6 World Education Blog

EDUCATION in Africa has a history reaching back many centuries. Certainly the achievements of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Ethiopia are well known. Then, early in the first millennium of the Common Era, the Moors and other peoples on the northern fringe of Africa made notable contributions to world education and culture. And during the past 1,000 years the Saharan and sub-Saharan peoples had several centers of learning—Timbuktu, Agadez, Gao, Katsina and Borno, where books written in Arabic were in great demand.

More than 800 years ago at Timbuktu, in Mali, colleges provided advanced education. Katsina, in northern Nigeria, has been a center of learning since before the sixteenth century. It was there that, about 200 years ago, Muhammed ibn Muhammed became noted as a specialist in numerology.

The aforementioned cities were dominated by Moslem culture, and mosques were the centers of learning. However, the cost of learning under the tutorship of the mallams was very high and so few persons could afford it. The educated minority exercised tremendous influence, and were the key administrators, lawyers and clerks. But the majority remained illiterate.

In the non-Moslem, sub-Saharan cultures, education was largely nonliterate, by oral instruction rather than by use of reading material. Educational systems varied from tribe to tribe, and there were different degrees and levels of training, depending on the social and cultural development of a particular tribe. The training covered a fairly wide range, with specialized instruction at different age levels. Each educational system had specific forms of preparation for the roles of individuals in society. A look at the system of education among the Yorubas in precolonial Nigeria illustrates this.

The Yoruba System

Among the Yorubas, training in obedience, etiquette, speech and counting came early in the child’s life and was given within the family circle. Children quickly learned to express themselves in their language. Progressively, they mastered the proverbs, poetry and folklore of the community or tribe. In this way they learned the history and the moral and philosophical attitudes of their people. continue reading

The Internet has broken down language barriers, country boundaries, and learning methods. Today, learning at home is not only possible but highly advisable because the World Wide Web gives students resources that otherwise are not available as fast as the time it takes when a student turns on his or her personal computer.

The era of education online means that your ability to obtain higher education is just a mouse click away. Online education is one of the best options for those who want to get a degree and work at the same time. Within the past ten years, online education and internet training has provided many people with a new incentive to learn.

Online education includes a full spectrum of possibilities starting with early childhood education and including college preparation, or complete learning programs for obtaining a college degree. Online courses open a world of possibilities to people who for any given reason were unable to attend regular school programs, or those whose actual activities and limited time, made it hard to stick to a full-time learning schedule.

Online education is spreading across the globe like a wildfire fueled by textbooks and periodic tables. Millions who previously thought that a college degree was firmly out of their reach have discovered that all it takes to attend college in today’s world are the combination of a few free hours each day and access to the Internet.

Online Education Equals Big Business

Originally conceived as a way for adults to earn a college degree later in life than usual, online education or “distance learning” has spread to the point that people of all ages are now involved. Children as young as the fourth grade level now have access to online education in many areas, using it as a supplement to or in place of traditional classes.

With Online Education Everybody Wins

Part of the appeal to online education is that it is literally good for everyone. Educators can enter a new job market in writing and implementing an online curriculum and can use this income to supplement the earnings that receive from classroom education. continue reading

In today’s uber-competitive worldwide marketplace, you cannot rightly say, “a writer is a writer is a writer”.  A writer may very well be a writer, but that does not mean that they are a web content writer, at least when you are looking at the overall effectiveness of the end-result of their work.  There are a lot of “for print” writers trying to transition themselves into the web content writing game, and at the end of the day, they may be qualified, but they do not have the education they need to create effective web copy.

Web content writing vs. “for print” writing is like the difference between the shady looking, but effective, used car salesman versus the dolled-up, suit-wearing, manager-in-training, yet completely ineffective photo-shoot prop that purports to sell used cars.  Writing for print does not “translate” well to the down and dirty needs of today’s website content — it’s more than just words on a page, it’s engagement on several fronts that is needed.

This is not to say that traditional print writers cannot make good-to-excellent web content writers, because there are many who fill these roles and excel on all fronts.  However, just because somebody has a college degree, or even extensive training in the general writing industry, does not mean that they will be able to create effective content for your website’s needs. 

Writing for the web is so much more than just placing flowery, yet flowing, words on a page, being sure that all the Ts are crossed and all the Is are dotted — it’s about creating content that is effective for its purpose. Effective web content writing must excel on several fronts:

1. Web content must be “attractive” to search engines - search engines do not only use “exact-phrase-matching” to determine the relevancy of a web page — they also use context.  For example, if this article were about “article writing”, it would be natural to include terms like, “writer”, “content”, “seo”, “quality”, “marketing”, “services”, etc.   

2. Web content must engage the reader - Even if continue reading