My Beauty Best Teacher

Software should be viewed holistically, in my opinion. I know that in 4 years most of my students will not be using the same version of any software I teach. I do want them to have deep knowledge of many different programs, however, I want them to know that no matter what software or "apps" come their way that they are able to take the app, understand the app's purpose, an utilize it in a functional way in a very short period of time.

Instead of the standard 4 software application program 2 semester program that I ran 10 years a go when I started this job, we start off with a bootcamp using software that I know they do not know. After learning a method of how to intuitively learn new software and viewing a video that introduces them to the concept of building a PLN, we embark on our "software exploration" project. I thought I'd share that with you today.


Software Exploration in a Nutshell

After introducing the ClickSmart method of learning new software  I have them set off to learn about new software and explore the software on the computers in our lab. (ClickSmart(tm) is a way I invented to look at software holistically- and yes, I need to publish that in detail - several publishers want to publish it but they want me to do things to the book I'm not willing to do so I WILL be self publishing hopefully sooner rather than later.)

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Before we began, I showed them the video about Dantae Thrash, the Evansville Indiana student who linked himself into the Lego Brick Filming online groups. We talked about help files built into software programs but the importance of building a Personal Learning Network when you have something you are passionate about. We pulled up a few message boards for on of our programs to show how to determine which message boards and forums have things going on, which do not, and how to join in.

It has been quite a fascinating journey and today will be their last presentations. Just wanted to give you an overview of the software that we've plowed through the three days in the first class (they had 2 days of prep time to explore and document the software in our class One Note notebook which doubles as our textbook.)

One Note Notebook
Below you can see the Online view of the One Note notebook. It has a little less functionality than the offline version but still means that students can access the information anywhere.

View on One Note notebook in Skydrive from a computer that does not have One Note Installed

We had a challenge signing up for Windows Live ID's -- Windows Live ID service only allows 2 people from one IP address to sign up for their service in a 24 hour period! It took us 2 weeks to get my 90+ students into our one note notebook!  You can, however, use Microsoft's Live@edu setup which is their alternative to Google Apps for Education. We've been on Google apps, though with no plans to switch at this point and so live@edu setup by importing a csv file was not for us. To work around this problem, the only solution they could offer was for me to bring in my mi-fi hotspot. I had students register on my iPad on the hotspot and reset the hotspot every 2 sign ups. YES, it was cumbersome. It is worth it for me, but I don't recommend it for you. Needless to say, we had a great discussion about IP addresses, spammers, and how the Internet routes data.

AFTER Windows works through this problem, I highly recommend that every class have their own class notebook. As much as I love Evernote for keeping my files, nothing compares to One Note for taking notes in class. If you want to link One Note on the ipad, the One Note app is decent but right now Mobile Noter is a better app for this.

You can see the project page for this assignment.

the software exploration assignment and on the left you can see some of the programs my students shared.

Blender - A student showed the basics of Blender, the 3D object creation software and also showed a famous movie filmed entirely in Blender. We discussed machinima. I noted that there is a lot of interest in this but mentioned how the mesh objects here could be exported and imported into our Open Sim Island and also the Jibe worlds that we'll be working with this year. (I'd like them to have their own 3D virtual world embeddable on a  web page in their personal portfolio using Jibe. Great tool.) The students agreed that this is definitely a higher end program. We also discussed Geometry and how the x,y,z axis are important in 3D work. They seemed surprised to see that Geometry had real-world uses.

Google Sketchup - Another 3D object creation tool, the students shared with their friends. The students LOVED how you can import 3D objects stored in the special google search engine for 3D objects. They were excited to pull in these objects and realized that they can export them into virtual worlds just like on Blender.

After this student presentation, I took the boat that they pulled in and figured out how to export as 2D (I wanted them to see how I figured this out as I haven't used Google Sketchup before) - I adjusted the camera a tiny bit and took about 10 pictures that I exported into a folder entitled "boat zoom" and pulled them into Pinnacle Studio to make a small 1 second clip zooming in on a boat. This was a demonstration of how easy it is to film machinima - just moving objects a small bit at a time and exporting the image. I think this is something they now see and feel is doable.

Audacity - This group demonstrated how to hook in our M-Audio Podcast Factory microphone into the computers and imported some audio and showed how to record over, edit the voice, remove things, and apply filters. They also demonstrated how to run an instrument app on an ipad or ipod Touch and record into audacity.

(I had to take a side trail and talk about what a male to male, male to female, etc. cables are and how to tell and ask for them -- it is a 'fact of life' that they need to understand the different kinds of cables (pardon the pun)).

I have to get a splitter so they can hear what they are recording as they are recording it because for some reason our MAudio box isn't letting us record the ipod/ ipad through the mixer box although you can hear it through the headphones. The presenters shared a song that they had remixed and I talked about how the award winning cheerleading squad from last year had mixed their own music in the computer lab using audacity.

We also spent time talking about DRM protection and a student with an ipad shared some about mixing in Garage Band on the ipad and Mac and how it is different from Audacity. We also talked about how to understand file extensions and look up what various types of files are. (This takes CONSTANT reinforcement.)

TuxGuitar - This group went all out. This program is for writing sheet music off of guitars and was a new one for me. You play the guitar shown on the screen and the program writes sheet music. This team also showed how to find midi music and import into Tux Guitar and to turn off and on tracks. We then hooked the computer with Tux Guitar into another computer running audacity and they realized how they could write, edit, use midi files on one computer and then record the track into another.

Synthesia - This game was brought in by the Tux Guitar students. They had learned everything about Tux Guitar and wanted to bring in this program. This teach-yourself piano game uses the computer keyboard but could use a real keyboard. They talked about how you can learn how to play almost any instrument.

So, I took them to one of my favorite Kevin Honeycutt videos about using the ipod/ iphone as an instrument. We discussed the evolution of music.

Whew! Just two days. Note that all of them have screenshots and instructions for the "computer user manual" we have built in one note.

Then, we went into photography with Picasa, learning how to take pictures on our webcam and a discussion about resolution (or rez), Picnik (the online photo editor integrated with Picasa) and also about the sort of scary "Face finder" service now integrated into Picasa. We discussed how our Face is now a fingerprint of a sort.

 We then moved into Skype. It was fun on the Skype session as I have the whole class get up on Skype. This is important to me because if I am ever out of town or home sick (or home taking care of a sick child which is more often the case,) I am able to skype into class to help students with issues. I'm really always "there." We learn how to group skype, but then I take my iPad and three boys into the library and have them skype back to the class. Then, I give them permission to take the class on a 4 minute tour and they take my ipad around and say hello to the librarian, the teacher coming from the copier. We discuss the mobility of VIDEO connection. This is a fun conversation.

Oovoo - The students asked that I install Oovoo on several computers because they wanted to compare and contrast Skype with oovoo which lets you do 12 way video chat. The kids say they really like Oovoo and are using it heavily.

Google Plus - Seeing some similarities between Oovoo and Google plus, it was then that I took them into Google Plus and ended up with a whole side conversation about tagging people. (See My Google+ Lesson Turned into a Whole Lot More than I had planned.)

We are just getting into the other class but I'm excited that three of our young ladies have jumped into Scratch and are loving it. They will teach the class today.

What is the purpose?
Before this, I have already laid the groundwork of my paperless classroom, how to print to PDF from word or any application, how to open into Google docs and save down from Google docs. How to move files around and organize them.

With this project, I am:

1. What is this class of students interested in? How do I reach them
2. Do they already have any prior knowledge of a program that I can build upon
3. Can they learn to use forums and help resources when they have no prior knowledge? If not, I guide them in the learning process about how to FIND resources and people when they don't have prior knowledge.
4. I set the stage for students-as-teacher and discuss presentation skills.
5. I let them start and share with each other and then I build upon that with certain things I want them to know.
6. We set the stage for super fast student-empowered learning where the tool is less important than finding a tool that will do what you want. The artifact we are trying to create becomes more important than the program we are using.

Surely, such planning seems like chaos to many, however, since I've started the year with this, I've found that I'm spending less time at the front of the room droning on and more time actually getting into the meat of the projects that make this such a fun class to teach.

I want them to be master of technology NOT the other way around.

Where this will lead.

The Freshman Project
I've gotten approval for a "Freshman project" of the student's own deciding due next May that will take 30-50 hours of time (I will give 30 hours of class time) that will be self-directed independent projects of the student's own choosing. This is modeled after the "senior project" idea in Evansville, Indiana that inspired DanTae in the video at the top of this blog post.

We must find student interests and help relate technology to turbo charge their careers and lives before they even graduate.


Flawed and imperfect as it is, the 6 class days required to do this activity start my year well and with a powerful message that we are in this together. Learning together.

Pushing forward into a future that is not yet written we will lead and no longer complain when our software is upgraded on us because we have powerful decoding skills that will let us master any app in our digital destiny.

Jeffery Sachs contends that:

Proper risk management is critical to the farmers' well-being and their financial viability since it increases their creditworthiness and thus allows them to make investments in high-yield activities such as higher value-added farming (using fertilizer to plant their crops). Engaging in these activities greatly diminishes the likelihood that a farmer will fall into poverty.
Citing the success of other financial schemes like micro-finance in boosting the lives of destitute farmers, Sachs raises the concept of micro-insurance as an instrument to further the progress already made. Micro-insurance as he envisions it, unlike traditional crop insurance, would have the effect of improving the fortunes of both the farmers and the companies involved and carry little risk.

via TreeHugger

During the Rhee administration, her education plan which was released 18 months into her administration promised to terminate a significant share of the DCPS teacher workforce. Well the Rhee firing squad strikes once again. On July 23, Leah Fabel of the Washington Examiner newspaper reported that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee will fire a sizable number of teachers and school staff by next week. Rhee did not appear in a Thursday briefing and left the dirty work to her deputy, Kaya Henderson to announce the bad news. Fabel reported the numbers of the terminations was not revealed in the briefing. The firings are based on a new evaluation instrument (IMPACT) which was introduced in school year 2009-10. Many have argued that IMPACT had inadequate training which was offered after the evaluation cycle began and takes into consideration fifty percent of DC-CAS student test scores for those in testing grades. WTU's President, George Parker whose term ended June 30, 2010 reported in the Examiner article that grievances would "definitely" be filed for each fired teacher, based on what many teachers perceived as a botched process. Parker stated "The Impact evaluation is flawed, and we requested that DCPS not terminate teachers or inflict adverse actions in its first year. The document should've been piloted first." Terminated teachers would join a very long waiting list of DCPS employees who have already been fired by Rhee's administration over the past three years. Many WTU members believe that Parker's response to IMPACT evaluation has been reactionary and a little to late. In union meetings during last school year, members insisted that Parker fight IMPACT as an evaluation tool that is unfair. These requests made by union members of Parker have fallen on deaf ears.

Bill Turque, Washington Post writer for the DC Schools Insider blog also covered this story. Click the School Insider link for Turque's story. Stay tuned for more on updates on teacher and school staff terminations in the upcoming week. While Kaya Henderson would not give reporters a ball park figure of the number of terminations, what's your best guess of the number of DCPS teachers and school staff to be terminated?

A DCPS special education teacher at Maury Elementary School calls it quits. 

Lately, I have received a number of emails and text messages from teachers and colleagues about how many DC public schools teachers are voluntarily calling it quits. Teachers that I have spoken to admit that some of their reasons for leaving are due to the IMPACT evaluation which was rolled out this year without it first being piloted. Many complain of inadequate training which is provided 'on the job' while teachers must digest an instrument that is complex and misinterpreted by principals, instructional coaches, program managers and master educators (who often aren't so master). Power points to supplement IMPACT are still being developed as we speak to help further explain rubrics that are not so specific. Teachers and service providers are rated in areas in which there has been limited training. Not to mention, the fact that it will take a total of three years for teachers to be graded on all of three of the IMPACT components. Teachers are complaining in some schools that they have lost their planning periods to more grade level meetings, extra duty, more paperwork and many other demands which result in lost time to plan. As a result many of our teachers come to work as early as 6:30 or 7 a.m. and stay until 6 or 7 p.m. and continue to work into the night. Yet they are still demonized in the press by Rhee and company. Time for family, friends and social activities is virtually non-existent.

Many teachers and service providers are receiving poor performance ratings on IMPACT evaluations with scores averaging in the minimally effective and ineffective range. Even I received a low impact score of course being marked down in the attendance area due to allegedly being seen at a protest rally while I was on scheduled leave. Could it be that Rhee's plan is to rate teachers low so that she can force out a significant share of our teaching workforce through terminations, lay-offs, resignations and retirement as revealed in her five year educational plan? 

I received an email from a teacher asking me to post the resignation of yet another certified DCPS teacher. Her email states - Hello Candi, "A certified special education teacher with a masters degree resigns from Maury Elementary School due to belittling by Principal Carolyne Albert-Garvey. Maury is located at 1250 Constitution Avenue NE. 20002. The principal heavily imposed special education coordinator (SEC) duties which is a full time job by the way and gave an unjust Impact rating. SEC duties "IMPACTed" no pun intended on this special education teacher's planning and instructional time. This special education teacher had a case load of 12 special education students in testing grades 3, 4 and 5. Go Figure... Now the school is left with a brand new uncertified teacher. Thanks." Signed, anonymous teacher

                                                                                   Posted by The Washington Teacher featuring Candi Peterson, blogger in residence and whistleblower.

Andrew Mwenda writes in the WashingtonPost:

More aid to Africa, whether it comes from the West or China, should not give us too much hope because, at root, foreign aid is an ineffective instrument that distorts recipients' incentives for the worse. Aid is given with the assumption that its recipients lack the necessary resource base to generate tax revenue to meet their public expenditure needs. Yet in many African countries, the problem of insufficient tax revenue is caused by poor tax administration, bad policies, and institutions that undermine growth. Then, once taxes come in, there is poor prioritization of expenditures.

via AfricaWorks

Business Daily reports:

Kenya is to launch a diaspora bond to help it direct the increasing amount of remittances to development projects and act as a source of cheaper credit to the Government...The financial instrument to be developed will enable the Central Bank to use remittances as collateral for bond issues and loan securitisation.
...Dilip Ratha(covered earlier), senior economist responsible for migration and remittances at the World Bank told Business Daily that no African country has yet issued a diaspora bond, except Ghana which has recently announced a saving scheme that has elements of a diaspora bond.

Mutumwa Mawere recently addressed the Nigerian diaspora he stated:

...There are countless examples of African entrepreneurs and professionals who have substantial amounts of money in Africa but it is evident that the prosperity has not been democratized to the extent of creating an African ownership class able to take the continent’s majority into a new and dynamically positive direction underpinned by new values of work, combined with saving, investment and an ownership mentality. It is also important to underscore that there is a distinction between being “rich” and being “wealthy”.
Yes, some Africans have made money but because financial literacy and “platinum rights” was not stressed as much as a sense of public justice and civil rights were by our founding fathers and we did not keep it (the money) and we certainly we did not grow it.
Many have made money but no one has really taught us how to keep it in our communities.
Imagine, after 13 years of South Africa’s democratic dispensation, we still do not have a new mutual for blacks? No one taught us about financial literacy and the basic tenets of a free enterprise system that appears universally to capture the imagination of many progressive and successful nations.
The challenge of understanding the free-enterprise system and making it work for the majority of Africans has to become a core part of any conversation among Africans concerned about wealth creation and creating sustainable wealth addresses for Africans. Most of our wealth addresses are not assignable and transferable let alone from one African generation to the next.
Any successful nation building enterprise must necessarily be sustained by a healthy, robust and growing tax base and not foreign aid. Africa’s post colonial budgets still remain principally funded by bilateral and multilateral sources of finance.
Africa must create its own dominant class of very successful entrepreneurs, at all levels. We should have our own wealth builders and not become a continent specialized in distributing other people’s wealth.
As we approach the 47th birthday of Nigeria, we must focus on converting ourselves from cash economy customers into banking (our own banks), tenants into homeowners, small business dreamers into small, medium and large scale business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage workers, economically illiterate into economically empowered citizens.
Many of us are consumed with directionless conversations that are primarily focused on what governments can do for us and not what we can go for ourselves. We tend to be good at being against something and not for something.
Literacy can be a sustainable instrument for poverty eradication. They often say that when you know better, you tend to do better.
Any when Africans know better, I have no doubt that we can transform ourselves from islands of affluence to oceans of hope and prosperity. We have not invested much in literacy and integrated the literacy challenge in our post colonial agendas.

Any nation is as good as the interests that inform it. The only power we have as Africans in any field on endeavor whether it is in politics or the wealth game is the power to organize ourselves. One hand cannot clap but two hands can surely make a noise.
Why then is it the case that we have not been able to use our collective spent to our advantage? Many of our African governments have benefited from the financial illiteracy of Africa’s intellectuals. Africa has invested in human capital and yet such investment has not been able to provide any leadership on the bread and butter issues.
Surely, it is evident to all of us that any consolidation of our pain and opportunities can create a critical mass that is missing in action. Imagine if all Nigerians resident in South Africa could consolidate their mobile phone expenses into one pool, how much impact would they have in the South African economy.
Equally, if all Zimbabweans resident in South Africa chose to use one bank, how much would that bank be worth? Even the obvious things that Africa needs to do are not so obvious to our leaders.
I think it is self evident that the poor need the rich in as much as the rich need the poor. Can you imagine a nation of only poor people with the same means and possibilities? On the key ideological questions, we have heard many people argue that a free enterprise system is not suited for Africa and many of our governments in Africa have perfected the skill of creating ideological and theoretical entrepreneurs/bureaucrats without asking the question whether in fact if all the rich people were eliminated, Africa would be any better.
The post colonial experience has confused many of us to the extent that we are now looking for intelligent leaders to govern us when leadership may have little to do with intelligence. Even in a family, it would not be normal for all the children to be the same. Those who do well in one generation inspire the next generation to do better.

Is Africa’s future safe with a system where the state thinks for its citizens or where the citizens think for themselves and act in their own self interest? Many believe that governments (created by the same citizens) can and should be expected to lead the anti-poverty crusade and yet human history has not given us any good examples of governments acting in the interests of citizens who are not in government.

We must take ownership of our destinies and we must be the change that we want to see in the continent. No one else is going to do it for us. We must sell ourselves as worthy of investment and we must change our attitudes because in the final analysis, our attitude to wealth determines our altitude.

Anyone can make money in a growing economy than can be stolen in a decaying and dysfunctional system. If we look at Africa’s unmet needs, then we can appreciate the possibilities that exist in the continent and yet we think and act in a fragmented and confused manner. Those who should ordinarily lead appear to be visionless preferring to focus on yesterday (which is gone) and not on actions that create a better Africa.
Before we can think of creating an African pool of wealth, we need to understand the meaning of wealth. Wealth has come to mean an abundance of items of economic vale or the state of controlling or possessing such items and encompasses money, real estate and any personal property.
In many countries wealth is also measured by reference to access to essential services such as health care or the possession of crops or livestock. Accordingly, an individual who has accumulated wealth relative to others is often described as wealthy.
Therefore, wealth refers to some accumulation of resources. In light of the above, Africa is not recognized as a wealthy continent because of the inferior relationship between the majority of us and items of economic value. We are generally challenged in the resource accumulation enterprise...

photo courtesy of ZimDaily

Via Education Watch International comes this story- Obama Administration To Impose Liberal UN Curriculum. Yes, it was only a matter of time until Obama realized that he could use your money to brainwash children into buying his view of the world.

According to the Department of Education, the Obama White House will direct $4.35 billion in taxpayer money to be used as bribes to get states to give up to the executive branch of the United States their constitutional power of education. Once the White House is then personally directing the education of all students in our country, it will make teachers and schools adopt an "internationally benchmarked education standard"- ie, schools will be forced to teach subjects in a way that the UN wants them taught.

Before you think this is just being hyper-sensitive, read the fine print. All 50 states will now be teaching that the UN is great- after all, the UDHR states that all "education shall . . . further the activities of the United Nations."

The standards will also include the UN's Earth Charter, which says that all education must include a focus on "sustainability education." What is this "sustainability education" that your tax dollars are now going to be used for? The Charter explains that "sustainability education" entails the "promotion of the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations" (Art. 10:a), nuclear disarmament (Art. 16:d), gay marriage (Art. 12:a), legalized abortion (Art. 7:e), adoption of an "international legally binding instrument on environment" (The way Forward), and indoctrination in pantheism (Art. 14d and Art. 16:f).

Yes, that's right, Obama is going to use money that you earned from your own labor to bribe states to teach communism, pacifism, anti-family values, and paganism.

What is the best way to evaluate a teacher's job performance?

This question is being increasingly asked in public education, inspired by legislation like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top and important because teachers rising salaries have not led to rising performance on national tests for students. It is an important question and a basic one, a question that likely has already been established for you if you don't work in government- those of you who work in the real world know what your pay and job security and recognition is based on, whether it be sales, piece-work, clients, hours, reviews, boss evaluations, or something else. But in education, teachers are rarely evaluated, and even more rarely are evaluated in any sort of meaningful way. So the question needs to be asked- what is the best way to evaluate a teacher's job performance?

At our staff meeting last week, our social studies department discussed this issue, and it is my hope that you can see why simply asking the question is very threatening to those who work in public schools. My department has about a dozen social studies teachers, teaching subjects ranging from US History to World History to International Relations to Government to Psychology. Only a couple have been teaching less than 10 years, and the rest have been in education for many years. It is our suspicion that sometime in the future some parts of our job may be based on job performance so we decided as a department to start the conversation up on how we should be measured. And the conversation didn't get very far.

"There is no way that anyone can evaluate a teacher's job performance," Mr. Liberal Teacher said (I call him Mr. Liberal because his ideology could be most closely described as liberal- he likes big government, activist judges, few limits on government, was opposed to the War on Terror, hates Bush and Palin, often talks about the plight of various groups like the poor or minorities or gays, and thinks rich people are evil- ie, generally has liberal views on issues). He is the leader of a group of teachers in our department with a similar mindset.

"I disagree," I said, and then suggested "One way that we can be evaluated as teachers is by test grades, such as our scores on AP tests." (Most of our department teaches some form of Advanced Placement class).

"No," Mr. Liberal Teacher said, "That's not a fair way to assess us. Some of the AP Exams are easier than others- I know I teach for the hardest AP exam."

That was not true- all AP tests are equally hard, and are statistically weighted and designed to be this way, but I didn't want to fight him on that point, so I suggested another way "How about then we all get evaluated based on how our students do on our common assessments?" (The core subjects that are taught in our department span several teachers and now have common unit tests).

"No," Mr. Liberal Teacher said, "That's not a fair way to assess us either. Some of us have different students of different capabilities in our classroom, and it wouldn't be fair to assess us as teachers because we may have lower performing students in our classroom."

That was a good point, I suppose, so I applied my few math skills and tried to think of a solution. "Okay, then we'll take the average of our classes and measure over a period of several years- that should correct for the statistical problem of a low sample size of a group of poorly performing kids which may lower a score- over time, we'll all have the same opportunity to get the same groups of kids, and therefore our common assessments will be valid ways to assess our teaching."

"No," Mr. Liberal Teacher said, "That's not a fair way to fix this problem. Some of the other teacher's will just 'teach to the test' to improve their scores, and I don't think that is right."

That was a fair point too, I suppose. "Okay, so if the test is the problem, we can go about creating a better more valid instrument to measure the students on, one that will be based on the curriculum that we're supposed to be teaching and broad enough so that teacher's can't just feed students specific answers."

"No," Mr. Liberal Teacher said, "That's not a fair way to fix that problem. There is no test that will ever be able to correctly evaluate what I am teaching my students."

This is the sort of thing that liberal teachers say when they get provoked and frustrated, because you see, they are hiding their real motive. Let's continue the story and you'll see what the real motive is...

"Okay," I said, moving on, "How about then if we have the students evaluate us? We'll come up with some sort of perfect student evaluation that will ask students to judge us based on a variety of measures."

"No," Mr. Liberal Teacher said, "That's not a fair way to assess us either. Your students like you because you are easy and give everyone an A and never yell at them- my students don't like me because I am tough on them and fail many of them and yell at them to keep them disciplined- it wouldn't be fair to assess me on what kids think about me."

"Okay," I said, trying one more time, "How about a basket of many things including evaluations by students, AP scores, common assessment scores, evaluations by peers, evaluations by administration, number of after school activities, number of students signing up for your classes, and parent reviews?"

"NO," Mr. Liberal Teacher said, "There is no possible way to ever evaluate my job."

That ended our conversation in our staff meeting, but I'm curious- what sort of job do you think he is doing as a teacher when he refuses to be evaluated?

Sam Ikoku calls for the development of tradable instruments to facilitate the efficiency of remittances:

"...if you want Nigerians(read Africans) to bring their money back home, you have got to give them the instruments which they can use, tradable instruments. You have got to create markets, capital markets..."We need to have instruments to create markets for Nigerians abroad. The Chinese people don't just send the money into the streets. They send the money into banks and institutions that are known to sponsor or support industries, we don't have these structures...."We don't have instruments. Every Nigerian sending money home is doing Western Union, take this to my brother, take this to my sister, give them clothes let them sell, It's such a pitiful way but if Nigerians can have instruments like in other countries, they will send large amounts of money home..."It is time for us to stop begging people to invest in this economy of 150 million people. There are Nigerians here and abroad that can invest in this economy. When we start it by example, then guess what, everyone else will be running after us. That's was what happened in China. So let's start it ourselves, lets not beg,"

Demba Moussa Dembele critiques Aid dependency, "...So aid is an instrument, not a gift. For many Western countries and institutions, it plays a key role in their overall strategy to maintain and even expand their influence in Africa...the money disbursed as aid goes mainly to foreign-controlled enterprises and aid flows are used to buy goods and services from donor countries...the cost of complying with conditions imposed by donors and lenders and subsidies on domestic produce by OECD countries – help explain, among other things, the worsening of the debt crisis, which in turn has meant greater dependency on foreign aid...much of the so-called aid given by Western countries and the loans made by multilateral institutions are not based on developing countries’ real needs, nor on any performance criteria, but primarily on the interests of ‘donors’. It’s time, now, to consider some possible alternatives..."

In Tanzania:

"...The purpose of the Anti Corruption Tracker System (CTS) is to keep track record of publicly available information on presumed or confirmed cases of corruption in order to increase accountability and responsiveness in the fight against corruption..."

Its aims are:

• To building a data bank of cases on presumed and confirmed cases on corruption
• Increasing transparency and accountability of cases
• Increasing citizen engagement in the fight against corruption
• Establishing an electronic quick archive that can be accessed to monitor cases on corruption
• Establishing a mechanism that can used as an instrument to assist state institutions to take action in response against corruption behaviours
• To provide an electronic medium between the state institutions and public on issues related to corruption.