Links I liked

I'm in the middle of reading through my blogroll after a very long time. I've just been inundated with work, and am finally able to make the time to catch up on my reading. Here are some of the best of the links I've seen so far:

1. Interesting Q&A session with popular development economist and author of "The End of Poverty", Prof Jeffrey Sachs

2. Diagnostics continue to be the bottleneck for most healthcare in the developing world. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that this particular cheap diagnostic test out of Vietnam is causing ripples.

3. Around a fifth of global science papers are now freely available online, a study finds, with Latin America and India leading the pack!

4. Ask a garbologist questions. Fascinating potential discussion and amusing writeup.

5. Belgium is considering resomation...would you want to be resomated after you die??

6. How "easy" do you think this award-winning "easy latrine" is??

7. Alaskan water being shipped to India...(seriously!)

One in 8 Million photoproject

The visually stunning One in 8 Million photo project (photosource: NYTimes)

Thanks to a friend (hat-tip GK), I came across this visually stunning photoproject, called One in 8 Million, that highlights the interesting lives of everyday people in New York City...like an 80 y/o tabloid photographer, a young female pathologist who has been performing autopsies at one of NYC's busiest hospitals, a 72 y/o accountant who works by night rather than the day, a chinese woman who adopted an ethiopian child, a teenage mom who was changed by the experience, etc.

Definitely check it out...

Thoughts on Fixing Education - II

A teacher at the TEP Charter School in NYC. (photo source: NY Times)

Will education improve if teachers have higher salaries??

A lot of people think that improving salaries will attract more talent into the teaching pool. I have my own thoughts on it; I think the system is a little more complicated. For example, some of my favorite teachers were kicked out by the university or school system because of their unorthodox teaching styles (think Dead Poets Society). Or its often hard to even become a teacher. Even with my university teaching experience and my graduate degrees that allow expertise in much-needed subjects like math and science, I've had trouble breaking into the teaching system in the US. The school districts in my area desperately need math and science teachers; but they require a Teaching Credential or a Graduate degree in Education in order to teach. This means an additional 1-2 years of education that I don't want to deal with now (particularly since I've already taught in university). Even to be a substitute teacher, requires me to pass an exam. I understand that rules are there for a reason, but it is a little ridiculous that a qualified and enthusiastic person cannot fill in an immediate need. This is just ONE of the systemic changes that need to be addressed. No wonder charter schools are popping up constantly, hoping to bypass these ridiculous rules to test out their theories of improving education.

This morning, the NYTimes put out a great article on a new charter school that is popping up in New York City. Started by a young educational entrepreneur, the school aims to test out whether better salaried teachers will mean better students. Of course, the $125,000 salaries come at a price; but it is very interesting. And I'd be curious to know what the results will be. Somehow I think the students and teachers will both come out for the better. But is this scalable or replicable?? I don't know.

Zeke Vanderhoek, the Founder and Principal of the Equity School (the charter school), went on a personal hunt for the best teachers from across the country. How many can actually do that?? And you have to really HATE learning in order to fail under Kobe Bryant's personal trainer, or a teacher who was a class clown.

Still, this is a great case study, and I wish Vanderhoek the very best.

The far-reaching consequences of a policy

Policymakers need to be big-picture and long-term thinkers (photo credit: S. Christopher)

What few understand is that policy has far-reaching consequences that near-sighted politicians and lobbyists rarely look to understand properly. In the absence of solid leadership, these shortsighted politicans are able to sell their story to the public making the situation very dangerous. A perfect example is the US' ridiculous Iraq war or even their shortsighted attack on Afghanistan. In neither case did the policymakers really think about the lack of training they had, how long they could commit or anything else. Now the US finds itself in the middle of a major quandary that is also killing millions of innocent people on both sides. The shortsightedness of the policymakers is costing the world in the long run.

Everyday, millions of these policies are thoughtlessly being implemented. I saw two pieces in yesterday's newspapers that brought this back to mind; one in the US (that will have global impact), and the other in Egypt.

The first was featured on 60 Minutes, and showed how the clauses in the economic stimulus money, especially the "Buy American" model, is affecting Americans. For example, any organization getting the stimulus money must use American steel for any work they do. Seems simple right?? Not exactly. Watch or read this piece to understand why every policy has two sides.


Watch CBS Videos Online

Then this morning I saw this piece in the NY Times about the new "ban pigs" clause that Egypt has come up with, post swine-flu. You wouldn't believe what the effects of that are.


The bottomline is this: Every story has atleast two sides. If it doesn't, then you are being lied to. Be cognizant of both, then make the best decision you can. But also think about how to mitigate the effects of the other side(s).

Friendship, healthcare, and a gym

Find a friend, says the NY Times, and your wellness factor increases!

The American healthcare system sucks. Not because the doctors or quality of healthcare sucks; but because of insurance issues. You can't get decent care in this country without buying into the insurance system. Ironically, frustration, rather than being about the medical system, is about measly insurance companies who couldn't cure a patient even if their life depended on it.

Because I'm an independent consultant, I'm responsible for my own health insurance (most Americans get their insurance through their employers). And because its so expensive and so hard to decide what type of health insurance to get, I've been living without health insurance for several years now. But the tables are turning (as they always do).

I'm getting out-of-shape, and everyone is scaring me about terrible calamities to come. So I went to several gyms yesterday and found out that insured people have lower monthly fees, which really pushed me to start hunting for an insurance policy. I am having SO much difficulty picking something. Every one of my friends then gives me an opinion about which one to pick and they are all different, further confusing me.

In the midst of this, I read three different articles in the same issue of the NY Times, all relating to healthcare: this one about a family struggling to keep their son free of cancer, and this one about friendship being good insurance.

I'm lost and frustrated, have high gym rates, run the risk of taking my wonderful family into financial bankruptcy; but I have friends and hopefully that will keep me alive and well. Maybe I should take my friends to the gym, and we really will be alive and well to an exponential degree! :-)

Doing what is right

How often have you seen this picture in the media?? Look at their boards. Not what you expected??

One of my fundamental beliefs in the world of aid and global development and peace and unity is that change will NOT happen unless it comes from within (this applies to people on a personal level too). Indians need to take responsibility for their own and help develop their country; Africans need to do the same with Africa; and Americans need to do the same with America. Don't like what's going on in your community?? Then find a way to fix it!

Its why I am so proud of the Indian muslims for making a silent, public statement about their religion. During the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai when several innocent people were slaughtered by terrorists who were doing their "jihad" in the name of Islam, the Indian muslim community vocally supported the innocent victims and stood behind their core religious values of tolerance and love. For anyone who is angry with Islam, go read the Holy Koran. There are pages and pages about love and peace and unity, yet the terrorists and the media never focus on them. The real muslims need to come out and show the world what their religion is really about.

Now their voices are even louder, and I want to thank Tom Friedman of the NYTimes for highlighting this story. To date, none of these so-called "martyrs" of this terrorist plot have been afforded a proper burial.

All nine are still in the morgue because the leadership of India's Muslim community has called them by their real name - "murderers" not "martyrs" - and is refusing to allow them to be buried in the main Muslim cemetery of Mumbai, the 7.5-acre Bada Kabrastan graveyard, run by the Muslim Jama Masjid Trust.

"People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim," Hanif Nalkhande, a spokesman for the trust, told The Times of London. Eventually, one assumes, they will have to be buried, but the Mumbai Muslims remain defiant.

"Indian Muslims are proud of being both Indian and Muslim, and the Mumbai terrorism was a war against both India and Islam," explained M.J. Akbar, the Indian-Muslim editor of Covert, an Indian investigative journal. "Terrorism has no place in Islamic doctrine. The Koranic term for the killing of innocents is 'fasad.' Terrorists are fasadis, not jihadis. In a beautiful verse, the Koran says that the killing of an innocent is akin to slaying the whole community. Since the ... terrorists were neither Indian nor true Muslims, they had no right to an Islamic burial in an Indian Muslim cemetery."

I'm proud of the Indian muslims, particularly the Mumbai muslim community, for doing what is right. It is quite often, very hard to do what is right. Doing this, has made the Indian muslims vulnerable to threats and every kind of low-level mediocrity that their lesser "brothers" will use against them; and more so, in a country where they are a significant minority. But they've stood up and stood loud. And as a human being, that makes me proud!

Skateistan

I thought this video in the New York Times this morning was interesting (though honestly, I thought this video was more fun...also love the song!)




According to their website, Skateistan is

Afghanistan’s first dedicated co-educational skateboarding school. The school will engage with the growing numbers of urbanised youth in Afghanistan through skateboarding and provide new opportunities in cross-cultural interaction and education. Students will be selected from a range of different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds. Student capacity will be developed in skateboarding, skateboarding instruction, project management, life skills and English. Our aim is to develop a program that empowers youth to take leadership on issues important to them and build networks that will counter current ethnic barriers. See our Frequently Asked Questions section for further details.

Nick Kristof's Youtube channel

Nick Kristof on assignment for the New York Times.

Nick Kristof (who is sponsoring that amazing contest that I spoke of yesterday) has also started a wonderful (and depressing) YouTube channel to showcase all the columns he's written about. Amazing footage and stories fill the videos. I've seen three today and they were so depressing that I had to switch to watching ABC's The Bachelor.

Here's a sample of one of the more hopeful pieces (last thing I want is for you to be depressed and run away from my blog!):

Awesome job opportunity for a student

New York Times Columnist Nicholas Kristof (also one of my favorite journalists) is offering a chance of a lifetime for any student based in the United States. He will take you on a trip to visit the places he does in remote parts of the world and give you a powerful stage (the New York Times paper and blog) to let your voice be heard.

So what kind of a person am I looking for? The truth is, I’m not entirely sure – except that I want someone with excellent communication skills, who can blog and vlog in ways that will capture the interest of other students. If you’ve done blogging, vlogging or journalism, be sure to mention that. Ditto for anything else that makes you special or will make your voice more memorable.

[read more]

Is a computer a good substitute for a teacher??

Nigerian kids get a taste of the OLPC laptop. Can these types of technologies substitute well for real teachers?? (photo courtesy: CNETnews.com)

Nicholas Negroponte has an amazing vision. During his tenure at MIT's famed Media Lab, his team came up with the $100 laptop (granted it has since doubled in production cost, so it should be called the $200 laptop!), and proceeded to start the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. His idea was to use computers to engage and help educate the poor kids of the world. He talks about his vision in great detail at a TED conference in 2006. (Regardless of what other people say about the program or him, Negroponte is a visionary and he deserves tremendous credit for trying and testing out an idea that people have long thought about but never gone forth with.)

But the question is...is technology a good substitute for a human teacher??

To answer this, I'd refer to two different write-ups: one a paper (you can also read a summary here) that's come out of the well-respected Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) at MIT; and a piece on education published in the New York Times (NYT) on August 17, 2008.

The JPAL paper publishes a study on randomized trials in India that compared learning rates between computer-assisted learning and those without. The NYT piece covers computer assisted learning in the United States and UK.

I would highly recommend reading both pieces. In general though, I found that the two highlight two very specific ideas:

• Computer assisted learning works best when learning in class (with a human teacher) is complemented with technology. Technology by itself isn't a substitute for a teacher. Having been through all three combinations (teachers only, computers only, and computer assisted learning) , I couldn't agree more.

• Probably a BIG caveat to any of this is that different students respond differently. This is NOT a one-size-fits-all idea. This is why having a teacher around REALLY matters. Teachers can customize their teaching; computers can't. This is the key. This is why technology is a poor substitute for real human teachers.

Evidence of Ancient African Societies

Paul Sereno and Elena Garcea excavate adjacent burials at Gobero, the largest graveyard discovered to date in the Sahara. (photo courtesy: New York Times)

Sadly, very little is known about ancient African societies. I got into a long discussion with a good West African friend of mine about this. I kept asking him for books about ancient African societies (outside of the Egyptians). Surely they must have had civilizations; but where's the information about it?? He voiced equal amounts of frustration. There were a few; but hardly any had the information we were looking for. As a student in Africa, so little of your history lessons are focused on your own country or continent. Most of it is focused on the world, and is extremely euro-centric (stunner!). But more frustrating than anything else is the fact that only a miniscule percentage of Africans even seem to care! Most of you might say...well, they are struggling for survival, so they don't have time! Well, I've seen evidence enough of well-fed Africans running around who have the time and money, but don't care...

In one of the (possibly) biggest archaeological stories of the century, the NY Times reported on a set of graves from the pre-Stone Age period that have been found in the Saharan desert. Pictures and history are slowly making their way out of there. How wonderful. Apparently the desert used to be lush and green. There's so much to learn from our past, so we don't make the same mistakes again. Hopefully more stories like this will make their way out. And hopefully it'll be Africans uncovering their biggest stories in the future!!

education, olympics, water, and aid effectiveness

1. On the education theme, a NYT piece on rebuilding schools the better way, thanks to Katrina.

2. On the Olympic theme, Why India has so few Olympic medals, by Tyler Cowen. Don't miss the discussion comments at the end. Great discussion!

3. On the water theme, aguanomics takes on the World Bank's advising policies.

4. A GREAT write-up on aid effectiveness by Maurice.

5. Treehugger on how Bangladesh is capitalizing on its PET trash.

Twitter's a dud in Africa...and more...

1. Read WhiteAfrican's great post on why Twitter's low penetration in Africa matters

2. The Importance of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, by Tactical Philanthropy

3. PSFK's find: Camera for the Blind. I think more technologies for the disabled should be developed.

4. NY Times does an amazing graphic visual on Olympic game dominance by country, over the years. Its simply fascinating to see the evolution!

Another model aid story?? -- Defining a metric of success

photo source: Candace Thecoco

In today's New York Times, Nicholas Kristof tells the story of Beatrice Biira who credits her against-the-odds life story to a goat appropriately named Luck.

Beatrice’s story helps address two of the most commonly asked questions about foreign assistance: “Does aid work?” and “What can I do?”

The tale begins in the rolling hills of western Uganda, where Beatrice was born and raised. As a girl, she desperately yearned for an education, but it seemed hopeless: Her parents were peasants who couldn’t afford to send her to school. [...]

If I'm trying to extract the lessons from this extremely brief story (I'm still not sure how the dots connect, i.e. how the book helped get Beatrice into a prep school and then college), it would revolve around defining the success of "aid." What is a reliable measurable metric of success, particularly in aid??

I once asked a group of inner-city school teachers how they kept themselves motivated. Surrounded by children in drug and crime infested neighborhoods, and goaded down by disruptive, delinquent parents, I wondered how these women and men stayed positive. They said it started with redefining their metrics of success. Many of them admitted that they had started their jobs with idealistic viewpoints - they would "save" all their students from the streets. This soon downsized to half a class, then to a dozen students, then to two, and one... "and just as you are about to give up, one makes it through...he/she becomes your beacon of hope, your reason for being, your success metric...and you go on until the next one happens." This must be exhausting, I reasoned. "Nah...you get used to it...its all about how you define your success metric. Success to me is just getting a kid to start thinking of a future that doesn't involve this life [of drugs and crime]. If even for a second they can experience that freedom, I know I've succeeded!"

In Heifer's million donations, there have been only a few Beatrices...just as there have been only a few seconds of freedom for the students in this particular inner-city school district. So do we just focus on these few success stories?? Can more be done?? Do you think we are being too hard on "aid"? Should we downsize our metrics of success??

Help Burma Links

Wanna help Burma? Here are some resources:

1. Arabella Advisors, financial advisors who specialize in philanthropic strategy, is holding a free advisory teleconference for donors interested in helping the Burmese on Monday, May 12th at 3PM ET. RSVPs are encouraged. Details are here.

2. Chris Blattman and Alanna Shaikh blog their picks here, here, and here. Alanna is an aid worker, so I'd give her picks some thought.

3. The New York Times has put together a well-thought out list of resources here.

4. For those on the hunt for more permanent action, ReliefWeb has a list of positions here.