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Showing posts from December, 2014

Can we solve the KCPE problem by abolishing ranking?

If every time you measure something, a problem is revealed you can solve that problem by stopping the measuring, like a Kenyan The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education results are out. For the first time in the history of KCPE, we will not rank schools. It demeans children and forever scars them when we make them compete against each other, or so we think. The purpose of an education is to impart knowledge, rather than rank small children. As usual, we are missing the point, or as I happened to be taught, missing the forest for the trees. Why? Well, I'll agree with you that perhaps we should not rank children, as this may not serve a lot of purpose, besides that of blowing horns, or as some people said, tossing our children around like potatoes. It should not escape us though, that even with no outright ranking, KCPE candidates will still be ranked, like Kenyan coffee. The top performers will go to the good schools, the national and provincial schools. At the bottom,

Kenya, regulated oil prices, taxing keg, and the laws of unintended consequences

Laws to stop Kenyans from being exploited have instead entrenched the exploitation in law. Image -  oilnewskenya.com Kenyans love laws. The unmistakable belief that a law will make certain undesirable habits change because of the consequences of breaking such laws is common here. It is however lost on these Kenyans that even they themselves break many laws, with abandon. Therefore, new laws will not make people change their habits for the better, but will instead make people adopt their behaviour to account for the law, hence creating some other unintended consequence most of the time. A law meant to make oil cheaper for Kenyans made it more expensive   Take, for example, the laws that regulate the price of oil - petrol and diesel - in Kenya. A few years ago, at some point, politicians felt that the price of oil in Kenya was too high on fumes, and that the citizen was being "exploited" by oil companies. The politicians even went ahead and decided that it was no

Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship 2015 Europe, the Middle East and Africa

Dr. Anita Borg (1949-2003) devoted her adult life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology by dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. In honor of her vision, Google is proud to announce the Google EMEA Anita Borg Memorial scholarship, which awards a group of female students a € 7,000 scholarship for the 2015-2016 academic year. All recipients will also be invited to attend a networking retreat. Deadline to apply: February 2, 2015 To be eligible to apply, applicants must: • Be a female student enrolled in a Bachelor's, Master's or PhD program for the 2015/2016 academic year • Be enrolled at a university in Europe, the Middle East or Africa • Be studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics or a closely related technical field For full details, please visit us at: www.google.com/anitaborg/emea/ P.S Students can find tools online to allow them to convert their scores to GRE.