What are your children reading?

WEDNESDAY, 01 FEBRUARY 2012 10:15 BY CAROLE KIAMAH

I once attended a class on developing curriculum. The teacher made an interesting comment that learning takes place via connections. We all have a frame of reference to which we attach any new data coming in through our senses. That meant that the more exposed a person is, the more likely they were to do well in school because they had a greater reference from where to draw from. The news was mind boggling for me, with my children still fairly young it meant that I could increase their capacity to learn by exposing them to more things that could increase their frame of reference.

I began to be quite intentional in exposing them to as much information as they could take in the different spheres of their learning. For geography, we began travelling and where we could not go physically, we travelled through the wonderful world of books. We visited various parts of the country where they learnt about different people, groups and cultures. They learnt about the density of water when we visited Mombasa and Lake Bogoria, saw the hot springs, the different animals in the parks and the famous pink flamingoes in Lake Nakuru and became exposed to the various facets of our country and people.

Helping them with their English was a little trickier. I tried to make them discover the beautiful world of books as opposed to watching it through a movie. It was not an easy buy, both wondered, why read a 20-page rendition of Aladdin when you can always watch a movie? I tried to make them see that a movie was someone else’s interpretation of a good story and that by reading the book, they could create their own interpretation. Let us say, it is an ongoing struggle.

Some of the books had no cultural relevance, what was with the short plump man with a long beard who went down people’s chimneys and gave them toys at Christmas? What happened to the poor child in Africa who had neither chimney nor snow for the sleigh? And what are fairies anyway? I think little sparkly ladies who brandish sticks and have wings are spooky and so are little short ugly men with big hats (goblins). A good witch, a cow that jumps over the moon, and a moon made out of cheese? What exactly are we teaching our children? And what is this entire rave about witches and wizards anyway. Why would I want TJ or Toriah’s hero to be a little boy who is studying to be a wizard, or a grown man who spends his day in a pajama outfit and a mask climbing walls like a spider?

One of my favourite stories when I was young was the little matchstick girl, a story of a little poor girl who had nothing to eat and kept looking at the sumptuous feasts in other people’s homes by peeping through the windows. She finally starves to death and is carried off to heaven. I don’t know why I liked it but when I read it to the boys they made me see it in a whole new perspective. “But why did they not invite her to their homes?” Easy enough “They did not see her”. “Okay, but why did she not just knock and say she needed some food?” Good point. I wonder why the author did not think of it. Come to think of it, what exactly was the moral of the story?

The more I look at what is available for children to read the more I wonder what happened to some of the good old books that were available when we were younger. The How stories; the Where stories; and the When stories. What happened to legends like Luanda Magere and Mzee Kiundu (remember the greedy dude who missed out on food by trying to be in two places at the same time?). What happened to the crafty tortoise that won the race or the greedy hyena? Those were great books that were relevant to us and our culture. Suffice to say, Grace Odhiambo and others like her are needed back to their computers.

Our children are in dire need for more of Africa. They need to know about the hare and the tortoise. They need to learn our own folk lores. I must admit that I loved the books that Kenya Institute of Education released years back, comics with our own traditional stories. I cannot wait to introduce my children to Wangu wa Makeri (the ultra feminist), Luanda Magere (our equivalent of Incredible hulk) and Ole-Kuiyot. Perhaps in the quest for entertainment they will also learn a little more of this wonderful continent and its rich culture.

http://www.the-star.co.ke/lifestyle/diary-of-a-mum-/60549-what-are-your-children-reading

Investing in Renewable Energy is Good for the United States and the World

Statement of United Nations Foundation President Timothy E. Wirth on President Obama’s State of the Union Address 

Washington, D.C. (January 25, 2012) – In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama highlighted the importance of increased investment in renewable energy and greater energy efficiency. Prioritizing sustainable energy will position the United States and its partners for a stronger economic future, and will help advance global sustainable energy goals.

“United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlined the global vision earlier this month in a New York Times Op-Ed on his Sustainable Energy for All initiative. He set his sights on 2030, challenging governments, corporations, and people everywhere to create ‘a world with universal energy access coupled with significantly improved rates of energy efficiency and a doubling of renewable energy in our mix of fuel source.’ In order to accomplish this vision, Ban wrote, ‘We need to raise sustainable energy to the top of the global agenda and focus our attention, ingenuity, resources, and investments to make it a reality.’

President Obama’s remarks last night in his address to the nation once again demonstrated the close alignment of U.S. policy goals and the UN’s leadership in the international community. That’s why I am proud to serve as a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High­-level Group on Sustainable Energy for All. This topic will be a major focus of the Rio+20 summit in June – the UN Conference on Sustainable Development – and today the Secretary-General reiterated his commitment to sustainable development as the top priority of his second five-year term, which began this month. Both the President and Secretary-General remind us that now is the time to take on the issue of sustainable energy, with policies and investments that build a better, more secure future for everyone.”

http://sustainableenergyforall.org/about/news/63-investing-in-renewable-energy-is-good-for-the-united-states-and-the-world

Study suggests disarmingly simple way to better job ethics: slow down

Media contact: Benjamin Haimowitz, (212) 233-6170, HHaimowitz@aol.com

When the FBI made front-page headlines recently with the arrest of a coterie of  financial traders and analysts charged with tens of millions dollars worth of securities fraud, it was only the most recent of dozens of similar cases over the past two years. Yet, such big-time rip-offs, spectacular though they are, represent only a tiny sliver of the nation's total business-related cheating, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, which estimates that U.S. business lost close to a trillion dollars from employee fraud in one recent year.

Is such a massive amount of cheating indicative of  a work force that is hopelessly corrupt? Research in the new issue of the Academy of Management Journal suggests not. It finds that, confronted with clear choices between right and wrong, people are more than five times more likely to do the right thing when they have some time to think about the matter than they are when they have to make a snap decision.

"Having time to think things over may not make much difference in big-time financial swindles, but our findings suggest that it would make a considerable difference in innumerable instances of lying and fraud that happen every day in the business world," comments J. Keith Murnighan of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who carried out the new research with Brian Gunia of Johns Hopkins University, Long Wang of City University of Hong Kong, and Li Huang and Jiunwen Wang of Northwestern.

In explanation, Prof. Murnighan adds: "Immediate, automatic moral intuitions tend to be selfish, given that self-interest is a basic, instinctual response to external stimuli. In contrast, conscious, deliberative thought adds social concerns, setting off a battle within the individual that pits the strength of self-interested intuitive desires against the constraints established by social learning."
 

The study also finds that even a modest nudge on behalf of morality can carry the day in such battles, with ethical urgings four times more likely to engender good deeds than advice on behalf of self-interest will.

In sum, as the study puts it, "Organizations with a 'fast pulse' or tendency to reward quick decision-making may suffer ethical penalties by discouraging contemplation and conversation... At a minimum, our results suggest that individual, organizational actors facing right-wrong decisions should take the time to think or to consult an ethical colleague."

The findings emerge from experiments involving 146 college undergraduates who were confronted with a moral dilemma that the researchers manipulated in several different ways. Seated at computer terminals, participants were told that $15 would be divided between them and another student (who, unbeknownst to the subjects actually did not exist) according to one of two options. In Option A, the participant would received $10 and the other student $5; in Option B, the participant would receive $5 and the other student $10. The imaginary other student would choose one option or the other, and it was up to the participant to send beforehand one of two messages of advice. A truthful message would be "Option B earns you more than Option A"; a lie would be "Option A earns you more than Option B."

In one variation, the "immediate-choice condition," participants received instructions and proceeded directly to a screen that asked them to send the message within 30 seconds. In the "contemplation condition," subjects first encountered a screen that remained visible for three minutes and that asked the subject to "please think very carefully about which message to send."

The difference between the two groups was dramatic: 26 of 30 subjects in the contemplation condition (87%) told the truth even though it resulted in their receiving less money than their anonymous counterparts. This compared to 19 of 34 (56%) of the subjects who were asked to make an immediate choice.

In a second experiment, subjects were confronted with the same two options, but this time, before making a decision, they received one of three brief emails from a third party (again fictional) who was supposedly facing the same dilemma. One message "guess[ed] that most people would b honest on this kinda situation;" a second couldn't "help thinking that most other people would try to gain the most money"; a third offered no particular advice, "guessing most people would have a hard time deciding what to do in this kinda situation."

Again the results presented a stark contrast: 20 of 25 subjects who received the ethical email (80%) told the truth, in contrast to 14 of 28 (50%) who were urged to attend to their self-interest and 20 of 29 (69%) who were not given any particular advice.

While such results suggest the benefits that derive from an ethical workplace milieu, the professors express concern about the "potent effects" of the superficial advice proffered in the experiments. In the words of the study, "Given the current ubiquity of email and text messaging, these findings are troubling. More generally they suggest that right-wrong decisions can put people on the fence, straddling ethical action and temptation, and that even minimal influence processes can have big effects...Whether [the advice] led them toward or away from ethicality, the fact that people were influenced at all by such minimal conversations is troubling, as it suggests that people routinely depend on others, even unknown others, to direct their moral choices."  

In conclusion, the study urges organizations to "consciously design moral decision-making processes, integrating them into training and enforcing them institutionally via policies, rewards, and sanctions. Policies mandating a 'cooling-off period' or multiple levels of approval for consequential decisions, for example, might provide institutional analogs for contemplation, and ethics hotlines might act as institutional conversations. Opportunities for instituting and improving these kinds of procedures abound."

Adds Prof. Murnighan: "Executives know what types of decisions raise moral red flags in their companies. If people make these decisions electronically, their computers might be programmed to require contemplation time before decisions are finalized -- and even to fill this time with reminders of the firm's ethical values. Managers already employ similar technology, though usually for non-moral purposes. Hopefully, they will assign enough priority to ethics to adapt existing tools for the purpose of encouraging what's right."

The new study, entitled "Contemplation and Conversation: Subtle Influences on Moral Decision-Making" is in the February/March issue of the The Academy of Management Journal.  This peer-reviewed publication is published every other month by the Academy, which, with about 18,000 members in 103 countries, is the largest organization in the world devoted to management research and teaching. The Academy's other publications are theThe Academy of Management Review, The Academy of Management Perspectives and Academy of Management Learning and Education

Media Coverage:

hbr.com. Extra thinking time leads to ethical decisions. (Tuesday, January 31, 2012)

http://www.aomonline.org/aom.asp?ID=251&page_ID=224&pr_id=453

Ban urges African countries to entrench civil, political and economic rights

29 January 2012 – 

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today urged African countries to entrench civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights to boost stability and development in the continent.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a promise to all people in all places at all times,” Mr. told African leaders gathered in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, for the annual Summit of the African Union (AU).

He cited discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity as one of the injustices that has been ignored or even sanctioned by many States for too long.

“This has prompted some governments to treat people as second-class citizens, or even criminals. Confronting this discrimination is a challenge. But we must live up to the ideals of the Universal Declaration,” Mr. Ban told the Summit, held in a new conference centre funded and built by China.

“I salute your efforts to build African prosperity and grow intra-African trade. Our challenge is to transform Africa's potential into progress for all,” he said.

The Secretary-General noted that 25 African countries will hold elections at either the presidential, legislative or local levels this year and urged them to ensure that the polls are well-managed, transparent and inclusive.

“The transition in Tunisia has been a model for other States. In Libya, our political mission is helping the new transitional authorities to organize elections and improve public security, rule of law and transitional justice,” said Mr. Ban.

He once again encouraged the transitional authorities in Egypt to guarantee the peaceful and early handover of power to a civilian government, uphold human rights, release political prisoners and accelerate the pace of reform.

Mr. Ban pointed out that the so-called Arab Spring – popular protests for civil rights – took the world by surprise because traditional indicators were showing that the affected countries were “stable.”

“Yet below the surface, there was deprivation, exclusion, abuse. Events have proved that repression is a dead-end. Police power is no match for people power seeking dignity and justice,” he said.

Mr. Ban said he was committed to deepening ties between the UN and AU, noting that the fruits of the two organizations' partnership had manifested themselves in the search for peace in Darfur, in common diplomatic efforts in Guinea and cooperation on Somalia.

“Where there are differences, let us continue to find common ground for the future. For example; let us review how effectively and how quickly we are able to respond to crises,” he said.

He called for joint efforts between the UN and AU to improve the lot of women and youth in Africa, who account for 80 per cent of the continent's population, pointing out that the presence of Liberian President President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, at the Summit was an indication that women are not only victims of war. “They are also champions of peace,” said the Secretary-General.

He called for greater representation of women in parliaments across Africa, which he said currently stands 20 per cent on average.

“We must ensure that women are fully represented in decision-making bodies, including in Egypt and Tunisia, where they played a role” in the recent pro-democracy protests.

“And we must restore hope and a better future for youth in Africa. Unemployment and poverty feed chronic instability and create tensions. I intend to appoint a special representative for youth, who will open dialogue with young people and lead our efforts,” he added.

On the sidelines of the Summit, Mr. Ban had separate meetings with the leaders of African countries, including Salva Kiir, the President of South Sudan with whom he discussed several issues, including the country's new institutions and the constitutional review process.

Issues relating to post-independence arrangements also came up for discussion, including dispute over the transportation of oil produced in South Sudan through neighbouring Sudan, and the need for a quick resolution of the Abyei dispute. The Secretary-General reiterated the continued engagement of the UN in peacebuilding efforts in South Sudan.

At a news conference on the sidelines of the Summit, Mr. Ban voiced concern over the deteriorating relations between Sudan and South Sudan.

“It has become a major threat to peace and security across the region. It is the responsibility of the African Union – and its international partners, including the UN – to intensify common efforts to resolve outstanding issues and build confidence between the two countries,” Mr. Ban told reporters.

“The longer these issues remain unresolved, the greater the tensions will grow. The international community needs to act, and it needs to act now,” he said.

Mr. Ban's meeting with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki centred on developments in Somalia, including support to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the AU peacekeeping force in Somalia (AMISOM), as well as efforts to combat maritime piracy in the Indian Ocean. He thanked the Kenyan Government for hosting a large number of refugees from Somalia.

The Secretary-General also met with the Libyan Prime Minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, and voiced his support for the interim Government's work. They also discussed the security situation in the country and reintegration plans for former fighters, as well as plans to improve conditions of detention.

Mr. Ban's meeting with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, the AU current chairman, focused on de-escalating inter-community tensions. They also discussed cross-border challenges affecting the central African sub-region, including the growing threat of maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, and the need for enhanced efforts against insurgents of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

The Secretary-General also met with the Presidents of Tunisia, Moncef Marzouki, Francois Bozizé of the Central African Republic, as well as Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Júnior of Guinea-Bissau. He also conferred with Presidents Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria and Idris Déby of Chad.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41073&Cr=African+Union&Cr1=

How to Move Through Uncertainty to Opportunity

Ineffective leaders require certainty before they act, I am certain.

On the other hand, successful leaders make decisions where outcomes are uncertain.

Turbulent times, regulations and compliance, technology, politics, people, and global markets enflame uncertainty. Additionally, complex challenges have more than one solution. Leadership is rich with uncertainty.

A surprising juxtaposition:

“Trustworthy leaders move through uncertainty to pursue opportunity,” Amy Lyman. The opposite of uncertainty isn’t certainty it’s opportunity.

Have you been in a meeting where conversations revolved around problems and uncertainties? They usually spiral in despair, stall, and produce nothing. Participants return safely to their offices feeling successful because they dodged imaginary bullets.

Without leadership and direction, groups produce uncertainty. Leaders always pursue opportunities while acknowledging realities. Successful leaders don’t get stuck.

Certainty matters:

Adequate certainty eliminates distracting uncertainties. Five ways every organization builds baselines of certainty:

1.      Standard operating procedures.

2.      Decision making models.

3.      Designated decision makers. (usually those closest to the action)

4.      Transparency.

5.      Clarity of mission, vision, and values.

The ultimate goal:

Certainty is not an end in itself. Lyman explains the ultimate goal is, “Creating enough stability to capitalize on opportunities.”

Opportunity:

Strategies that enable organizations to pursue opportunities include:

1.      Honor.

2.      Inclusion.

3.      Valuing and engaging followers.

4.      Sharing information.

5.      Developing others.

From: “The Trustworthy Leader.”

Global Survey Reveals Most Companies Naive When it Comes to Energy Management

Epicor Software Corporation, a global leader in business software solutions for manufacturing, distribution, retail and services organizations, announced the results of its first ever global carbon accounting survey, which offers insight into the fact that despite forthcoming legislation mandating carbon accounting, most companies are still lagging in their comprehension of carbon accounting as a whole, and in the execution of said carbon accounting initiatives.

With Australia introducing the new tax legislation on carbon emissions, and new regulations soon being introduced in California, the momentum behind requiring corporate energy management is well under way. The survey, which was conducted by Epicor during August and September 2011, was designed to investigate the ability and willingness of companies to identify their greenhouse gas emissions; to find out how they technically capture emissions; and to clarify the extent to which companies have to meet not only legal requirements for sustainability, but also what demands they meet from partners and customers.

The survey compiled responses from nearly 1,000 companies worldwide. The majority (48%) of respondents were from organizations in the manufacturing industry. Most (42%) respondents were from organizations with 100 to 1,000 employees and organizations with $50 million in annual revenue, or less (43%). The survey revealed that 58% of companies surveyed had not heard of the term “carbon accounting”, that less than a quarter could accurately describe what the term means, and that a full 80% of companies surveyed don’t monitor their company’s carbon footprint.

“It’s quite worrying to think that a third of all companies don’t know whether they are under legal obligation to report emissions and we want to take this opportunity to urge the industry as a whole to take responsibility and help educate businesses about energy management,” said Chris Purcell, product marketing manager for Epicor. “Businesses should prepare now for carbon accounting.”

He explained, “Carbon reporting will happen irrespective of any personal opinions about global warming; those businesses that prepare now for the reporting that will be legally required of them in the near future will have a clear competitive advantage over laggards. Energy management is not a distraction to a company’s core business. Businesses can gain cost and energy savings from sustainability investments and the growth of emission trading schemes will only increase the need for companies to understand how carbon accounting will impact their bottom line.

The survey also revealed that although the CEO is the most likely person to be responsible for a company’s green strategy, 50% of companies surveyed don’t have any C-level involvement at all in their carbon accounting initiatives. 85% cannot report the level of carbon their company has consumed in each of the last six months, and nearly 70% believe that they accurately account for less than 25% of their company’s carbon consumption.

Read more about the survey at: http://www.epicor.com/MRCPR/Epicor-Announces-Carbon-Accounting-Survey-Results-NR-012512.pdf

Can Computers Replace Teachers?

Until we figure out how to best use technology in the classroom, the bells and whistles are often a distraction

By ANDREW J. ROTHERHAM | @arotherham | January 26, 2012

Steve Jobs didn’t think that technology alone could fix what ails American education. It’s worth remembering that in the wake of last week’s breathless coverage of Apple’s new iBooks platform, which the company promises will radically change how students use and experience textbooks. Under Apple’s plan, companies and individuals will be able to self-publish textbooks, ideally creating a wider array of content. Students will be able to download and use these books on their iPad much like they would use a regular textbook — including highlighting passages, making notes and pulling out passages or chapters that are especially important to them. Apple says it also plans to cap the price of textbooks available through iBooks at $14.99, a significant departure from the price of many textbooks now.

Critics were quick to pounce that Apple wasn’t being revolutionary enough. Former school superintendent and current ed-tech investor Tom Vander Ark chided Apple for not thinking past textbooks, which he considers hopelessly 20th century. Others worried that Apple’s real goal wasn’t to open up the textbook industry but to control it and profit from it through restrictive licensing agreements and a platform that dominates the market. I’m sure the for-profit company’s shareholders will be horrified at that news.

Let’s slow down. Textbooks or tools that look a lot like textbooks aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. And since high quality educational material isn’t cheap to generate, simply tearing down distribution barriers will only go so far in reducing the costs of producing good content. Lost in the heated claims, however, is a more fundamental question: what have educational technology efforts accomplished to date and what should we expect?

As a field, education is easily seduced by technological promises. Textbooks? Thomas Edison saw movies as way to replace them. In a prelude to today’s debates, the phonograph and film strip were lauded as technologies that could replace live teaching. These days, conservatives are in love with the idea that technology will not only shrink the number of in-classroom teachers but render the teachers’ unions obsolete.

The experience to date is less grandiose and more worrisome considering the billions that have been spent on technology in schools in the past few decades. Interactive whiteboards have been around since the early 1990s and done little to transform how teachers teach, and computers are often unaligned with classroom instruction, even though 90% of classrooms around the country have them. Still, according to Department of Education data from 2009, just 61% of students use computers to prepare texts “sometimes or often” and just 45% do more complicated tasks, for instance to “solve problems, analyze data, or perform calculations” on a regular basis.

Usage aside, there is scant evidence that technology is improving learning — even the cheerleaders are reduced to arguing that various education technology tools are obvious rather than supported by much evidence. And when you watch, say, high school students use the Internet to prepare research papers, it’s questionable whether technology — especially when coupled with poorly trained teachers — isn’t doing more to enable the superficial rather than open up richer veins of information for students.

The reasons for the slow pace of change are as obvious as they are stubborn. Altering classroom and school practice in our wildly decentralized education system is always a slow process. Many teachers are not familiar with technology or how to use it in the classroom, and high-quality training programs — either in schools of education or as part of a teachers’ ongoing professional development — are rare. As always, there are few guides for educators to determine which products are any good.

There is, of course, still promise in education technology. When Dreambox Learning, an online math program for elementary-aged students, offered me a free trial to check it out, I did what I usually do with new educational tools — I put it to the ultimate panel of critics: my kids. Dreambox, which just this week announced a new series of lessons aligned to the nascent Common Core standards and free licenses for every school in the country, combines real content with an interactive format so kids are learning even when they think they’re just playing games. I’ve looked at a variety of products, and it’s one of the best in terms of powerful instruction. In a short time, it substantially boosted my kids’ math achievement. (They have a great teacher, too.) As for engagement? Maybe too much. One of my daughters woke me up at 5 am the other day because she wanted to do math.

Yet even a top-shelf product can only augment live teaching. Despite Dreambox’s overall good functionality, there are places where students can become frustrated — not because they don’t know how to do the underlying math, but because the directions for the online activity are confusing. Likewise, technology is bringing back in vogue the idea of the “flipped classroom” with the teacher acting as a “guide on the side” rather than the primary source of instruction. I say back in vogue because, ironically, talk of devaluing the teacher as content provider has been a fixture of progressive education thought for a century. Another variation of the flipped-classroom idea is to use technology to explain concepts at home and use classroom time differently. Again, a lot of potential, but only with keen attention to instructional quality. Much of the online content available today merely replicates the lame instruction already available in too many of our nation’s schools.

As a parent and an analyst, I want technology that includes rich content or enables students to access it. And I want technologies that are engaging for students but actually teach them something. Plenty of applications err on one side or the other. And as with lots of offline schoolwork, there are time wasters that aren’t helping anyone learn much of anything. If anyone tells you an ed tech tool has “gaming elements,” make sure it’s not just a game.

American education desperately needs an overhaul that goes far beyond upgrading computers in the classroom. It’s the last major American field relatively untouched by technology. But Jobs was right: technology by itself won’t fix what ails our schools. He saw teachers’ unions and archaic practices as the big barriers. Perhaps, but I’d argue they are symptoms of our larger inattention to instructional quality. The bells and whistles of technology, for all its promise, are distracting us from this mundane but essential reality.

Rotherham, a co-founder and partner at the nonprofit Bellwether Education, writes the blog Eduwonk. The views expressed are solely his own.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/26/can-computers-replace-teachers/#ixzz1keY2dbXV