Teachers told to step in to help prevent HIV/AIDS

Schools should help prevent HIV/AIDS by teaching a mixed health and anti-drugs program, the Indonesian National Commission for UNESCO has told teachers.

But schools should also be given leeway in choosing the most effective methods for reaching their students, experts and activists concluded at a workshop organized by the commission last week. 

""Act globally, think locally. Let's not forget our roots,"" the commission's executive chairman, Arief Rachman, said at the closing ceremony of the two day workshop for secondary school teachers on HIV/AIDS prevention. 

He reminded teachers to think about ways of teaching students that were appropriate to individual schools, and not to get distracted by the fact that the workshop was organized on a national level. 

Thirty-two schools, including religious institutions, from Jakarta and several other cities participated in the workshop, which included discussions and presentations on three distinct methods of thwarting the spread of HIV. 

One of the methods introduced was a guidance and counseling approach, advocated by, among others, South Jakarta's Lab School Foundation. 

Another was based on an Islamic perspective, while the last method was a collaborative teaching approach using online learning through the International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) and engaging the expertise of HIV/AIDS non-governmental organizations (NGOs). 

""Teachers are the spearheads of the prevention process. They are the ones facing the students on a day-to-day basis, so they know what exactly awaits them in the field,"" the national program officer for HIV/AIDS and school health at UNESCO Jakarta, Mira Fajar Aviatri, said. 

""This workshop is a good start to display the alternative methods available for implementing HIV prevention education which can be accommodated with school's curricula."" 

Mira acknowledged that some faith-based schools would have trouble abandoning rigid approaches to religious teachings and discussing the disease in more depth. 

But Mira applauded the open-mindedness and eagerness of most participants to exchange information and their experiences of teaching about HIV/AIDS. 

""There was a teacher from a faith-based school who was quite rigid in his outlook at first, but by the end he was able to appreciate and take into account other methods of teaching introduced by other participants,"" Mira said. 

Another teacher, Triveri, said the workshop had been of benefit to her. 

""At first I was not that interested in the program,"" the teacher at state high school SMA 99 said. ""But after listening and participating over the past two days, the workshop was actually interesting and most importantly, enriching."" 

Triveri, however, said she hoped the information on HIV/AIDS prevention she received during the workshop could be made available to more schools, especially those with difficult students. 

According to Mira, one of the challenges in implementing effective HIV/AIDS prevention lessons was the fact that the present curriculum only emphasized cognitive learning. 

""Time is really a constraint for our teachers, particularly since schools are mainly focused on the output -- on how many students graduate from schools. So you could imagine how heavy the teachers' burdens are in creatively delivering HIV/AIDS education alongside other pressing expectations,"" she said. 

Also at the workshop, a representative from UNESCO Bangkok, Simon Baker, announced the organization would hold a national competition for teachers to come up with the most innovative method to teach HIV/AIDS prevention. 

""The competition is for school teachers to create the best lesson plans for HIV/AIDS,"" Baker said, adding that ""in addition to a financial reward, the best action plan will hopefully be posted on the Internet for others to learn.""

Source: The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Thu, 06/28/2007 10:19 AM | Jakarta 

Indonesia’s education equity goals ‘moderate’, UNESCO report shows

A global ranking on education equity recently released by UNESCO has placed Indonesia 71st out of 129 countries surveyed, down from 62nd in 2007 and 58th in 2006.

In its 2009 Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report launched last week in Geneva, UNESCO placed Kazakhstan on top, followed by Japan, Germany, Norway and the UK. Last year’s report saw Norway in first place, with the UK topping the list in 2006.

Southeast Asian nations Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia are on a list of 56 countries with a high EFA Development Index (EDI); while Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines are among 44 countries with a medium EDI. Cambodia and Laos are included in the bottom 29 countries with a low EDI.

Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam were not included in the report, along with the United States and Australia.

The annual Global Monitoring Report, available at www.unesco.org, is a means of monitoring countries’ progress toward achieving six EFA goals, set in 2000, by 2015.

The EDI is a composite that uses four of the goals, excluding the first and third, selected on the basis of data availability. The universal primary education goal is measured using the indicator of total primary net enrollment (NER) — the percentage of primary school-aged children who are enrolled in either primary or secondary school; while the quality of education goal is measured using the proxy indicator of the survival rate to fifth grade.

The EDI can vary from 0 to 100 percent, or 0 to 1 when expressed as a ratio. The closer a country’s EDI value is to the maximum, the greater the extent of its overall EFA achievement and the nearer the country is to the EFA goal as a whole.

Indonesia’s EDI dropped to 0.925 from 0.935 last year and 0.938 the year before. Its total primary NER score was 0.984, indicating 98 percent of its primary school-aged children are enrolled in either primary of secondary school. The adult literacy rate was 0.910, meaning 9 percent of Indonesia’s adults are still illiterate.

Hamid Muhammad, the National Education Ministry’s director general for non-formal and informal education, responsible for ensuring Indonesia achieves the six EFA goals by 2015, told The Jakarta Post Friday that Indonesia could have had a better EDI and ranking if UNESCO had used data from the last two years for its report, and not data from the school year ending in 2006.

Hamid said EFA goals for Indonesia meant the country, among others, should have an NER of 95 percent, gross junior high school enrollment rate of 95 percent and adult literacy rate of 95 percent.

Indonesia has attained these first two goals, with both the NER and junior high enrollment rate exceeding 95 percent.

“Our illiteracy rate now stands at 5.7 percent, so in fact we only need to cut 1 percent more from the rate to reach the EFA goals,” Hamid said. 

Six EFA goals 

1. Expanding early childhood care and education
2. Providing free and compulsory primary education for all
3. Promoting learning and life skills for young people and adults
4. Increasing the adult literacy rate by 50 percent
5. Achieving gender equality by 2015
6. Improving the quality of educatio

Source: Erwida Maulia , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sat, 12/06/2008 8:07 AM | Headlines 

How to Increase Your Adsense Revenue

If you're a webmaster, you've probably heard about Google's Adsense. Perhaps you're even earning from it already. This article will show you a method to increase your Adsense revenue dramatically.

Google's Adsense allows webmasters to place links from Google's Adwords advertisers on their webpages by inserting a special code. When a visitor clicked on a link, the webmaster gets a cut of the profit Google made from the advertiser. The unique feature about Adsense is that the links it generates on your webpage are relevant to your page content. Thus, your keywords and topics become very important determinant for the type of links that will appear on your webpage.

There are only two factors that determine how much a webmaster can make from Adsense. The first factor is the number of visitors who click on the links. The more people who clicked on the links, the more you make. Naturally, this means that the more targetted traffic to the website, the more you'll make. This is where most webmasters focus their efforts on.

The second factor is the value of the links they clicked on. Here's where you can make a great difference to your earnings from Adsense and is our focus in this article.

Suppose you have 1000 visitors to your website and you get 2% conversion, that is 20 people clicked on your Adsense links. Let's assume that your Adsense links pay you only 50 cents per click. So you earn $10 dollars.

Now let's see how much this same traffic will make for you if your Adsense links pay you $5 per click. For the same number of clicks, you make $100 dollars. That's a ten-fold increased in revenue!

Well, that makes sense, you said, but how am going to determine what type of links appear on my webpages?

Good questions!

Here's where you'll need to do a little research and here's a tool to help you do just that.

Go over to http://www.pixelfast.com/overture/ and you'll get a tool that shows you how much each keyword is worth. While this tool is for Overture's keywords, we can safely assume that this reflects the keyword values for Googles Adwords as well. Once you've found the keywords with high monetary values, you can optimize your webpages for them. This will increase your chances of having these high value keyword links appearing on your webpages.

Some people have actually made extensive researches on Google's top paying keywords and found that one or two keywords are worth almost $100! However, generally most keywords are valued at between 50 cents and $5 dollars. Some keywords like "internet marketing" may fetch up to $7 dollars and "mortgage" pays up to $10 dollars.

These values may change from time to time but they generally hover around these levels. Naturally, this information is priceless and you'll have to pay to get it. I feel it is worth every cent you paid for it. You can check it out at http://theselfimprovementsite.com/links/top-paying-keywords.html.

And there you have it! A single factor that can radically increase your Adsense revenue!