Questões de Vestibular

In Higher Education, a Focus on Technology

By STEVE LOHR
The education gap facing the nation’s work force is evident in the numbers. Most new jobs will require more than a high school education, yet fewer than half of Americans under 30 have a (2) postsecondary degree of any kind. Recent state budget cuts, education experts agree, promise to make closing that gap even more difcult. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and four nonproft education organizations are beginning an ambitious initiative to address that challenge by accelerating the development and use of online learning tools. An initial $20 million round of money, from the Gates Foundation, will be for postsecondary online courses, particularly ones tailored for community colleges and low-income young people. Another round of grants, for high school programs, is scheduled for next year.

Just how efective technology can be in improving education - by making students more efective, more engaged learners - is a subject of debate. To date, education research shows that good teachers matter a lot, class size may be less important than once thought and nothing improves student performance as much as one-on-one human tutoring. If technology is well designed, experts say, it can help tailor the learning experience to individual students, facilitate student- teacher collaboration, and assist teachers in monitoring student performance each day and in quickly fne-tuning lessons. The potential benefts of technology are greater as students become older, more independent learners. Making that point, Mr. Gates said in an interview that for children from kindergarten to about ffth grade “the idea that you stick them in front of a computer is (3) ludicrous.”

(1)
higher education: educação superior.
(2)
postsecondary: termo que se refere aos cursos feitos após o high school ou, no modelo educacional brasileiro, o Ensino Médio.
(3)
ludicrous: ridícula, absurda.

How can consumers find out if a corporation is “greenwashing” environmentally unsavory practices?

Brazil despite its economic success remains one

of the inequality champions

August 22nd, 2012



Brazil might be the leading economy in Latin America and has had a significant performance in reducing poverty in recent years, but it still remains among the countries with the highest inequality in the region together with Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia, points out the UN­Habitat report. In all four countries based on 2009 data, the Gini income per capita distribution index stood at 0.56, to which must be added Dominican Republic and Bolivia, two inequality champions with high concentration of wealth. This compares with the US and Portugal Gini indicator of 0.38, two countries that offer no relief since Portugal, for example, has the highest inequality index of the European Union.
Nevertheless, Brazil advanced compared to 1990 when it had the highest degree of inequality and stood well ahead from the rest of the continent. But the region continues to have the highest inequality rate in spite of advances in helping income distribution. Among some of the causes for distribution improvement are productivity, upward trend of salaries and workers categories, strong economy and implementation of income transfer programs in several countries, particularly in the two leading economies, Brazil and Mexico. In the case of Brazil, the country’s economy now figures sixth at global level.
Former president Lula da Silva and one of the most popular leaders in history of that country based his success precisely on the Bolsa Família Plan, which distributed a monthly basic food basket to millions, helping anywhere from 14 to 22 million climb out of poverty, plus ensuring his Workers Party an encouraging future. The Gini coefficient or index measures the inequality among values of a frequency distribution (for instance, levels of income). A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality where all values are the same (for instance, where everyone has an exactly equal income). A Gini coefficient of one (100 on the percentile scale) expresses maximal inequality among values (for instance, where only one person has all the income).


(http://en.mercopress.com. Adaptado.)