A Mobile Application Provides All relevant Information for Incoming Asylum Seekers

Almost 3 million people are expected to reach Europe by the end of 2017. This creates a tremendous geo-cultural challenge for refugees, especially at the outset. Being forlorn, destitute, lost in translation – and with a mobile phone, new comers do not have enough local information and are held back by language barriers. As much as they get help, especially in Germany, there is a mismatch between public aides and refugees. The is why Integreat app was developed.

Integreat provides comprehensive local information for refugees, is multilingual, has simple administration, and is connected to local authorities, is linked to job platforms, and is free of charge. Creators of Integreat asked these two simple questions that lead to the creation of the app : Can we provide all the relevant information to incoming people in our city in their own language as quickly as possible – without permanent internet access and without confusing paper chaos?

Integreat is available in the App Store and Google Play.

Comments

Hattie’s Effect Size: A pseudoscience or critics just being critics?

Hattie’s meta-mata analysis that culminated in the publication of his most influential work of Visible Learning (2009), and later updated to include more studies, has been hailed as the “holy grail” for educators and education leaders around the world. In particular, his effect size of instructional practice interventions has had the lion’s share of his work. Hattie considered that if schools set the effect size at 0 then “virtually everything works, and so we need to shift the question from “ what works in education” to “what works best in education”. Hattie’s meta-meta analysis of more than 800 meta-analyses studies comprising 50,000 studies (later included more 1500 meta-analyses) revealed that the baseline of the effect size that schools should start from is not 0 but 0.4, termed as the “hinge point”. In other words, for medium to large effect sizes on student achievement, the effect size of an instructional practice should be o.4 and above. This does not mean that we n...

Education Reform and Social Cohesion in Lebanon

It is no secret that the MENA region has had a sweeping education reform as the result of the Arab Spring, although the result of this reform, up till now, has not had the desired effect ( Read here ). Lebanon is no strange to education reform. In the post-war torn country, Lebanon sought to reform its education sector to create social cohesion amongst its divided sectarian and religious groups (based on the premise that the cause of the 15 year civil war was religious and sectarian, although many historians argue that social injustice, masked in religious and sectarian factions, was what spiraled Lebanon into a destructive civil war). Two education reforms were thus conceived and implemented, the Educational Recovery Plan in post war Lebanon in 1994, and the National Action Plan for Education for All in 2005. However, two questions arise as we ponder on education reform in Lebanon, a conflict-prone country: 1- Who takes decisions on the need, nature, and implementation of t...

198 METHODS of Nonviolent Actions to Instill Change

In 1972, Gene Sharp produced a brochure listing 198 methods on nonviolent actions to instill change. Since then, his methods have become a blueprint for nonviolent actions around the world. I publishing it here in the hope that this might spark done ideas for change. Practitioners of nonviolent struggle have an entire arsenal of “nonviolent weapons” at their disposal. Listed below are 198 of them, classified into three broad categories: nonviolent protest and persuasion, noncooperation (social, economic, and political), and nonviolent intervention. A description and historical examples of each can be found in volume two of The Politics of Nonviolent Action, by Gene Sharp. THE METHODS OF NONVIOLENT PROTEST AND PERSUASION Formal Statements 1. Public Speeches ...

Re-thinking Life !

Search This Blog