Month: October 2014

Learn, Nurture and Grow: every child has potential

“The potential possibilities of any child are the most intriguing and stimulating in all creation.”-Ray L. Wilbur, Third President of Stanford University Potential, is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future” and is from the Latin word potentialis, from potentia ‘power‘, from potent– ‘being

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The Power of Words: Medicine or Weapon?

What was your first word? “Mum”? “Dad”? Something else? What did you remember when you read these words? There are lots of interesting associations to the each word. Why did this happen? Every stage in our life, we are accompanied by various words: a house, a garden, a school, a job, a family. Every word

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If The Whole World Embraced Affordable Education For All None Will Be Left Behind

Education processes and systems in some countries more so in Kenya, has many traits that create great fears. This is attributed to complicated and congested curriculums which cripple learners to have poor memory, resulting into poor performance in tests and eventual laxity. No wonder George Bernard Shaw described school as an interruption to one’s education.

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Are Massive Open Online Courses The Future Of Higher Education

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are the future of higher education though in some countries the legislative base regulating the use of ICT is not yet comprehensive enough to warrant broad utilization of ICT in the rural areas. Public awareness about advantages and opportunities that come with the ICT is very minimal especially in the

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The Power Of The Voice

Words are human expressions for communicating, either written or spoken. It is believed that the use of words dates back to creation. It is also believed that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”- Holy Bible. Speeches commenced long before letters. Many religions believe that

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“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk” Thomas A. Edison

I love dolls. Give me a Barbie, Fulla or an American Girl Doll (notoriously known for their eye-watering prices) and I’ll be entertained for hours. I currently have a collection of the above, including one historical American Girl Doll named Josefina Montoya. Now imagine how much will be on the lavishly-spending parents’ bill as they

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Words Mean More

As the proverb goes, “Fine words butter no parsnips”, that is, spoken words carry deeper meaning than recorded information. And in this I strongly agree with Maya Angelou’s assertion that words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. As examples

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Defining Freedom

Freedom is a term which is very loosely associated with things. Although this is the case, one thing has always been very clear; we, as humans, desire freedom. We crave it. We yearn for it. But what exactly is freedom? Freedom is very often personified in birds. ‘I want to be as free as a

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Education, Education, Courage…

If Nelson Mandela learned this, who taught him? ‘Courage may be taught as a child is taught to speak’ according to Euripides, so perhaps Mandela learned this definition of courage from observing those around him and imitating their actions. There is a problem here, however, as it is difficult to observe people conquering fear, the

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Hackschooling, Why Not?

Logan LaPlante is completely correct. Adults focus too much on what they want for their children, not what the children want for themselves. I mean, if you’re looking for an answer like neurosurgeon or businessman, go ask a genius baby or something. I feel that parents set their children’s goals for them, rather than asking

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Set in Stone

He was sweating, his hands moving in a blur, ever so eager to let the image in his mind that was screaming out at him out of the marble. Moving, moving, moving, tool after tool, noises that made his ears ring, months of exhilarating work, still moving, still moving, still… Finally still. After many months,

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Teaching Tolerance

I was fourteen when I was first labeled as too dangerous to attend school. My act of rebellion? I had tried to kill myself. The sad thing is, it wasn’t the first time this had happened, nor was it the last time I would try to end my life. Even today, as I suffer from

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Words Mean More Than What Is Set On Paper…

A child is engaged with words than reading and this comes even with the child’s first days in school. Processing the child’s thoughts and actions in communication analysis are at most times difficult. Parents and teachers will require the voice skill to properly convey some inbuilt message so that the child can understand instructions, respond

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Fear vs Courage

Courage is a very prominent and credulous word. Yet very complicated to actually define and understand if some people consider that boldness, braveness, roaming around broadening your chest and yelling that they are not scared of anything is actually being courageous whereas the actual definition lies here, right on the quote, stated by Nelson Mandela.

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Good Mistakes

When you do a mistake, do you think you learn faster? Doing mistakes is, I think, very important to learn, and learning also means to grow up and evolve. A lot of people are afraid of making errors and think of them as something that should be avoided at all costs or assimilate them with

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The Chicken or The Egg

It is often said that exams test your ability to remember rather than your intelligence. They rigorously check whether we recall the correct formula or the exact structure of words that will get us one more mark and let us pass. For a school, or any institute of learning, that is judged on the results

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Contributions of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the Education Field

Massive open online course (MOOC) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access through the web. MOOCs provide interactive user forums that help build a community for students, professors and teaching assistants. MOOCs are the biggest upcoming trend in the current education scenario. It has offered opportunity to all individuals irrespective of

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Dare you make it?

“Study just to find a job and get a livelihood, raise a family and die” Is that the real life we wanted? Does it make it worth to breath every second? Mark Twain says “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

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Spoken Words

Man naturally was born with the inherent ability to commune; transfer information and share ideas with his fellow man through the employment of speech as propagation medium right from primeval times. In the complexity of his evolutionary chemistry, the arch necessity of conversing with species of his like was of utmost importance even in the

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The True Value of Marble

Born in 1475, in the small Italian town of Caprese, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (artist, sculptor, architect and poet) sparked a great revolution in art in the high renaissance era. Michelangelo was the artist who recreated what wasn’t there. He sculpted and painted the world that existed solely in his mind. He treated the

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