Friday 21 February 2014

Smart Education Curriculum: Bringing the Extra-educational Means through which technology trends into the Classroom.


Smart Education in South Korea. Image credit to Advance Technology Korea
I can't remember who I was discussing with some time ago but one thing I got from the conversation was this in my own paraphrase: people born in this technology age cannot do without or (get to the very highest level in harnessing their full potentials) without technology, be it in their jobs, startup companies and, which is the focus if this piece, education.

Many developed and developing countries' governments and private corporations are making efforts in bringing technology into the school setting-by providing tablet computers stuffed with books and 3-D interactive materials for the primary and secondary school students; the higher institutions are not left out of this. And this has greatly helped the students to develop their potentials in their school works and projects.

While these successes are being recorded, I still believe there are much more rooms for great improvements. Yes tablet computers with all the materials have been provided (they are helping because we use our PCs and ipads to play games, watch movies and listen to music; and hence there is a very high tendency we'll always study and work on our school projects using them). However, having incorporated the tools of technology into our education (though here in Nigeria we still have a long way to go), we're neglecting the means through which technology is permeating its way into the favorites and choices of the everyday life of young people (the main segment of the society fully immersed in the educational institution).

But before I hit my target, I give an illustration. Here in Nigeria last year the universities' lecturers embarked on a 6-month long strike demanding as the major priority improved funding of the nation's universities which are owned by the government. After so many negotiations, the lecturers' body and the federal government of Nigeria signed an agreement in which the government endorsed to pump in #220 billion ($1.3 billion) annually for the next 5 years into the universities for massive infrastructural development and other upgradings. While I hailed this achievement, I discovered another problem (wahala in the Nigerian pidgin English): the hardware (the infrastructure of our universities) of the problem is being addressed, but nobody is talking about the software (the lecturers-I mean the way these lectures deliver their lectures to students).

In most Nigerian tertiary institutions, some lecturers, I'm sorry to say, are luddites (ludite from Ned Lud one of the workers who led a protest against the industrial revolution in factories in the early 19th century when machines were taking over the works done manually by workers) and old fashioned in even the knowledge base of their specialty: imagine a lecturer detesting the use of electronic boards and projectors in teaching students; students using their phones and tablet computers to read, reminding them that in their own days they carried their big books to the libraries and read them from cover to cover. Another set of lecturers would teach students with notes they made in the 1980s and 90s and expect them to give them back in exam exactly what they taught them: if any student dared including new stuffs and updates as regards the particular course such a student might fail the course. And so this is the wahala I saw after the strike issue. 
Smart Education: personalizing teaching to student needs. Image credit to Smarttech
The world is changing and the knowledge database of each discipline is expanding at an incredibly exponential rate because of the rapid advances in science and technology. And for the disciples of each of these areas of knowledge to keep up, the tools of technology and the various means through which these tools are used (especially in the extra-school setting) are indispensable and must be incorporated into the academic learning setting.

Efforts are already being made in this direction (educational games and so on). Another strong extra-school means through which tech tools are voraciously being used is the social media-Facebook, Twitter and so on. This can be incorporated into the educational curriculum (but how many teachers and lecturers will agree to this at least in my country, Nigeria?.....That's the problem). However, some teachers, not in Nigeria unfortunately, are already experimenting this idea. According to a report on the New York Times, some high school teachers in Iowa, US are already experimenting with incorporating social media into classroom teaching and discussion in which students use Twitter to contribute to discussions on various topics in class, and some of them have recorded increased participation of their students in such discussions because social media (in this case Twitter) which appeals to them has been infused into what otherwise was a boring topic to them. The report also highlights some universities which have developed their own on-campus social media forums for academic discussions.

Though there are many critics of this approach, and it is understandable as there are tendencies of distraction, but it is still being experimented on and can be improved on. One such way is to configure such forums to monitor and indicate when a student has strayed off the subject of discussion ONLY DURING THE CLASSROOM DISCUSSION; it will possibly get better with time. And other social media like Facebook can be incorporated by schools and universities; and universities can develop their own online discussion forums linked to Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks to be used as part of some classroom teaching and discussion.

I hope universities here in Nigeria can embrace this modality as one of its teaching methods. There are signs they will with time; one sign, though it is still at the student level, is the social education network Acada360 co-founded by Mr. Godswill Oyor, a Law graduate of my school, the University of Ibadan. Acada360, I will say is still evolving, is where students in Nigerian universities can upload their notes taken by them in class and get rewards when other students download them. I got to know about this site today on Instagram. Social media technology has come to stay and rapidly advance and our school curriculum must capitalize on its positive prospects.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

The Greatest Labs of our Time


The Large Hadron Collider at CERN Lab. Image credit to The Telegraph

When we hear of great scientific and technological inventions and discoveries, do we actually take a moment to imagine the centres that served as the factory, the machine house for these ingenious, world-changing productions: works that weave their webs of applications into so many areas that have been vital to our continued smart adaptation to this our world (I mean the ability to bend the course of the process of natural selection to our desired trajectory)? These are great halls that house great men and women during their days of tireless labour and sleepless nights of waiting for Eureka moments.

It just occurred to me that these bedrocks of history making deserve some recognition (because most people are fairly or not even aware of them); and though there are so many, I have selected one for now because of the magnitude of its structure, the large number of science and tech experts  working in it and the unprecedented level of collaboration it has (in terms of funding, rapport with universities and other research centres, and political commitment), and of course the quality of basic and applied research works it has churned out and it's still producing.

And I'm talking about the largest particle Physics lab on the planet-the CERN Laboratory. Founded officially in 1954 (with origin dating back to 1949) after what was known as the CERN convention by 12 European countries under the auspices of the European Organisation Nuclear Research, the Lab is located at the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva. Its name CERN is derived from the acronym Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire or European Council for Nuclear Research, and it is sometimes referred to as the European Laboratory of Particle Physics.

In terms of collaboration, CERN Lab is run by 21 member European countries and observed by some non member countries from around the world, who all contribute to the funding of the lab's programmes; over 600 universities and institutes around the world use the lab's facilities; and about 10,000 scientists from over 113 countries come to CERN Lab for reseach.

CERN Lab currently employs about 2400 people. The lab majorly specializes in particle physics and has built some of the world's largest particle accelerators and detectors (gigantic machines used to accelerate subatomic particles like protons to near the speed of light and detect resultant particles from such collision).
ATLAS Particle Detector of the LHC. Image credit to CERN Lab

This great research lab has given birth to so many exceptional pieces of research. In 1989, the British scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (www.) which on 30th April, 1993 was released to the public for free; and we all can agree how the web, free, has revolutionized every area of our human endeavour.

Though still in the experimental stages, physicists, biologists, doctors and other multidisciplinary experts are working at the CERN Lab to detail the biological effects of antiproton (a subatomic particle with all the properties of a proton but with opposite charge
Antiproton Cell Experiment. Image credit to CERN Lab
and magnetic field direction, and so when it collides with a proton, they both destroy each other, releasing only a burst of energy) in the hope of using it in cancer therapy. What I see here is the prospect of reducing damage to healthy cells due to the scattering of protons when it collides with the nuclei of atoms of cells in the current cancer radiotherapy; the potential of antiprotons colliding with cancer cells and being destroyed together with the nuclei of atoms of these cells, releasing only bursts of energy and no other particle which can damage nearby healthy cells is a great insight being brewed inside the CERN Lab.


And last year, Professor Peter Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics  with Professor Francois Englert for their over 50-year-old theoretical physics research on the Higgs Boson particle (the particle that gives all matter their mass). This Nobel Prize was awarded to them because of the confirmation of this particle's existence after 50 years it was proposed; and this confirmation was done at the CERN Laboratory. The Lab's particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, spanning 27 km in length), worth $10 billion through its two detectors named ATLAS and CMS detected the particle; over 4000 scientists worked tirelessly to make this possible. I'm not a physicist but the existence of this particle and its confirmation holds untold potential for mankind which may not be in sight now: when protons were first discovered, nobody thought they would find applications in medicine, agriculture and so on. So, time will tell how great the real-world impact of this great fundamental scientific discovery will be.


Wednesday 12 February 2014

5% of Hypertension Cases can be Prevented


Checking Blood Pressure. Image credit to Shogo Green
We discussed hypertension in one of our tutorials in Internal Medicine II clinical posting this week, probably on Monday, and this was where I first brought up the news--even the resident doctor taking us was a bit surprised not because a medical student said something he has not heard before, but because of the very complex nature of hypertension in terms of its management based on multiple published studies he must have read about.

Back to the tutorial discussion. We discussed the various guidelines for the the definition and classification of hypertension; the various proposed mechanisms underlying its occurrence, and the documented fact that as much as between 90 and 95% of all hypertension cases have not been found (with current research--I say so because I believe with further sophistication in technologies geared towards scientific research in this area and much deeper foresight and insight coming to researchers, we may just begin to get fortunate) to have a specific known cause: that is one single definable underlying structural and functional error. This means that most people diagnosed with hypertension (consistent blood pressure at or greater than 140/90mmHg measured at two or more separate occasions, preferably weeks apart) will be on lifestyle modification and antihypertensive drug treatment probably for the rest of their lives. That's so unfortunate.

Hypertension. Image credit to Medicine Net
But I think some people, let me say some families with an established history of hypertension could actually prevent their kids from having this clinical condition in later life; however, it is if such a family is lucky to fall within the small percentage under the 90-95% class of hypertension of unknown cause that research is bringing a ray of hope to.

In a research published on 4th August 2013 in the journal Nature Genetics and headed by clinical pharmacologists from University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke's Hospital, it is shown that 5% of hypertension cases can prevented. Scientists from laboratories in four European countries collaborated in the study in which the Cambridge University team developed a newer and more powerful PET-CT scan (Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography--they use radiations like x-rays and positron, a subatomic particle to produce functional images of the body's internal structures) that was used to image the adrenal glands (two small structures on top of the kidney which produce adrenalin, cortisol and aldosterone--aldosterone is involved in blood pressure regulation) for benign tumours. These benign adrenal tumours were found to have mutations--which the researchers sequenced using the latest gene sequencing technology--that cause hypertension through a direct mechanism also revealed by the study. The researchers predict that this benign tumour is the likely cause of hypertension for 1 in 20 patients with hypertension, and they affirm that this group of people if diagnosed with this benign adrenal tumour at a young age can have them removed, hence averting the development of hypertension in these people later in life.

I guess we are already beginning to get fortunate.