Impediments of educational bureaucrats on teacher education in Nigeria
This paper set out to discuss the impediments of educational bureaucrats on teacher education in Nigeria and to examine the person of the education bureaucrat, their functions in Nigeria context, their management behaviors and why they failed in the country. It was expected that at the end of the day stakeholders in teacher education would be able to have a positive orientation and understanding of the place of educational bureaucrats in the success of the country’s educational enterprise in teacher education. Nigeria has not been so lucky with good educational bureaucrats in all her endeavors in general and in schools in particular. For this reason, this paper toiled with the future of children with compulsory miseducation in a context of schooling without education – a rebirth of the diploma disease. Therefore, it is recommended that the education bureaucrats should involve teachers, non-teaching staff and students as well as the community through Parent Teachers Association to enhance teacher education in the country.
Facing Challenges of a New Era of Educational Assessment
Educational assessment is undergoing rapid change in American schools. The changes are easy to see. But the underlying causes are not so easy to detect. As a result, we have yet to realize the depth of the change taking place and its importance for the future of our educational system. In fact, over the past 2 years, we have seen the end of a six-decade assessment era and the beginning of a whole new era, in my opinion. In this article, I describe the old era in terms of its origins, characteristics, and the reasons for its demise. Then, I turn to the new era, discussing how it will be different and detailing four critical challenges to be met by the assessment community if we are to make a smooth transition between apparently conflicting eras.
Introduction and experience with the primary mail services based on their names for students
Kyushu University provided mail service based on student IDs such as "1AB10123X" to the university students for many years. Using this model, we had problems communicating with the students who graduated from the University and enrolled in the graduate school. The students received new mail addresses based on their new student IDs such as "2AB12789Y". Faculty members were forced to change the student mail addresses in the mailing lists and in their mail client address book. Furthermore, students were forced to notify the e-mail address change to all of their existing contacts. We introduced a new mail system to provide addresses based on the student name, as well as student ID in April 2011. The new naming convention uses the following format: lastname.firstname.999 where 999 is a random number of 3 digits. Students can select some combination patterns of their first and last names for Japanese. We also consider the middle names for foreign students. In the system implementation, we did not have the formal information of alphabetical names for students. We generated alphabetical names from Japanese Katakana names. It is not easy for us to get the appropriate name in this manner. We implemented a confirmation stage of the alphabetical name at first use, and then students can select their mail addresses for their convenience. We paid much attention to the user interface in the system. Since April 2011, the number of users who use the mail address based on their own name has been increasing gradually. This paper will detail the usage status of the new system.