Nigeri The Western Coast Of Africa - 1151 Words

Nigeria is located on the western coast of Africa, surrounded by Benin, Cameroon, and Niger. This country is known to have one of the largest populations among the African countries. Falola (3) says that not only it has large population, but also its land size is a little bigger than the size of the U.S. state of Texas. Nigeria has about 170 million residences which is about half of current population in United States. In other words, Nigeria has a very dense population regarding its size of land. Within 170 million people, there are twelve dominant ethnic groups, such as Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Fulani and etc., and about 200 more distinct ethnic groups are present. Therefore, hundreds of different languages are also used in Nigeria. Lastly,†¦show more content†¦Cultivation of root crops is practiced by the central part of Nigeria, while cultivation of cereal crops are practiced in Northern savannah region (Gordon, 2003). Furthermore, Nigeria, at first, was involved in the slave trade for mutual beneficial interaction. But as time went by, the mutual beneficial interaction changed to one-sided trade; it only benefited the several societies with wealth and power, but destroyed the other groups of society. But later in 1800s, the slave trade was abolished (Gordon 2003). According to Graham, in 1884 British colonized Nigeria officially at the Berlin Conference. British used force and violence to control Nigeria. Although there were riots by Nigerians, all of them were suppressed (Graham 2009). Meanwhile, British practiced in indirect rule of Nigeria; British colonization changed many aspects of Nigeria including language, education, religion, economy, transportation, and etc. So this Legacy paper will discuss about the legacy of Nigeria on religion, economy, and demographic followed by British Colonization. Nigeria has two major religions, which are Islam and Christianity. Fifty percent of populations believe in Islam, forty percent of populations believe in Christianity. Christianity is one of the legacies that British had left. Gordon said that religion was one of the ways for Nigerians used to resolve political, economic, and social

Critical Analysis on Clinical Supervision in Schools Free Essays

The purpose of this study is to present the definition of clinical supervision and some basic concepts that are currently being used in the clinical supervision of public schools today. By having a clearer understanding of these definitions and concepts, prospective supervisors in public education will be better equipped to do their jobs. A situation has occurred due to the ever-increasing demand for supervisors in public education today in which those entering supervisory positions may not be properly equipped to supervise. We will write a custom essay sample on Critical Analysis on Clinical Supervision in Schools or any similar topic only for you Order Now This is primarily due to the fact that they may not understand all that is expected of them. To use economic terminology, the â€Å"demand is exceeding the supply†. As a result, supervisors may be placed into supervisory positions without a clear understanding of some definitions and concepts which have come into the realm of education fairly recently. Supervisors cannot do their jobs effectively if they are not properly educated in the roles and responsibilities of the clinical supervisor. The following study may serve as a review of some current definitions and concepts. The earliest supervisors in America’s schools were often nothing more than overly critical â€Å"snoops† whose main job was to find what a teacher was doing wrong and report it to the teacher’s superiors. Today we refer to this type of supervisor as a â€Å"snoopervisor†. It was more likely that a teacher would receive a reprimand or dismissal as a result of those supervisory visits. The role of the school supervisor has changed drastically from the humble beginnings of America’s schools. Our public school system has gone through many different stages of development. Likewise, our educational supervisors have evolved as well. Since our public school system has gone through so many changes, (and continues to do so), a clear understanding of the responsibilities of clinical supervision is needed in order to properly prepare those wishing to serve in that capacity. Today’s supervisors must know what is expected of them and some of the more current methods and concepts being used in clinical supervision. The research information in this study is limited to the study of school supervisors in the public school system. This study focused on supervisors who oversee the grade levels of Kindergarten through the 12th grade of high school. This study does focus on supervisors of colleges or other secondary educational institutions although much of this information may apply in those areas as well. It is, therefore, the primary goal of this study to collect, compile, and organize information that will help to prepare those wishing to serve as school supervisors so that they may better understand some of the terminology and concepts in clinical supervision. One of the more common roles of today’s school supervisor is that of providing teachers with the support they need to become better teachers. Today’s supervisor must be a coach or mentor, a â€Å"teacher’s teacher†, so to speak. Where supervisors once tore down teachers and criticized them, today they build up teachers and edify them. The first use of the term â€Å"clinical supervision† was in 1961 when Morris Cogan used it in a proposal entitled Case Studies and Research in Clinical Supervision at Harvard University. Cogan defined clinical supervision in the following way: â€Å"Clinical supervision may therefore be defined as the rationale and practice designed to improve the teacher’s classroom performance. It takes its principal data from the events of the classroom. The analysis of these data and the relationship between teacher and supervisor form the basis of the program, procedures, and strategies designed to improve the student’s learning by improving the teacher’s classroom behavior.† From Cogan’s definition of clinical supervision we can see that the emphasis is on improvement of the teacher’s performance. This makes the role of today’s supervisor more of a supportive role. With that definition in mind, how can supervisors help teachers to become better teachers? What can supervisors do to improve the educational system in which they work? In the following study are a few examples of contemporary practices and concepts being utilized today to answer those questions. First of all, supervisors are concerned with the quality of teachers they have in their school and school system. It is the job of supervisors to make sure that the teachers working in their school system are the best teachers possible, and that they are working to the best of their ability. Once teachers have been selected and hired, they must know that the supervisor is there to support them and help them to improve their teaching skills. In an article in Educational Digest, Thomas Harvey and Larry Frase put it this way: â€Å"Coaching is not an option for school leaders but a basic function, along with counseling, mentoring, tutoring, confronting, and supporting. All of these will increase the commitment to quality and productivity.† This simply means that supervisors must engage the teachers (as well as themselves) in a never-ending process of improvement. That means keeping up with current changes in teaching styles and curriculum. Supervisors must be willing to set an example for teachers by showing that they are also willing to make changes in the way that they do things. Now that we are in a new millenium in education we see the education system in a state of constant change. Everything we do changes regularly. Teaching styles, the equipment that we use in schools, and even the schools themselves continuously go through new stages of development. It is no longer acceptable to simply achieve and maintain a status quo. Supervisors must recognize this and always be ready to lead their teachers into the future and new ways of educating students. The first way supervisors must lead their teachers is to make sure that they are aware of the legal aspects of education. In a recent article in Education magazine the authors said, â€Å"First on the list of all things a beginning teacher must do is to learn the policies of the school system and local school. A teacher who is legally challenged by a parent will receive support from the board of education when the teacher’s actions follow policy†. For this reason, supervisors should tell their beginning teachers that board policies and the school handbook are required reading. Once this has been concluded, supervisors can move on to the matter of teacher evaluation. One method being used by many supervisors to evaluate and support new teachers is the peer support method. This concept has been touted as a promising way to build a teacher’s sense of professionalism. Margaret Johnson and Lucy Brown described one study in which teachers in a large elementary school with about 42 teachers were organized into collegial support teams (CSTs) to ,†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦supervise their teaching performance and promote their professional growth.†. Many of the teachers involved in the study said that it created,†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦a â€Å"safe zone† in which they could admit shortcomings and work to improve their practice.†. This method follows the philosophy that the best people to evaluate the performance of teachers in a particular school system are other teachers in the same school system. This method is becoming very popular. Sometimes the path into the future of a school system may not be clear and narrow. There may be many different directions the supervisor may have to choose from. While discussing teachers who pursue positions in administration, Roberta Bernstein writes: â€Å"The position of curriculum developer requires working in teams and reporting to the central office. While following the directions of your superiors, you will also want to provide teachers with a curriculum that excites them. It’s a balancing act.† Indeed, supervisors must often let their own preferences fall by the wayside in order to reach the compromise that is the best, overall solution for a situation. One driving motivator behind the decision-making process should always be â€Å"What is the best thing for the students?† The same thing holds true when evaluating teachers. Unfortunately, sometimes supervisors realize that a teacher just isn’t performing at the minimal level necessary to remain in the system. Even after working very hard to help a teacher come up to the required standard of teaching to remain in their position, the supervisor asks â€Å"What is the best thing for the students?† and realizes that a replacement may be what is needed. There are many different reasons for teachers becoming marginal. In an article in Education Digest Don L. Fuhr identifies three categories of teachers who become â€Å"marginal†: â€Å"First is the helpless marginal teacher who doesn’t grasp the basic techniques of effective teaching. It may be because of poor training or of good training never absorbed. Second is the teacher with a pressing personal problem, the more common ones being serious illness of a loved one, marital problems, or financial difficulties. The third and most difficult type is the hardheaded marginal teacher who has developed ‘an attitude’. † Regardless of the reason for a teacher becoming marginal, encouragement is the key to trying to help them improve. Supervisors must be willing to advise and help them. First, the teacher must be made aware of the specific problem. Then, a strategy can be developed for dealing with the problem. Sometimes, the best time for strategies to be developed is after a classroom observation. According to C.H. Van der Linde, â€Å"The follow-up discussion sometimes provides the most important situation for the collection of further data, because the teachers are now in a situation where they are able to explain their behavior.† Van der Linde goes on to say, â€Å"The teacher should be encouraged to give attention to both strong points and deficiencies. Remedies that are realistic should be discussed and steps to promote continuing professional growth should be outlined.† Some people, such as Francis Duffy, feel that we in education are going about staff development all wrong. Ms. Duffy says, † Even though we understand that school districts function essentially as systems, we persists in trying to improve schools one teacher at a time.† According to Ms. Duffy’s Knowledge Work Supervision model, teaching would be improved by focusing on the performance of the entire school system rather than just individual teachers. One thing is certain, no matter what model of evaluation or development a supervisor uses, it is still inevitable to occasionally come across marginal teachers which fail to meet minimal standards no matter what the supervisor does to try to help them improve. One possible contributing factor to this situation is stress. Education, and particularly educational administration, are very high-stress professions. Clinical supervisors should encourage personal responsibility for stress management. Articulation of the expectation that individuals are to take the responsibility for control of their own stress levels also validates personal inclinations to do the same. How to cite Critical Analysis on Clinical Supervision in Schools, Papers

Facilitation Of Crowd Funding Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Facilitation Of Crowd Funding. Answer: Background Crowdfunding can be traced back to the 1700s when the Irish Loan fund founded by Jonathan Swift started to give loans to low-income families in the rural parts of Ireland. By the 1800s more than 300 crowd funding programs gave out small sums for short periods of time. Bruton et al. (2015, p. 9) noted that its peak, 20% of all Irish households had used this program. They further explain that after this period there was no documented evidence of crowdfunding until 1997 when British rock band Marillion funded their U.s tour when their fan base raised $60,000 online to give to the band. In 2000 Artistshare became the first dedicated crowdfunding website (Schwienbacher et al., 2013, p. 585). From 2009 crowd funding kicked off and since then it has become a novel way for entrepreneurs to raise capital for various projects. Facilitation of crowdfunding is done through a website, or an application called a crowdfunding platform. These platforms offer founders/entrepreneurs their webpage where they explain what the project entails, its outcomes and the outline of the amount of money they needed to achieve the potential outcome (Schwienbacher et al., 2013, p. 586). They can also state how many days or months their campaign will run for collect money from backers/funders. Research from Northwestern Universitys Segal Design Institute suggests that crowdfunding is often found by campaign creators to be strenuous and time-consuming. For some entrepreneurs, they must deliver new skill sets entirely new to them for they have to deal with funder relations, marketing and publicity which require time and effort (Harrison, 2013, p. 283). Top crowd funding websites include kick-starter, gofundme, Indiegogo, Crowdrise, Crowdfund, Ozcrowd, Crowder and Pozible Types of crowdfunding Equity crowdfunding is whereby an individual /organization invests a big sum of money in exchange for a piece of equity, shares or a stake in the company. Donation-based crowdfunding is designed to raise money for charitable or social projects, in this case, there is no equity nor reward, a tax deduction may be the incentive (NiBusiness, 2018). In the website of NiBusiness (2018) it is also explained that reward-based crowd funding allows investors to raise money in exchange for a non-financial reward, the reward may range from free software licenses, use of the invention or free gifts. Debt crowdfunding consents financiers to fund your project in exchange for monetary returns on their investment (NiBusiness, 2018). This finance option may provide you with borrowing at a lower cost than that offered by applying for a loan through a bank. The advantage of this model is that it may be easier to win support for a campaign, as investors are attracted to getting a return. Crowdfunding in innovation Fast Company (2018), suggests that crowdfunding has changed how entrepreneurs bring innovations and products to the market. According to this website, it has also allowed millions of innovators to raise money, join a wider network of potential funders and build brand awareness, all while still in the product development process. Examples of crowdfunded products include the Glif. Photography has become an integral part of cell phone users with new smartphones coming out with more focus on the camera pixels. In 2010, almost eight years ago, through Kickstarter, Dan Provost Tom Gerhardt launched the Glif, a tripod mount for the iPhone 4 (Fast Company, 2018). After realizing that smartphones had become an integral tool, for journalists, filmmakers, regular smartphone users and photographers, they had one target- to create the best tripod mount for smartphones. The internet communities response to their campaign was outstanding. They were able to initially raise more than $137,000 for th e device (World Bank, 2013). Since then, they have released several updates to the Glif not only for iPhone but 90% of the current phones in the market. The Glif allows smartphone users to attach their phones to a tripod or prop their phones up at different angles (Bruton et al., 2015, p. 9). The photography landscape has changed drastically since the launch of the original Glif in 2010. With each successive smartphone, the camera is getting more and more incredible. The Oculus Rift is a virtual-reality gaming headset worn by the user for gaming. It raised $2.4 million via kick-starter. Oculus has disrupted the traditional gaming platform as we know it. As argued by Bruton, et al. (2015, p. 11), in the past one would use a controller connected to a game box/pc and a monitor. However, the Oculus allows the user to become the game. The user enters the game and becomes part of the simulation. A player can go inside their favorite film, hang out with friends or space travel or time travel (Bruton et al., 2015, P. 12). Oculus VR has been acquired by Facebook Inc. for $2 billion. Conclusion To be successful in crowdfunding the quality of the project is important, and one should be well prepared to have a good pitch ready. A founder should develop SMART goals Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based to deliver a product on time. Careful planning and organization are important to achieve crowd funding goals. Crowdfunding is a disruptive change the funding of new ventures. Key insight 1. The subtleties and ever-changing aspects of crowdfunding have been largely unstudied due to its rapid rise as a source of capital. Being well prepared, social readiness, as well as idea quality, have been linked to the rate of project success. Geography is a major factor associated with new ventures, but crowd funding has disrupted this idea of traditional constraints imposed by geography (Allison Davis, 2014, p. 53). Social media platforms and the availability of online communities have made the creation of new ventures around the world a possibility (Pozible, 2018). A founder in Australia can get funds from a funder in America or a founder in Africa may get funding from funders is Australia and Israel. Online communities can interact, fund and coordinate with crowdfunding efforts to spawn new services and products with diverse people in different parts of the world. Crowdera is an international platform which allows an entrepreneur to raise funds from countries all over the world and in multiple currencies through the same campaign Key insight 2. It has also been noted that there was a problem of logistics when it came to delivering products to the markets as well as to funders with very few founders doing so in the time frame they had given. An example is The Pebble E-Paper Watch was able to raise $10,266,845 in 38 days, but as months passed, the funders became distraught when production came to a halt raising questions of whether founders would deliver large orders in a little time (Mollick, 2014, p. 3). They were able to deliver in 10 months after their said time frame. References Allison, T. Davis, B., 2014. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. Pp. 53-73. Bruton, G., Khavul, S., Siegel, D. Wright, M., 2015. New Financial Alternatives in Seeding Entrepreneurship: Microfinance, Crowdfunding, and Peer-to-peer Innovations. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 39(1), pp. 9-26. Fast Company, 2018. The Worlds Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Crowdfunding. [Online] Available at: https://www.fastcompany.com/40532754/this-is-how-regulation-affects-airbnb-in-san-francisco-report-says [Accessed 18 February 2018]. Harrison, R., 2013. Crowdfunding and the Revitalisation of the Early Stage Risk Capital Market: Catalyst or Chimera?. Venture Capital, 15(4), pp. 283-287. Mollick, E., 2014. The dynamics of Crowdfunding: An Explanatory Study. Journal of Business Venturing, 29(1), pp. 1-16. NiBusiness, 2018. Crowdfunding. [Online] Available at: https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/types-crowdfunding [Accessed 18 February 2017]. Pozible, 2018. Introducing Equity Crowdfunding Platform Birchall: Everyone should have the Opportunity to Invest in the Brands they Love.. [Online] Available at: https://pozible.com/birchal/equity-crowdfunding [Accessed 18 February 2017]. Schwienbacher, A., Belleflamme, P. Lambert, T., 2013. Crowdfunding: TApping the Right Crowd. Journal of Business Venturing, 29(4), pp. 585-609. Schwienbacher, A. Larralde, B., 2010. Crowdfunding of Small Entrepreneurial Ventures. Pp. 1-23. World Bank, 2013. Crowdfunding's Potential for the Developing World. In: Washington, DC: World Bank.