Genius Hour Reflection #2

Improving Education in Africa

For this second Genius Hour Project, I decided to work and learn more about the education in Africa. The reason why I choose to do so is because as we are living in this African Continent and where to majority of us are from we need to make sure that the leaders of tomorrow have a good education. We need to leave our countries in good hand for a better future. Most of Africans countries are poor and I wanted to know how do they manage to educate their nation. I leaned that education here, in Africa has been an issue and finding a way to improve it. In education we most of the time fall in gender inequality as more boys go to school then girls. This uprising issue, inequality and a proper education are ones of the United Nations Sustainable Developments Goals of the year 2030.

  How is education in Africa and what are the number of people that don’t have an education?

According to UNESCO statistics, it is globally in poor countries mostly in Africa that kids do not have a proper education. It was said that 263 M kids are out of school in the whole world! 

A women was interviewed and asked why is the quality of education poor in most African countries: “You see, there is something inherently wrong with the educational institutions and systems across Africa. There must be. How else can we explain why Africa is not producing entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, famous public speakers etc?” and she responds to this by saying:”Because the reality is African students are not graduating out of our educational institutions as experts.”(Djanie,Akua)

She says that Africans don’t get a proper education because their own government is not putting an effort to hire good teachers and make their kids education better.

According to UNICEF statistics, it shows that people living in urban areas attend more school than those living in rural areas. 

If you’ve ever been in public school in Africa, you can see the classes in where students are supposed to learn are not clean or big enough. Classes may contain more than 100 students in one classroom! They most of the time lack in proper materials for the kids leaning. The are also many reasons why kids do not go to school.

Why don’t children go to school?

Their are a number of reasons why kids do not go to school such as :

  • Prejudice – statements like ‘Because they don’t want to go to school’ and ‘Because they don’t need an education’, can be used to explore the negative ideas and images the class have of children in developing countries.
  • Cultural – statements like ‘Because they can get their education elsewhere’, and ‘Because it is more important to educate boys’ can be used to explore how different cultures view education.
  • Economic – statements like ‘Because they can’t afford to go to school’, ‘Because girls are needed to work in the home’ and ‘Because they have to earn money for their families’ can be used to explore how poverty restricts access to education.
  • Political – statements like ‘Because there are not enough teachers’, ‘Because schools are not near to where they live’ and ‘Because there are not enough schools’ can be used to explore the reasons why some governments are unable to provide an education service for all.

On of the reasons why kids don’t go to school it is because of their parents mentality on this. Sometimes it doesn’t have to do with the parents decision nor the economical difficulties but the countries on level of poverty. Children sometimes can’t go to school because of complications such as a civil war in their country or because of financial problems.

Does not having an education have to do with gender inequality?

“Millions of girls in the sub-Saharan are not in school” (BBC) 

According to UNESCO,

  • “ There still only 92 girls per 100 boys in primary school in the region.The country with the greatest inequity remaining in primary and lower secondary is Chad.”
  • “ In Guinea and Niger, approximately 70% of the poorest girls had never attended school compared with less than 20% of the richest boys.”
  • “The lack of progress in literacy among adult women is stark: two-thirds of adults who lack basic literacy skills are women, a proportion unchanged since 2000. Half of adult women in South and West Asia and sub-Saharan Africa cannot read or write.”

Another reason why girls can’t finish their education is because they can be married at a young age and get pregnant and can’t go to school anymore.

Solutions:

  • “ If existing laws on age of marriage were enforced, this would result in an overall 39% increase in years of schooling in sub-Saharan Africa. Early pregnancy remains a barrier to girls’ education as well: Pregnancy has been identified as a key driver of dropout and exclusion among female secondary school students in sub-Saharan African countries, including Cameroon and South Africa.”
  • “Provide policies to address the problems that many boys face, as well as girls in accessing and completing education.”
  • “Alternative secondary education options should be provided for out-of-school adolescents.”

Other organizations are trying to solve this inequality issue and education such as the World Bank to financially support countries.

During this Genius Hour Project I learned a lot more about my continent and will like to spread my knowledge around to those who do not know about this. I hope this will touch some people and we may start small by helping schools just in our neighborhood.

For my next Genius Hour Project I would like to learn about hunger in countries of the world and there for spread my learning and knowledge to others.

Link to my presentation.

Work Cited

UNESCO. “263 Million Children and Youth Are Out of School”. UNESCO, 15 July 2016, uis.unesco.org/en/news/263-million-children-and-youth-are-out-school .

Djanie, Akua. “Education In Africa Is Failing Its People”, NewAfrican, 8 September 2011, newafricanmaga.zine.com/education-in-africa-is-failing-its-people-2/ .

BBC. “Why don’t Africa’s girls go to school?” BBC, 4 July 2003, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3045818.stm .

Hassan, Nayyar. “Gender Inequality.” Gender Discrimination in Education ( A Research Report), 19 December 2015, nayyarhasan.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/gender-discrimination-in-education-a-research-report/ .

Chigozie, Emeka. “Is Africa a country or a continent”. AnswersAfrica, answersafrica.com/is-africa-a-country.html .

 

Twitter Connect Expert Assignment- Reflection

Public Speaking

For this Twitter Connect Expert Assignment, I decided to work on something I have always wanted to improve on: Public Speaking. I worked using this application called Twitter that would help me connect with experts on this domain. Here are the different people I followed:

  1.  

Well for the first few weeks I was tagging them on my tweets or re-tweeting their tweets. After that I started to ask them question. The point of all of his was to make sure they were seeing us be active then started asking them questions. we had to make sure we were polite and not creepy. When an unknown person approaches you just like that you would find them creepy but if you do it in a polite way they might answer you back.

Below are the questions I asked each of them:

                                                                                                                                                  (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                  (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                   (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                  (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                   (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                   (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                   (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                   (Farah, Idyl)

                                                                                                                                                   (Farah, Idyl)

If I get the answers needed, I would apply it in my speaking and it might help me progress as a better Public Speaker. Talking about responses I didn’t get any from my 10 experts nor did they follow me back. It was it was very disappointing to have received no response but when they were tweeting interesting stuff on my  research topic I would read further more.

It was an interesting experience because I got to use Twitter for the first time and learn an other way of getting information and connecting myself with others.  I got to learn that their is a lot of information we can get on social media.

Work Cited

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939911749645619201 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939914564094844928 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939916105652625410 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939917590297829376 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939921924464967681 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939925032993722369 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939927845735890945 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939962844094828544 .

Farah, Idyl. Twitter. 10 Dec 2017, https://twitter.com/21idylf/status/939963836110639104 .

 

Genius Hour Reflection #1

Cyberbullying

 (Todd Kominiak)

For this genius hour project I decided to work on cyberbulying. I decided to talk and do some research about this topic because as we know, now in our society we are most likely to bully each other. There is a double standard between girls and boys that also emphasis this cyberbullying. Cyber is the use of internet or computers and bullying is when a person intimidates another person. So that means that cyberbullying is bullying that is practiced on internet and social media.

The reason why I decided to work on this is because I wanted first to understand what pushes a person to bully others. I also wanted to sensitize my classmates and others to stop bullying. We should also be aware of the consequences of the acts of the offender (bully) on the victim. I have always been against bullying and cyberbullying, how can a human being be so mean and rude to another person just for the sake of having power and feeling popular? I have seen that nowadays, cyberbullying keeps on developing and expanding everywhere.

How can we stop bullying in schools? This was my research question. As we now bullying happens at a young, usually in our adolescence years.  With such a simple question, I learned a lot on bullying and on it’s affect on our society. But first of all, we need to know why do people bully others? I have found a couple of answers to this question:

1. they have been bullied in the past which made them angry and they want to throw it on someone else,

2. the bully might have problems at home or self esteem and they want to throw their anger on someone else,  this is similar the point number 1.

3. they are jealous about someone or finds bullying fun,

4. they bully others because they want to have this kind of power or superiority over others, or even popularity.They like to feel tough, strong and in control.

As you have read above they are a lot of reasons for one to bully an other. Here is quote to why others bully others:

The bullying was hideous and relentless, and we turned it round by making ourselves celebrities.” – Julian Clary

This quote comes back to my fourth point and a lot of kids feel that bullying has been a normal part of their lives. 50% of womens believe that bullying was a part of heir childhood contrary of 38% of men.

But all this reasons of bullying can have consequences on the victim himself. Do we all know that are actions do hurt others? How does the victim fell when being bullies? The answer is that the bullied victims feel more and more worthless, unpowerful and they are living in pain both emotional and physical, they also feel very lonely as they have no friends. Most of the time the result of bullying can lead to suicide! Here are some other consequences:

(Whiteman)

Are girls more bullied than boys or the other way round? Well as we know there is a double standard inn gender on internet. What is a double standard?  A rule that is unfairly applied. Or in other words there is a gender inequality. On social media, boys are supposed to act in a certain way. They have to post pictures showing their muscles or body. Girls are also expect to act in a certain way to. they are supposed to post pretty pictures. This is where cyberbullying comes in place because if you are not following what the society expect us to do then you will be considered as on outcast. Statistics show that 56% of men and 47% women said that they were bullied. While other statistics show that 74% of men and 83% of women bullied someone else. 

In this research, what I learned will help others as I am giving a message to others so that we con stop or even prevent bullying and cyberbullying first in our community and expanded in the world. It also helped me more as a person and even student because we have all passed in front of this kind of act. This has for sure made me understand that are actions always have consequences on others and that we should be careful. I was also surprised by the results of the statistics! I sure did learn a lot on this topic.

On my next Genius Hour project, I will be working on how to be a better public speaker. This will not only help me but others as we need to think about the future and make sure that we will have great public speakers and leaders.

Here is the link to my presentation on this Genius Hour project.

Want to read or learn more, on my work cites you will find all the links I read on this topic.

 

Work Cited

 

SBC8: Visiting other blog posts

As part of this week’s activity, I went on 3 others student blog post and left a comment.

Dear Sheridan,
This is a beautiful poem you just wrote. It is true that leaving without s hard and most of us waste t because we take it for granted. In this poem you explain the struggle that some have to face just to get some water.
I really loved your poem!

Sincerely,

Here is the link to the post: http://sgely92d.edublogs.org/2017/11/21/week-7-global-issues-poem/

Dear Vince,
It is true that child labor has been a issue worldwide. I really liked your slideshow and it is breath taking the number of children that have to be forced to work!
If we want to solve this issue, countries will have to apply a law as to forbid child labor.

Sincerely,

Here is the link to the post: http://ww2aircraftofamerica.weebly.com/blog/week-7-thinking-globally5636305

Dear Phakamon,
I really liked your post and how you are explain why WFP explains the reason of hunger worldwide. Both if my parents work for this organization and help feed populations. Hunger is a serious issue most kids do not have food in poor countries and we often waste food without think that others do not even have the opportunity to get some.

Sincerely,

Here is the link to the blog post: http://frankbrownthecat.weebly.com/home/week-7-think-globally7067332

 

This entry was posted on November 29, 2017. 1 Comment

SBC5: Schools

As I’ve been moving from countries to others I had the experience to see a lot of different schools. I have always  been in the a french school but this year we decided to move into the international school.

Just t say that both systems are really different form each other and that it was not that hard to adjust in my new school as I already spook english. In my experience I felt like In the international system the teachers are more attentive to students as they are smaller classes not like in the french system were we were almost 30 in one class. I believe that with the International baccalaureate you can have more jobs open or opportunities to you then the French Baccalaureate. I feel lucky to have been in the two systems as most people ask me how do I speak french? It is true that french is a difficult language and I won’t lie about it.

So far I prefer the International School than the French School.

Merci beaucoup!

#17stubc

#isdDC9

SBC4: My novel – Finding my inner self

In my English we started to write novels and here is what I’ve write so far. Don’t forget to give your opinion in the comments.

First day of High School, in my year of being a freshman. A lot of things change from Middle School to High School. I’m a little nervous to enter in this new society and world but I have my best friend Christine holding my hand tight and encouraging me to move forward.

Christine has been my best friend since forever actually no since day care where our mothers met and became best friend as well. Maybe that’s why we are best friend? I consider her as my soul sister as I’m an only child. She’s been supporting me since day 1. Christine Baker has always been there for me, we are always together nothing can seperate us. Some people think that we are twins which always make us laugh even though we dont even look alike. I’m a tall girl with long curly black hair and a pale skin with freckles on my cheeks while Kiki (Christine’s nickname I gave her in elementary) is a tall girl as well, we actually have the same height, with a well nice skin and fine black hair. I have always envied her for her hair and skin.

As always will we always walk to school together since we were little, a habit we haven’t want to stop because it gave us time to talk without anybody around us, parents. We were so happy to be now part of the High School, everything will change from this day on. But we were also very nervous, well mostly me. I couldn’t even stand in place! Christine was takling to me about her holidays and how she had changed her whole wardrobe for High School but I wasn’t paying attention at all, stress and nervousness was taking over me.

“Are you even listing to me?” she asked with laughing sound in her voice.

“I’m so sorry, is just that I’m really scared about what is going to us. You know most people say that the major things happen in High School and how some even loose their best friends.” I said, on the edge of tears.

She approached me and hugged me thight in her arms.

“There’s no need to worry we’ve been freinds for like forever and I will never let you down no matter out.”

At that exact moment I really trusted those words but little did I know that they weren’t full of truth.

We entered the gates of our new school, Christopher High School, their 100 times more people around here! I felt my stomach tighten even more. Kiki hold my hand and pushed me forward, I wish I could just go back home and run away from this. We walked together to our new class. We were so lucky that we ended up together or else I didn’t what I’ll do with my self. Actually we had always ended up together.We sat right next to each other and started to talk about our holidays before the school year starts.

Our Social Studies walked in and gave a us a brief speech on him self and talked about the subjects will be covering during the year and what will be the materials needed. Basicly what teachers always do at the beginning of each year at least now nothing to scary. Our day went on adn we meet all of our teachers of the year.

“ Actually our teachers aren’t that bad.”sad Kiki.

“Lucky us.” I replied with a happy voice and giving her a high five.

We handed to my house as usual, it was always like this on week days KiKi will spend the afternoon after school at my house and weekend will spend the day at her house. This was a habit with started taking when we entered Middle School as i was an only and had no siblings to disturb us or parents as they were always busy by work. We always ahd the house to ourselves.

I unlocked the doors to my self and I heard Oreo running to the door to see us. Oreo was my pet cat I got for my 8th birthday. She has always been a calm cat and very furry.We went on to the kitchen to get some food and headed to my room. The house was so quiet as I had no siblings and that my parents were always busy with work. We went to my bedroom were we most of the time there to chill and talk and as it was the first day of school we didn’t any work, yet.My room was big enough I had posters everywhere of my favorit bands as Fith Harmony, Why Don’t We and many more. I had a blue wallpaper as it was my favorite color, a small purple dresser onthe left side and my king sized bed with a view on my backyard. We threw our stuff on floor and lied on the bed with our Doritos chips in hands. I always had lots of snacks and nobody to share with except Kiki.

Three hours later, my parents pulled up on our driveway and had bought pizzas for dinner. Kiki and I wnet down to say hi.

“ Hi darlings, how was your first day of school?” asked my mother.

“ It was okay.” I replied.

“What you mean okay?” said Kiki laughing,” It was great we got to meet our teachers of the year and we are in high school”

We all laughed at her and headed to the dinning table. I started to set the table with Kiki while my parents were arranging the groceries they had just bought.

We started to eat till my father raised his head form his phone and asked:

“How are your teachers this year?”

“Well they all great so far and hope it will stay this way all year long” I replied.

“ That’s the same thing you said last year” he said laughing,” Do you remember Mr Colgo?”

“That one was a special case, Mr Taylor. Right Caro?” said Kiki.

My full name was Caroline but I always wen by Caro in my family. Actually it was Kiki idea.We were in my bedroom on of those weekend watching Netflix and out of no where she paused the movie and said:

” Isn’t weird i have a nickname but not you?”

” Well  don’t really mind. Can we proceed the movie?”

“Of course not we need to find something. Best friend code.”

Best friend code was something we had invented in primary, it meant that will always be there for each other regardless the situation and respond or do whatever one says. I had always found it weird but it did come in handy at times. That’s the way I had got the nickname and all our families called us in that’s way we were called: Kiki and Caro.

#17stubc

#isdDC9

This entry was posted on November 6, 2017. 2 Comments

SBC3: Writing a sentence with images

 &     

I found this pictures in Creative Commons, no attribution needed.

Lets see if you can figure this sentence. Write you answer in the comments!

#17stubc

#isdDC9

Work Cited

Image 1: Creative Commons, http://i1.allaboutvision.com/i/conditions-2016/eye-infection-1200×630.jpg

Image 2: Creative Commons, http://www.powerpointhintergrund.com/uploads/sea-background-30.jpg

Image 3: Creative Commons, https://d2s9xe8pzxi1js.cloudfront.net/wordpress/wp-content/themes/Marks-Daily-Apple-Responsive/images/blog2/redmeat.jpg

Image 4: Creative Commons, https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/vsbattles/images/a/ac/Tree.png/revision/latest?cb=20170515233039

Image 5: Creative Commons, https://www.canadapost.ca/assets/img/en/products/product_hold_mail_img_lg.jpg

 

SBC3: Opening yourself to the outside world

Hi and welcome to my blog! As part of the Activity 3 of SBC3, I am going to write a story based on an image. Just the beginning and let’s see how you writers are going to finish it! I’m very excited for what sort of ending you are going to write and add on.

Found this picture on Creative Commons no need to have attribution.

For the summer my parents decided to go out of the city’s pollution and stress to the beach. That was boring at first but something happened to me and changed my whole aspect of this summer.

Before starting my story, let me present my self. My name is Susanna and I’m finishing 8th grade, about to enter freshman year. How exciting is that!

During this summer, are destination was the beach. Isn’t that awesome? Well not for me, I’m more of an indoor person, outside is not really my thing. I begged my mother but she refused to hear complaining and my older brother, Carlos, was so excited because he had the perfect summer body for that. Well this meant I will need to be active this summer. How amazing, right?

When we arrived to our hotel, I decided to stay so I had to find a lame excuse. I said that the trip to here made me tired and they went off to explore the pace, good old excuse still work! I took my time to settle in the room I would have to share with my annoying brother, well I see things are starting pretty well. I lied on my bed to read a book I started not long ago, called “The Fault In Ours Stars” by John Green. I found it really great and sad, but kept on with my reading. I  was so captivated by the story that I didn’t realize it was starting to get dark outside. My brother entered the room in a rush and told me that both our parents had been taken by a huge wave. How was that possible? Is this real? What are we going to do?

I’ve done my part, your turn now.

#17stubc

#isdDC9

This entry was posted on October 24, 2017. 3 Comments

SBC2: How to comment on my posts?

Hi! Welcome to my Edublog!

How to comment on my page?

Well it is quite simple if you would like to comment on one of my posts. Just scroll down at the end of my post and you will see a “Leave a comment” in blue:

What are the kind of comments I consider good and junk?

Well if you would like to comment on my posts feel free to do so but I got some expectations.

  • Be respectful.
  • Be kind and use appropriate words.
  • Don’t be rude or disrespectful.