In sub-Saharan Africa, in that "Everything", it seems that we must include Everything but the teaching profession.
Indeed, the shortage of teachers that affects the whole world in general is particularly more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa. If we stick to the quote, this situation should have had the effect of raising the salary of teachers to attract as many people as possible in the profession. But no! On the contrary, it appears to be driving teachers' salaries down. In The Ivory Coast for example, in the schools, you can find benevolent teachers and volunteer teachers alongside state civil service teachers....
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Following my analysis on the web municipality project, its organizers produced a response in which they insist that their pseudo-mayor has no power over anyone and never will. Although the message is somewhat reassuring, several questions remained regarding their project. Also, the organizers ask me some questions in their statement....
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Researches show that those who find the answer themselves retain it better than those who are told the answer. What schools should do ideally is to give children the motivation to get involved, to create an environment where children, driven by their curiosity, solve interesting problems, instead of simply memorizing answers to the problems that have already been solved. This may seem unrealistic with regard to some traditional systems but......
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When we talk about academic training, a fashionable expression is to say that the established education system is defective - the current system is not defective, it is built in a great way. It's just that we do not need it anymore, it's obsolete. Ok, I can not speak for everyone, but based on what I could see in West Africa and South Asia, here are some hypotheses to consider:...
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In Africa, in general there are not enough teachers and not enough hours of classes a day to teach children everything they need to know. That's why we need children to stay interested and continue to learn voluntarily, even after leaving the classroom.
There is a solution that costs virtually nothing: alternate reality games....
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Let's admit that the education system in Africa is currently rather demotivational.
From the beginning of the school year, and starting the first homework, the ambitious student sees himself with a perfect score of 20 out of 20, but from there, the only possible direction is the reduction of his points, depending on his mistakes. If he is really brilliant, he could stay close to the average of 20, otherwise in general his average score drops with each of his mistakes.
There is a sort of feedback loop that encourages failure: when you have a bad grade, you feel less motivated to study, so you study less, so you have more bad grades, and so on. Basically, the more you fail, the more you fail.
However, in games, we learn that progress encourages progress and that the desire to be effective is a much stronger motivator than the fear of failure....
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This is just a warning with respect to the recent 'web municipal elections'(!) in Ivory Coast.
Revisiting the facts
It all started like a joke, there was even an agama reptile among the candidates (obviously a fictive character).
The initial idea seems to be some elections parody, some way of showing that technology and its users were able to come up with peaceful, transparent elections.
The project appears online a couple of months back, then follow some online promotion through Facebook and Twitter and a few weeks later, about 500 people take part to the said election.
A few local and international blogs relay the story, it all suddenly gets serious, there's even an investiture ceremony(!), the Ivorian Web population(?) would purportedly be having a mayor...
The parody assumes a new form, and with baby steps, some projects of taking over responsibilities and placing regulations are starting to raise......
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I just published a beta version of my first complete game. If you have a moment to try it, I hope you will enjoy it : http://babifraya.com/...
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You probably made resolutions at the beginning of the year. Whether you have achieved your goals or not, there is no need to feel sorry for yourself. You still have time to comply with these resolutions. But you would still have trouble getting there if you don't adopt the appropriate mindsets. In my view, these are 5 attitudes that remain paramount when it comes to raising to the next level:...
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