OSHAKATI The overpowering sewage stench at Oshakati West Primary School in Oshakati has

residents, teachers and parents up in arms and demanding answers from the education ministrys
maintenance department. The terrible smell emanates from a broken underground sewer system,
which has raised health concerns as the rains that have been pouring down in the area have caused
the sewage to mix with the rain water, causing the waste to spread all over the school grounds.
We dont know what they [maintenance department] come here to do because when they come they
just have a look and then leave, with the situation remaining unchanged, said one of the teachers.
The head of the maintenance department at the Ministry of Works and Transport Simon Totwe said
the problem lies with how the school was built but there are discussions to tap into the budget for a
permanent solution. The situation worsens when heavy rains trip the power supply.
Another teacher confirmed that the waste has been pouring out into the school grounds and nearby
streets. As you can see there is filth and used toilet paper all over the grounds. The situation is
neither healthy nor conducive for learners. As you can see we dont have a school hall and we hold
our assembly here on the grounds, while the learners especially the ones in the lower grades also
have their lunch break here, said the teacher.
Weve realised that the situation gets worse whenever there is a power cut. The problem also stems
from the way the school was built, it is built on low ground and those who built the school were
supposed to level the ground before they built the school. Now when the power goes off especially
now when it is raining someone will need to go and correct the circuit breakers because if not, the
pumping stops and the sewage flows back to the school causing the pipes to get clogged, said
Totwe.
Our children are running around the school barefooted when they play , they also eat their lunch
there, if one of them drops the food they pick it up to eat and that is not healthy, but there is also no
one to monitor them. We fear for the health of our children as diseases like cholera can easily break
out as a result of the sewage on the school grounds, complained one of the parents.

By Kakunawe Shinana

http://www.newera.com.na/2014/03/20/broken-sewage-system-swampsschool/

DepEd official blames lack of comfort rooms for students' low scores in
examinations
CEBU, Philippines- The Talisay City Department of Education (DepEd) Division
superintendent suspects that lack of comfort rooms available in public schools could
have been one of the reasons why students fared badly in the last regional and national
academic examinations.
Woodrow Denuyo, DepEd-Talisay City Division Superintendent, said the scores made
by the students in the last regional and national tests were low and attributes the dismal
outcome to the time students spend looking for comfort rooms and therefore miss a
fraction of the lessons.
He said some students go home if they couldn't find clean rest rooms, which is the case
in most public schools.
Denuyo however said that since that problem has already been identified, the DepEd is
now looking for ways to address it.
Some schools, such as the Talisay City Central School, have comfort rooms inside
classrooms.
Although these comfort rooms are reserved for teachers, students can use these for
peeing.
Freeman ( Article MRec ), pagematch: 1, sectionmatch:
The lack of classrooms and chairs is also another thing, said Denuyo.
Talisay may have 24 elementary schools and 18 national high schools, but the number
is not enough to hold the increasing number of students every year.
Due to the large student population, a classroom supposedly for 45 heads has to
accommodate 15 more.
This setup has been going on for years. In some areas in Talisay however, which just
have more students and no more space to build additional school buildings, the DepEd
has implemented the shifting schedule wherein two classes, one in the morning and
another in the afternoon, share one room, said Denuyo.
Denuyo said these problems are common in almost all public schools all over the
country.

http://www.philstar.com/metro-cebu/690313/deped-official-blames-lackcomfort-rooms-students-low-scores-examinations
Back to School: Open Educational Resources in Africa
Aurelia J. Schultz, September 1st, 2009
As students around the world return to school, ccLearn blogs about the
evolving education landscape, ongoing projects to improve educational
resources, education technology, and the future of education. Browse the
Back to School tag for more posts in this series.
In the United States, the turn from August into September means new
pencils, books and backpacks as the nations students start a new school
year. In other parts of the world, students are returning from semester
breaks or going on with classes as usual. And in some cases, with almost no
books, let alone new ones.
This is far too often the case in many African schools. Teachers face not only
a lack of student materials, but also a lack of access to teaching resources.
For years generous donors have attempted to address this problem by
supplying schools copies of textbooks, desks and other equipment. Helpful in
many ways, but merely giving supplies doesnt alleviate some of the biggest
problems. Take the text books for example.
In many countries, the required text books are outdated. Governments
cannot afford newer books, so without a market, new books dont get
written. Sometimes newer books might exist, but only in one language. For a
country attempting to teach primary school in several native languages, this
presents a huge problem, especially when considering the copyright
restrictions on translating a work. The same situations exist for teaching
materials as well as text books.
Enter open educational resources, or OER.
OER are materials, tools, and media used for teaching and learning that are
free from copyright restrictions or publicly licensed for anyone
to use, adapt, and redistribute. And several organizations around the
continent are using OER to address the specific challenges surrounding
access to teaching materials:

In South Africa, a new project of the Shuttleworth

Foundation is helping South African primary and secondary school teachers
share their resources. The aim of Siyavula (pronounced see-ah-hoo-la) is to
ensure that South Africa has a complete OER curriculum for all primary and
secondary grades. The project was designed with the new South African
school curriculum in mind, which requires teachers to develop more of their
own content. Some teachers formed small groups to adapt to the new South
African curriculum requirements, sharing their developments with their
groups and offering each other support. Siyavula is building upon this model,
helping new groups to form and offering workshops on developing, finding
and sharing resources.
The Siyavula system includes a large repository of curriculum, currently
complete from grades R (like the USs kindergarten) through 9 in both
English and Afrikaans. One great part of the Siyavula system is that as
teachers develop and adapt materials, they submit them back into the
Siyavula system where the materials are reviewed by curriculum advisers.
This ensures the OER materials always meet the countrys education
standards. Because OER are, well, open, there are no restrictions on
translating works like there are on materials under full copyright. This has
allowed Siyavula users to translate much of the material into Xhosa. Ideally
other languages will follow.

While Siyavula is tackling primary and secondary

education, another organization is focusing on higher education across
Africa. OER Africa is currently active in several countries across the
continent. Through partnerships with various universities in Africa and
elsewhere, OER Africa helps facilitate the sharing of resources between
universities and training schools. This program is particularly exciting
because it has African universities sharing with each other, instead of just
receiving materials from the United States or Europe. Additionally, in the
instances where African universities and outside universities are partnered
together, the relationship really is mutually beneficial.
One example of the mutual beneficial relationships in OER Africa was
explained by Project Director Catherine Ngugi during the Open Education
2009 conference keynote address. Collaboration between the University of
Michigan andKwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in
the Health OER program has given students at KNUST access to materials
that help them study common medical issues and has given students at
Michigan resources about infectious diseases to which they otherwise would
not have had access. (As someone who has had to worry about doctors in

the US not knowing enough about tropical medicine, this exchange makes
me really happy.) KNUST and Michigan also share and receive information
with schools in Ghana and South Africa.
OER does more than just supply teachers with educational materials. It helps
them customize their curriculum to their own needs, their own locations and
their own students. Organizations like Siyavula and ORE Africa are helping to
change the face of education on the continent, for the better. Creative
Commons is proud that its licenses help make that possible.

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/17273

Janine
Joan
Leazelyn

Roe Honey
Dolores
Erica Joi
Ecayyee
Cigarette smoking among U.S. high school students at lowest level in 22 years
Cigarette smoking rates among high school students have dropped to the lowest levels since the
National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) began in 1991, according to the 2013results released
today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By achieving a teen smoking rate of 15.7 percent, the United States has met its nationalHealthy
People 2020

objective of reducing adolescent cigarette use to 16 percent or less.

Despite this progress, reducing overall tobacco use remains a significant challenge. For example, other
national surveys show increases in hookah and e-cigarette use. In the YRBS, no change in smokeless
tobacco use was observed among adolescents since 1999, and the decline in cigar use has slowed in
recent years, with cigar use now at 23 percent among male high school seniors.
Its encouraging that high school students are making better health choices such as not fighting, not
smoking, and not having sex, said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. Way too many young
people still smoke and other areas such as texting while driving remain a challenge. Our youth are
our future. We need to invest in programs that help them make healthy choices so they live long,
healthy lives.
The YRBS provides data related to behaviors that contribute to unintentional injuries and violence. The
2013 survey found encouraging reductions in physical fighting among adolescents:

The percentage of high school students nationwide who had been in a physical fight at least
once during the past 12 months decreased from 42 percent in 1991 to 25 percent in 2013.

Fights on school property have been cut in half during the past 20 years. Sixteen percent of
high school students were in at least one physical fight on school property during the 12
months before the survey in 1993, compared to 8 percent in 2013.

For the first time, the surveys conducted by states and large urban school districts gathered
information on texting and e-mailing by adolescents while driving. The surveys findings indicate that
the use of technology while driving continues to put youth at risk:

Among high school students who had driven a car or other vehicle during the past 30 days,
the percentage of high school students who texted or e-mailed while driving ranged from 32
percent to 61 percent across 37 states and from 19 percent to 43 percent across 15 large urban
school districts.

Nationwide, 41 percent of students who had driven a car or other vehicle during the past 30
days reported texting or emailing while driving.

The new YRBS report shows mixed results regarding youth sexual risk behaviors.

The percentage of high school students who are currently sexually active (had sexual
intercourse during the past three months) has declined from 38 percent in 1991 to 34 percent
in 2013.

Among the high school students who are currently sexually active, condom use also has
declined from 63 percent in 2003 to 59 percent in 2013. This decline follows a period of
increased condom use throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

The report also indicates varied trends in obesity-related behaviors in recent years, such as excessive
screen time and drinking sugar-sweetened beverages like soda.

From 20032013, the percent of high school students using a computer three or more hours
per day (for non-school related work) nearly doubled from 22 percent to 41 percent.

The percentage of high school students who watch three or more hours of TV on an average
school day decreased since 1999 (from 43 percent to 32 percent).

There was a significant decrease in drinking soda (or pop) one or more times per day from 34
percent in 2007 to 27 percent in 2013.

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey is an important tool for understanding how health risk behaviors
among youth vary across the nation and over time, said Laura Kann, Ph.D., chief of CDCs SchoolBased Surveillance Branch. We can use these data to help schools, communities, families, and
students reduce youth risk behaviors that are still prevalent and to monitor those that are newly
emerging.
About the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS)

CDCs YRBSS is the only surveillance system designed to monitor a wide range of priority health risk
behaviors among representative samples of high school students at the national, state, and local
levels. National, state, and large urban school district surveys are conducted every two years among
high school students throughout the United States. These surveys monitor priority health risk
behaviors including unintentional injuries and violence; sexual behaviors that contribute to unintended
pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV infection; tobacco, alcohol, and other drug
use; unhealthy dietary behaviors; and physical inactivity. These surveys also monitor obesity and
asthma.
More than 13,000 U.S. high school students participated in the 2013 National YRBS. Parental
permission was obtained for students to participate in the survey, student participation was voluntary,
and responses were anonymous. States and large urban school districts could modify the
questionnaire for their own surveys to meet their needs. The 2013 YRBSS report includes National
YRBS data and data from surveys conducted in 42 states and 21 large urban school districts.
The National YRBS is one of three HHS-sponsored surveys that provide data on substance abuse
among youth nationally. The others are the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH),
sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration a primary source of
statistics on substance use among Americans age 12 and older (www.oas.samhsa.gov/nhsda.htm );
and the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse part of
the National Institutes of Health and conducted by the University of Michigans Institute for Social
Research (http://monitoringthefuture.org ). The MTF study tracks substance use and related attitudes
among students in the 8th, 10th, and 12th grades.

http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2014/p0612-YRBS.html

Engaging High School Students in Research on Smoking Behavior

Increasingly, scientists use information and communications technology to analyze large repositories of
existing data. Engaging students in database investigations has great potential for providing authentic
research experiences that are low cost and reflect contemporary science practice. Through a
collaboration between Genome Sciences and the Institute for Science and Math Education at the
University of Washington (UW), we developed Exploring Databases, a high school inquiry-based research
project combining neurobiology, epidemiology, statistics, genetics, and database research to answer the
question, Why do some people smoke, and others don't?
:

Nicotine addiction remains the most common form of chemical dependence in the United States (1).
Consequently, despite considerable public health investment, tobacco use is still the leading cause of
preventable illness and death in the United States (2). Exploring Databases engages students in
examining how environmental and genetic factors contribute to smoking addiction by using the Smoking
Behavior database.
This database is the result of a previous science education project that involved high school students in
planning and conducting a case control study that compared 300 adult smokers and nonsmokers (3).

Research subjects completed a questionnaire regarding environmental influences on their smoking

behavior. They also gave a small blood sample that was used to genotype their DNA at three candidate
gene regions shown to be associated with smoking behavior: a deletion in the promoter region of the
dopamine receptor gene; a synonymous substitution in the dopamine receptor gene; and a substitution in
an intron of the dopa decarboxylase gene (3). Questionnaire and genotyping data for each subject were
entered into the database.
The Exploring Databases curriculum module consists of seven 1- to 2-hour lessons, including
foundational activities and student-led investigations (see supplementary materials). The curriculum is
taught by teachers who have attended a professional development workshop. In the first three lessons,
students learn different aspects of human subjects research, discuss variation in smoking behavior, and
study the biology of nicotine addiction. In lesson 4, students learn the case control study design and
epidemiological analysis, including criteria used to distinguish causality from associations (4). Lesson 5
focuses on the fundamentals of statistics to estimate the strength and significance of associations.
Throughout these lessons, students watch taped interviews of scientists in related fields and explore the
role of databases in contemporary research. They develop an overarching hypothesis related to genetic
or environmental influences on smoking behavior by reviewing profiles of smokers, examining published
research and reflecting on their own experiences.
In lesson 6, student research teams identify questions that address their overarching hypothesis and use
the database for hypothesis testing (see the first figure, left). The online database interface provides
visual support to guide students as they submit queries, estimate statistics, and interpret their results (see
the second figure). Students then apply the criteria for causality to determine whether an association can
be considered causal. In lesson 6, students are instructed to conduct, at most, four statistical tests related
only to their overarching hypothesis to avoid false-positive results. However, in lesson 7, students mine
the database by analyzing many questions and exposure combinations to generate a new hypothesis for
a future hypothetical research study.
To conclude the module, students create a presentation in PowerPoint or poster format that displays both
their results and claims based on the evidence from their analysis and their proposed study. During their
research presentations, students participate in scientific argumentation by critiquing the claims of their
peers and responding to the questions and comments of others, using a rubric designed by their teacher
(5). In developing the module, we adopted the following design principles, which could be applied to other
programs:

Involving teachers, life scientists, and learning scientists as partners in curriculum

design (6);

Engaging students in topics that relate to their lives and interests (7);

Developing analytical tasks that focus on the learning goals of the National Research
Council science education framework (8) and the Next Generation Science Standards
(http://nextgenscience.org);

Providing instructional supports in the curriculum and database to guide student

enactment of the research process (9);

Designing the curriculum through an iterative process based on classroom

implementation data (field notes, audio and video recordings, interviews, and survey
items) and feedback from stakeholders;

Providing teacher professional development workshops in which teachers complete

many of the student activities (see the first figure, right) and engage in discussions with
lead teachers, scientists, education researchers, and each other; and

Providing Web-based access to project components, implementation support, and

ongoing technical support.

The module has been used in a wide variety of high school science courses, including introductory
biology, a biotechnology class for students for whom English is a second language, an Upward Bound
seminar, advanced elective courses (e.g., genetics and biotechnology), and Advanced Placement and
International Baccalaureate Biology, as well as community college courses. In the 201112 academic
year, nearly 600 students participated in the project. Through feedback from teachers, classroom
observations, and research studies conducted in the classrooms (10), we have learned several lessons
regarding implementation of the module:

Students often report that their interest in their investigation topics stems from their
observations of smoking practices in their family, friends, and the media.

Both students and teachers have limited prior experience and images of
contemporary scientific practices other than the classical experimental design covered
in traditional K12 science curricula.

Through their involvement in epidemiological research, students broaden their

understanding of contemporary scientific research and methodologies, especially
human subjects research.

A study comparing student learning of scientific research and attitudes toward

science after completing a genotyping experiment (3) and the database research
described here. Students were somewhat more likely to rate genotyping as real science
compared to their database research experience, despite associating more scientific
tasks with the database experience than genotyping.

Some students even expressed interest in conducting future case control studies
focused on drug addiction in the future.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6144/360.full

Smoking Definition
According
to
dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Smoking

the

site

http://medical-

Smoking is the inhalation of the smoke of burning tobacco encased in cigarettes, pip
es, and cigars. Casual smoking is the act ofsmoking only occasionally, usually in a s
ocial situation or to relieve stress. A smoking habit is a physical addiction to tobacco

products.Many health experts now regard habitual smoking as a psychological addic

tion, too, and one with serious health consequences.

According to http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shortage.asp

LACK OF --- A situation where demand for a product or service exceeds the
available supply.

According to http://www.power2u.org/downloads/ComfortRooms4-23-09.pdf
Comfort Room Definition:
The Comfort Room, formerly called the Quiet or Time-Out room, is a room that
provides sanctuary from stress, and/or can be a place for persons to experience
feelings within acceptable boundaries.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_system
Drainage system may refer to:

A drainage system (geomorphology), the pattern formed by the streams,

rivers, and lakes in a particular drainage basin.

A drainage system (agriculture), an intervention to control waterlogging

aiming at soil improvement for agricultural production.

A drainage system in urban and industrial areas, a facility to dispose of liquid

waste. See Sustainable urban drainage systems and Sewage.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_system
Smoking is a practice in which a substance is burned and the resulting smoke breathed in to be
tasted or inhaled.