Title Nine Essay Example For Students

Title Nine Essay Throughout generations, humans have played organized games and sports. For that same amount of time, it has been instilled that men are faster, stronger, and just plain better at athletics. We also have come to realize that the slower, weaker, and not as good women make up for physical strength with mental prowess, to succeed on the playing fields and courts of the world. However, this concept has not caught up with athletic directors, coaches, and trustees boards across the country. Women’s athletics is still not given the financial backing, the practice facilities, the correct training personnel, and the support of the general public for building winning programs; on the other hand, losing men’s programs are given any and everything for mediocre results. Title IX was instated 25 years ago, but the results are hard to see, if they can be seen at all. In states like Connecticut, where there are no professional sports teams, state universities are the big ticket in town. The University of Connecticut has two major sports, men’s and women’s basketball. We will write a custom essay on Title Nine specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Winning programs, that include national championships, have everyone in the state talking. They are talking about two successful coaches, two successful teams, and one successful athletic department. According to the UConn Athletic web page, Jim Calhoun, coach of the UConn’s Men’s Basketball team, has a 304-120 (. 717) record and 1 national championship in his 13 years as head coach. Geno Auriemma, coach of the UConn’s Women’s Basketball team, has a record of 393-95 (. 805) and 2 national championships over the past 15 years. One would think that with seniority, a better winning percentage, and more national championships the women’s coach would be paid better. Yeah okay, this is America. Geno Auriemma’s salary was about $ 250,000 for the year, while his male coaching counterpart made $ 875,000. (March 2000 issue of Connecticut Magazine) This practice is actually quite common. Seniority or winning does not earn more money, because it is believed that the men’s game is harder to coach then the women’s game. Umm†¦ am I missing something? A sport is a sport, no matter who is playing it, or so I thought. According to the Detroit Free Press coaches of women’s teams, earn 67 cents to every dollar that a coach of a men’s team earns. These were shown not to be the only discrepancies between men’s and women’s program. The Detroit Free Press analysis shows women’s sports get 25 percent of the athletic budgets, 27 percent of the recruiting dollars and 38 percent of the financial aid. The average Big 12 School spent an average of 2. 2 million dollars on its men’s programs. The average spent on women’s programs was $ 922,097. That’s a difference of about 1. 3 million dollars. These trends continue throughout the country. Athletic Directors are quick to add women’s programs to be compliant with the law, but do little to support them once they are up and running. Women’s programs are then put into an impossible situation; they are not given the resources to bring in the best recruits, the best coaches, or the best equipment. They are then told to win, and if they do not they are in danger of losing their sport. If they happen to win, it is often ignored or forgotten quickly. As we move into the 21st century, we have to wake up as a nation. Equality is not simply giving males and females the same number of athletes or sports, but rather support. This support should be financial, emotional, and physical. All athletes should look up at home games and see the President of the University, the Athletic Director, and alumni at a game. In the perfect world, this would happen but this is the real world. In the real world, most people can’t tell you who won the national championship in women’s basketball, but can tell you every loser in the past 10 Super Bowls.

Bernoulli essays

Bernoulli essays The Bernoullis Principle was a phonomena for all physics. He was considered to me the father of mathematical physics. The principle itslef was named after the Swiss scientist named Daniel Bernoulli during the eighteenth century. Bernoulli studied the many relationships among fluid and pressure. This principle shows the relationship of velocity, pressure, and the height for a steady fluid flow. When a horizontal flow is created, the speed of the fluid is increased while the pressure it creates decreases. The strong example of this is shown through the lift of an airplane in its motion. When the speed of the plane begins to increase, air is flowed faster over the curved top of the wing rather than the bottom part of the wing underneath. When the pressure becomes exerted upwards a net upward force is greated. This is called lift. This is because the pressure that is exerted downward above the wing is not as great of pressure as being exerted upwards. Another example demonstrating this similar method is witnessed in the spoilers of race cars. The spoilers are shaped in the image of an upside down wing . The curved surface it has in the bottom of the wing is what causes and produces the net downward force. In other words, a wing with more curvature on the top surface will have a greater lift than a wing with a flat surface. The similar application for demonstarting this and helping Bernoulli achieve his conclusion is the Venturi Tube. When Bernoulli was studing the flows of fluid as it reached the area in which the the Venturi Tubes pipe diameter was reduced. From this, Bernoulli stated that the velocity of the fluid, flowing through the most narrow diameter is increased while the pressure in that area becomes decreased. The Bernoullis Princliple clearly states that the pressure of a fluid that could be liquid or gas decreases when the speed of the fluid begins to increase. In the fluid, the high speed flow becomes a ...

Advantages of Good Agricultural Practices

Advantages of Good Agricultural Practices SWAGATA SETH Â   Good Agricultural Practices History The U. S in 1998 issued a guidance under which the contamination of fresh fruits and vegetables and how to reduce it was given by Food and Drug Administration was there. (USDA, 2011). In 2002 GAP was established by the agengy which are existed so they donot require any reauthorization. ( National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, 2014) Good agricultural practices have main points of food safety with the points like harvesting, transportation of products and advice the grower to implement the general recommendation of adopted the best management practices( Sudheer & Indria, 2007). Good agricultural practices are the practices which are used for the good economic conditions and also social conditions as well as it encompasses environment al issues for the commercialisation and good market value of horticultural and agricultural products also it tries to give good quality food which is healthier, safer, nutritious to the consum ers( The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia , 2012). Good agricultural practices also includes non-food products as well as processing foods. These practices make the food more safe from consumption point of view(Anonymous, 2008). Farming practices includes a very large scope of good agricultural practices at different at different levels. In these practices sustainable agriculture methods are also included(TNAU, 2015). Rules and regulations for the good agricultural practices includes a huge number of activities which may include from the product which are in the farm at cultivation stage, then it also includes the fields the polyhouses, type of fertilisers, seeds which is used then irrigation facilities, pesticides, composting, then interculture operations and then harvesting and also the process which are done outside the fields, like the processing of the products or the products may go through a long distributing channel which includes the middleman, producer and various agents, retailers upto the consumer that is the consumption point(Watts, 2012). Objectives Good agricultural practices needs to keep a proper record of the production process or the technologies which is required for processing or for harvesting of each crops for the areas which are very much good or important agricultural based and ecological regions, and to collect and then plan and the execute then the final process of distribution the knowledge in that major regions (ANONYMOUS, 2015). Good agricultural practices is required for the following reasons There may be contamination in the products which may be biological like fungi, bacteria, viruses, attack when the products are in the field or they are brought to home, although washing, cleaning and cooking can kill the pathogen but if consumed raw then harm can occur ( Eaton& Watson, 2012 ). Some of the important factors which should be keep in mind for Good agricultural practices. 1. Washing of products :- a)Â   Washing of products are necessary to remove the dust particles, chemicals, soil pathogen, microorganisms with fresh water( Srivastava & Kumar, 2009). b) Clean and fresh water is necessary when tanks are used. Paddle conveyor washers and rotary machines are used for washing(Gupta, 2015). 2. Cleaning: cleaning is a practice where the unwanted materials are removed which may be the green, yellow brown, dead insects soggy parts of fruits or other undesirable items either by hand picking or mechanically( Sharma, 2009).

Assess the impact of Multi- (or Trans-) National Corporations on Essay

Assess the impact of Multi- (or Trans-) National Corporations on international relations. Illustrate your points with examples from the activities of named corp - Essay Example Different markets have welcomes the move taken by such multinational giants but some of them have resisted the affect which has been created by them. Such is the eventual effect by these multinational corporations that many local businesses have winded up in a quick manner, thus putting them out of business in the wake of sheer competitive activity that these multinationals bring with their set agendas. The impact however has been on both sides of the divide – good as well as bad. The results have similarly been lopsided at times, favoring the business regimes in certain cases while bankrupting the parent organization in other instances. The sort of impact these multinational corporations have had on the global relations is something to ponder upon deeply though. This is because it is the international platform which indeed lays the success or failure basis for these multinationals. (Dunning, 2001) The multinational corporations worldwide face a number of challenges when they decide to go global. This is a common problem that they face since they do not have any prior knowledge or understanding of the new territory that they will do their business from. However what best they can do is to find out and research the strengths and weaknesses of this area and hence upon getting the much needed knowledge, base their theories and strategies in a much more effective and efficient manner. This will help one and all to better understand what the new territory, region or country offers the business and the people associated with it. The best thing is that the benefits and disadvantages are determined even before the multinational corporation goes the global way and thus it saves itself from embarrassment which it might face without having proper knowledge and adequate research within it. The significant thing here is to get prepared and be ready for what is to come in the future as

Letter of Intent Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Letter of Intent - Essay Example sode has really defined my career in financial services for last 11 years in various functions including programming, analytics, portfolio management, risk management, and investment advisory where I have always strived to apply my profound academic knowledge. At BNY Mellon Asset Management, I work for Investment Strategy and Solutions group. My role traditionally has been portfolio management, portfolio construction, strategic and tactical asset allocation for multi-asset strategies. Very recently, I had an opportunity to work on an investment research topic on investing in emerging markets. I was the primary contributor to the research as well as the co-author of the subsequent publication on thematic investing in emerging markets. The topic pertains to creating better building blocks for investing. My proven ability for investment research rekindled in me, the desire to reconnect with academia. I therefore, took this unique opportunity provided for executive PhD at EDHEC-Risk Institute to research to solve the gravest problems the investment industry is currently facing in times of financial crisis. This is more important considering that pension plans are underfunded, employees that are more recent are left stranded without proper ret irement solutions, developed countries are debt laden and have aging demographics. Developing countries, on the other hand, have significant human capital, resources and surplus they are looking for answers to tug of war between liquidity and reserve needs and long-term welfare planning, while fulfilling their investment objectives. In my current role as an asset allocation strategist, I have been posed with several institutional investment challenges that have, usually, required a distinct client oriented solution. I recently attended Advances in Asset Allocation conference offered by EDHEC-Risk Institute. I really liked how Dr. Martellini summarized all aspects of latest developments in portfolio construction, strategic and

Organizational Theory and The Heart of Change Essay Example for Free

Organizational Theory and The Heart of Change Essay The book The Heart of Change shows the practical side of the theories that are taught in the course textbook. It presents stories of successes and failures based in the application of concepts discussed in Organizational Behavior and Management and in class. Although we talked about several different concepts the ones that are evident in the examples in The Heart Of Change are the more progressive and individual centered approaches. The leadership characteristics that are important to successful change in an organization are those that are espoused in the transformational theory of management. It makes sense that ideals in line with the transformational management theory would be evident in a book about how to bring about positive change in an organization. Discussion A transformational leader essentially is about growth through change, about challenging the status quo, and staff to grow and perform it is about empowerment and all of those things are important in regards to the approach put forth in The Heart Of Change. A key theme in The Heart Of Change is that change is not brought about by statistical analysis or common sense, but it comes after changing the way that people feel about an issue. It is about connecting with the individual and bringing about an emotive response that motivates a change in behavior. And that is in line with one of the focal traits of a transformational leader. They are visionary leaders who focus who create the mission, focus and goals for the organization. Their approach to leadership is centered around the individual. This is important because for a leader to effectively implement change based The Heart Of Change they would have to be aware of they motivational factors of their employees so they know how do best address the intrinsic needs to change the attitudes of employees. The Heart Of Change shows that change does not happen simply by instituting different systems, but that people are the  force that ultimately determines how well an organization adapts change. That also relates to the leadership style of the transformational leader. They focus on the people as the key elements to bring change to an organization. Group Emotional Intelligence is a topic that we discussed in class that is essential to the type of change discussed in The Heart Of Change. The second stage of change is about putting together a team that is able drive the company towards its specific goal in regards to instituting change. There needs to be a strong force pushing the change and keeping the urgency up. It is understandably to much for on person to handle so there needs to be a team of interested, motivated people to act as that driving force. The three ideas of trust, sense of group identity, and group efficacy are essential to group effectiveness. The group that is at the forefront of the change action in an organization needs to exhibit a high EI. Not only because they need to be efficient, but because they are a model for the rest of the organization. This again relates to the character traits of the transformational leadership theory. Being a role model, showing others behaviors to emulate are what transformational leaders do, and this is what the change guiding group does as described in The Heart Of Change. Empowerment is an issue that is imperative to the change process. We touched on the idea of empowerment while exploring power, and politics in the workplace. Empowerment is important in regards to The Heart Of Change, because it is also about ownership. For change to be effective it takes an entire organization to believe in the change process. Through empowerment of the staff in the change process you are creating a sense of ownership for them in the process of change. Once they feel like they are an important part of the process it creates a sense of pride in their part of the process. In the workplace a sense of pride usually leads to a commitment to excellence in working towards the goals of the organization. Again this is a trait of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders encourage their teams and staff to be innovative, creative and encourage them to take risks. Empowerment is a tool, which is used to elicit the abovementioned traits in the staff, and drives the c hange. Organizational socialization is the way values; abilities, expected behaviors, and social knowledge of a organization are shared. It is based on creating an uniformity in mission, beliefs and actions. Socialization, in regards to the organizational change does not seem that it is an important issue in regards to affecting change in an organization. However, it is an integral part in sustaining any positive gains that have come from organizational change. After any sort of change occurs it must be accompanied with a change in the formal and informal socialization procedures to ensure they reflect the new organizational structure and culture. Effective socialization is imperative to ensure the change is long lasting. Updating Standard Operating Procedures for existing staff, as well as orientation procedures should reinforce the new changes for current staff, and introduce them to the new staff. Changing a system in simple. Sustaining a new culture and behavior in the workplace is difficult. People tend to revert to what is comfortable to them. In organizations that are in the process of implementing change is systems or culture, new people to the organization are the easiest to accept and adapt to the new changes. A new active socialization procedure needs to be adopted to address the veterans in the organization. They are the group that will be more apt to fall into old habits. Communication in the workplace is key to change, and is a theme that is throughout The Heart Of Change. Communication is important throughout several different stages of the change process as described in The Heart Of Change. There is a chapter in The Heart Of Change where they concentrate on communication of the vision and goals to the organization as a whole to motivate the members to buy into the vision. However, communication is very important during the first stage of change. In this stage the message communicated is the catalyst that will inspire the rest of organization to want to change. The communication should be tailored to evoke an emotional response, to motivate staff. The message can be we need to change, but the delivery of the message is has much to do its effectiveness. Also communication is important in the socialization aspect of sustaining  change. Within an organization communication comes in different forms. Procedures and rules are in the employee handbook, emails and memos. The culture of a workplace is transmitted through symbols and actions. The latter of the aforementioned communication is difficult and requires more effort to see that it is carried out in a manner that supports the organizational change. If there is a specific message, and vision that is to resonate with people and motivate them, all the actions of the leaders in the in the organization should reflect the message. Conclusion Change is a difficult process for an individual, but for an organization the difficulty grows exponentially. For an organization to change the actions and culture of everybody within the organization must change as well. There are the logistics involved in changing organizational structure. Then there is the task of changing the behavior of the employees as well. That is where the most obstacles will be found. The Heart Of Change offers a variety of experiences to highlight their theory in regards to the steps of successful change. Rooted in their theory are concepts that were discussed in class. Most of concepts that are evident in the change process theory are progressive and reflect ideas indicative of transformational leadership theory. The Heart Of Change has brought the individual concepts together and shown how they can work together to affect successful change in an organization. Reading The Heart Of Change shows how the powerful and effective the ideas that we learned about are, and how they can benefit us as we take leadership positions in our organizations.

Chocolate Chip Cookie report :: essays research papers

To be, or Not to Be the Best   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Chocolate Chip Cookie  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The delicious smell of chocolate chip cookies is known to everyone across the nation. Americans thrive on deserts and chocolate chip cookies happen to be one of the many favorites. As there are many different types of deserts, there are also many different brands of chocolate chip cookies. Most Americans have their own preferences about which chocolate chip cookie they consider the best. I made it my goal to go out an find the best chocolate chip cookie by surveying people and testing three popular brands of cookies for flavor, chewiness, and appearance.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The three chocolate chip cookie brands tested were Chips Ahoy!, Keebler’s Original Soft Batch, and Cub Foods brand. The three brands were rated on a scale from one to three (three being the best, one the worst) on their flavor, chewiness, and appearance. To score a three on flavor the cookie had to taste delicious and melt in your mouth like ice cream outside on a hot summer day. To score a three on chewiness, it had to be very soft like dough and take a long time to finish. Finally, to rate a three on appearance the cookie had to be very appealing to the taste tester and look delicious to eat. The brand of cookies that scored the highest in each category, I crowned the best chocolate chip cookie in America.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As everyone knows in order to be the best cookie, the cookie has to have amazing flavor. I asked my family members to volunteer and taste test each brand of cookies and rate them on a scale from one to three for their flavor. My family members ate each cookie and checked off which brand they preferred. The results show the brand of cookie with the best flavor was Keebler’s Original Soft Batch. Taste testers enjoyed the rich and smooth chocolate in the cookie. The cookie with the second best flavor was Chips Ahoy! brand cookies. Taste testers liked this cookies similarity to cookie dough, but did not enjoy the flavor as much as Keebler’s Original Soft Batch. The cookie with the worst flavor was the Cub Foods brand cookies because their taste was fake and stale. After looking at these results I found Americans prefer the flavor of Keebler’s Original Soft Batch cookies to have the best taste.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Another key ingredient in the best cookie has to be the chewiness.

Education Sector Essay

The typical Indian classroom was once characterized by students sitting through hour-long teacher monologues. Now, technology is making life easier for both students and educators. Schools are increasingly adopting digital teaching solutions to engage with a generation of pupils well-versed with the likes of PlayStations and iPads, and trying to make the classroom environment more inclusive and participatory. Take Smartclass from Educomp Solutions, one of the first Indian companies in this space. Smartclass is essentially a digital content library of curriculum-mapped, multimedia-rich, 3D content. It also enables teachers to quickly assess how much of a particular lesson students have been able to assimilate during the class. Once a topic is covered, the teacher gives the class a set of questions on a large screen. Each student then answers via a personal answering device or the smart assessment system. The teacher gets the scores right away and based on that, she repeats parts of the lesson that the students don’t appear to have grasped. â€Å"Technology makes the teaching-learning process very easy and interesting,† says Harish Arora, a chemistry teacher at the Bal Bharti Public School in New Delhi who has been using Smartclass since 2004. â€Å"For instance, [earlier] it would easily take me one full lecture to just draw an electromagnetic cell on the blackboard. Though I could explain the cell structure, there was no way I could have managed to show them how it really functions. This is where technology comes to our aid — now I can show the students a 3D model of the cell and how it functions. Instead of wasting precious time drawing the diagram on the blackboard, I can invest it in building the conceptual clarity of my students. † According to Abhinav Dhar, director for K-12 at Educomp Solutions, more than 12,000 schools across 560 districts in India have adopted Smartclass. More importantly, the number is growing at almost 20 schools a day. On average, in each of these schools eight classrooms are using Smartclass. â€Å"When we launched Smartclass in 2004 as the first-ever digital classroom program, it was an uphill task convincing schools to adopt it,† Dhar notes. â€Å"These schools had not witnessed any change in a century†¦. It is a completely different scenario now. Private schools across India today see [technology] as an imperative. A digital classroom is set to become the bare-minimum teaching accessory in schools, just like a blackboard is today. † Dhar recalls that one major roadblock for Educomp’s proposition in the early days was on the price front. At US$4,000 (at the exchange rate of Rs. 50 to a U. S. dollar) per classroom, schools found the product very expensive. To get over this hurdle, Educomp quickly decided to make the initial investment and gave the schools an option to pay over a period of three to five years. The strategy worked. Enthused by the market response, in January Educomp launched an upgraded version — the Smartclass Class Transformation System — with more features, including simulations, mind maps, worksheets, web links, a diagram maker, graphic organizers and assessment tools. Huge Potential According to the â€Å"Indian Education Sector Outlook — Insights on Schooling Segment,† a report released by New Delhi–based research and consultancy firm Technopak Advisors in May, the total number of schools in India stands at 1. 3 million. Of these, private schools account for 20%. Educomp’s Dhar points out that only around 10% of the private schools have tapped the potential of multimedia classroom teaching whereas in government schools, it has barely made any inroads. â€Å"The current market size for digitized school products in private schools is around US$500 million,† says Enayet Kabir, associate director for education at Technopak. â€Å"This is expected to grow at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 20% to reach the over US$2 billion mark by 2020. However, the market potential then might get as big as US$4 billion [i. e.if the total population of private schools that could adopt multimedia actually adopt it. ] Apart from this, the current market size for ICT [information and communications technology] in government schools is US$750 million. We expect this to grow five times by 2020 due to the current low level of penetration in government schools. † Kabir lists Educomp Solutions, Everonn Education, NIIT, Core Education & Technologies, IL&FS and Compucom as dominant players in this sector. New entrants include HCL Infosystems, Learn Next, Tata Interactive Systems, Mexus Education, S.Chand Harcourt (India) and iDiscoveri Education. Except for S. Chand Harcourt, which is a joint venture between S. Chand and US-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, all the others are Indian firms. A recent trend is that schools in tier two and tier three cities are increasingly adopting the latest technology. Rajesh Shethia, head of sales and marketing at Tata Interactive Systems, which launched Tata ClassEdge in early 2011 and has partnered up with more than 900 schools, says that â€Å"more than half of the demand for digital classrooms is from tier two and tier three cities. † According to Shethia, schools in these smaller cities realize that it is difficult for their students to get as much exposure as students from tier one cities. â€Å"[So] they proactively subscribe to solutions such as ours, which richly benefit both teachers and students by simplifying the syllabus†¦. Even parents want the best for their wards and are not averse to paying a little extra. They see value in these initiatives by schools to modernize the way teaching is imparted today. † Making some back-of-the-envelope calculations Shethia adds: â€Å"If we consider the top 100,000 private schools in India as the captive market, the potential is approximately two million classrooms of which currently just about 80,000 have been digitized. † Srikanth B. Iyer, COO of Pearson Education Services, also sees tremendous potential in the smaller cities. Pearson provides end-to-end education solutions in the K-12 segment. Its multimedia tool, DigitALly, has been adopted in more than 3,000 private schools across India since 2004. â€Å"DigitALly installations have been growing at three times the market for the past two years,† Iyer says. â€Å"Currently, more than 60% of our customers are from tier two and tier three towns, such as Barpeta (in the state of Assam), Sohagpur (in Madhya Pradesh) and Balia (in Uttar Pradesh). † In order to make its offering attractive to the schools, Pearson has devised a monthly payment model under which a school pays around US$2 per student per month. â€Å"As the price point is affordable, schools across all locations and fee structures find it viable to opt for our solution,† Iyer notes. â€Å"We focus on tier two and tier three towns and cities where penetration is relatively low and desire for adoption of technology is high. † HCL’s Digischool program, which launched about 18 months ago, has also made a strong beginning, with a client base of more than 2,500 schools. Partnering with State Governments Meanwhile, state governments are also giving a boost to the adoption of technology in schools. Edureach, a divison of Educomp, has partnered with 16 state governments and more than 30 education departments and boards in the country, covering over 36,000 government schools and reaching out to more than 10. 60 million students. â€Å"Edureach leads the market with 27% of the total schools where ICT projects have been implemented,† says Soumya Kanti, president of Edureach. â€Å"We are looking [to add] 3,000 more schools this fiscal year and 20,000 to 25,000 additional schools in the next five years. † As of now, Edureach has created digital learning content in more than 14 regional languages for these projects. In the northern state of Haryana, CORE Education and Technologies is implementing a US$59 million ICT project that aims to benefit 5 million students across 2,622 schools. Five of these schools will be developed as â€Å"Smart† schools. CORE is also implementing ICT projects in the states of Gujarat, Meghalaya, Punjab, Maharashtra and Nagaland. The scope of work in these projects ranges from implementation of computer-aided learning in schools, installing bio-metric devices to monitor attendance of teachers, and setting up computer hardware, software and other allied accessories and equipments. â€Å"The task has not been an easy one,† admits Anshul Sonak, president of CORE. â€Å"There are several logistical issues. Delivery of equipment to rural areas is a big challenge in itself†¦. There is lack of basic infrastructure — either there are no classrooms or there are ones with no windows†¦. Some schools don’t even have toilets. Moreover, the power availability in these areas is often poor and we have had to deploy generator sets in many schools. † But despite the challenges, educationists are optimistic. Rahul De, professor of quantitative methods and information systems area at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIM-B) believes that â€Å"ICT can have a huge impact on our education system. † He points out that ICT can result in increasing the reach [of education] and in keeping the costs low. â€Å"With increasing penetration of mobile phones and Internet kiosks, the potential is indeed immense,† he adds. A study conducted by De in 2009 on the economic impact of free and open source software (FOSS) in India found that it resulted in significant cost savings. â€Å"FOSS can play a huge role in education,† De notes. â€Å"In the state of Kerala, it has already had a huge impact in both saving costs and providing state-of-the-art access computing to students in government schools. FOSS has a huge number of packages for school students, many of which can be ported to local languages and used in schools. It is also helping disabled students in a big way, by enabling them to access digital resources using audio-visual aids. † Edureach’s Kanti adds that a study by the Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Development Research in Dharwad in Karnataka in 2006 revealed significant improvement in student enrolment and attendance, as well as a reduction of student dropouts due to ICT interventions. â€Å"Yet another study conducted by the Xavier Institute of Management in Bhubaneswar in 2007 revealed that computer-aided education has improved the performance of children in subjects such as English, mathematics and science, which are taught through computers using multimedia-based educational content. † All in a Tab In line with this increasing interest in technology for school education, there has been a rush of education-focused tablet computers in the market. The most high-profile of these has been Aakash, which was launched by Kapil Sibal, union minister for human resource development, in October 2011. The Aakash project is part of the ministry’s National Mission on Education through Information & Communication Technology (NME-ICT). It aims to eliminate digital illiteracy by distributing the Aakash tablets to students across India at subsidized rates. While the project itself has become mired in delays and controversy, it has generated a lot of awareness and interest among students around the educational tablet. Meanwhile, DataWind, the Canada-based firm that partnered with the union government for the Aakash project, has also launched UbiSlate7, the commercial version of Aakash. â€Å"The opportunity for low-cost tablets in India is huge. In the next two years, it will exceed the size of the computer market in India i. e. 10 million units per year,† says Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO of DataWind. In April, technology firm HCL Infosystems launched the MyEdu Tab, which is priced at around US$230 for the K-12 version. The device comes preloaded with educational applications and also books from the National Council of Educational Research and Training, a government organization. Anand Ekambaram, senior vice-president and head of learning at HCL Infosystems, is in the process of partnering with more than 30 educational institutes across India for MyEdu Tab. â€Å"MyEdu Tab has content offline and can be accessed over the cloud. It allows students to learn at their own pace,† Ekambaram notes. â€Å"With a topic revision application and a self-assessment engine, students can evaluate their skills and knowledge on their own. Teachers can upload content, which can be accessed by students and parents for tasks such as homework and progress reports on their respective devices. The parent can monitor the progress of his or her child through the cloud-based ecosystem. † Earlier this year, Micromax, a leading Indian handset manufacturer, also launched an edutainment device called Funbook. Micromax has also partnered with Pearson and Everonn to make available relevant content for students. Susha John, director and CEO at Everonn, was upbeat at the launch. â€Å"Digital learning facilitated through tablets will revolutionize the educational space,† John said. â€Å"Everonn has invested in developing content and services targeted toward tablet audiences. To start with, we will offer our school curriculum-learning modules †¦ and at home live tuition products on the Funbook. Students can now have access to good teachers, educational content and a great learning experience anytime, anywhere. † At Pearson, Max Gabriel, senior vice-president and chief technology officer, is â€Å"focusing on K-12 content in English to begin with. We are sitting on a huge repository of existing content. Adding the right level of interactivity and richer experience will be our priority. † Meanwhile, Educomp is gearing up to launch content that is device agnostic and can be run on any tablet. But even as schools in India are going through this transformation powered by technology, one key question is how big a role technology will play in the education sector. In an earlier interview with India Knowledge@Wharton, S. Sadagopan, founder-director at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore, pointed out that there are four parts to learning — lectures, library, laboratory and life — noting that, â€Å"Technology plays a critical role in all these. † Kabir of Technopak adds another perspective. â€Å"Despite numerous studies on the impact of ICT in education, the outcomes remain difficult to measure and open to much debate. It needs to be understood that technology is only an enabler and a force multiplier and cannot be treated as a panacea. We believe that impressive gains in teaching-learning outcomes are possible only through an integrated approach rather than a piecemeal intervention. † Don Huesman, managing director of Wharton’s innovation group, recommends caution in considering potential investments in educational technologies. â€Å"These are very exciting times for online and distance education technologies, but there are risks facing parents, educators and policy makers in evaluating the opportunities these new technologies, and their proponents, represent. † Huesman points to the recent growth in high-quality, free, online educational courseware offered on websites like the Khan Academy and the Math Forum, as well as the work of the Open Learning Initiative in developing intelligent cognitive tutors and learning analytics. â€Å"But such technologies, available from a global network of resources, only provide value when understood, chosen and integrated into a local educational community,† he says. As an illustration, Huesman offers the example of cyber kiosks, provided in recent years by foundations at no cost to rural communities in India, exacerbating the â€Å"gender divide† in many traditional communities in which young women congregating at public cyber cafes, also frequented by young men, would be considered taboo. â€Å"Interventions by governments and NGOs must be inclusive of local community concerns and aware of local political complications,† Huesman notes. Globalization: Impact on Education by Satish Tandon, September 2005 The principal objective of education has been the development of the whole individual. The minimum level of education that was necessary to achieve this goal in the agrarian society was basic or primary and in the industrial age, secondary. In the present borderless information society, education needs to be able to respond to additional demands of a rapidly globalizing world by raising awareness of environment, peace, cultural and social diversity, increased competitiveness, and the concept of a global village. Such education is to a knowledge or information society what secondary education was to an industrial economy. Education prepares the individual to connect – and live in harmony – with the environment around him. Globalization has changed the size, nature and quality of that environment. The challenge for higher education, therefore, is to reform, create and develop systems that prepare the individual to work in a borderless economy and live in a global society. In other words, our educational institutions need to produce global citizens. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 allowed liberal democracies to claim victory for the capitalist system and contributed to increasing the pace of globalization that was already under way. As globalization gained momentum, market substituted political ideology as the dominant force guiding national and global policies. What followed next, therefore, does not seem so illogical. National governments everywhere – partly in deference to the ascendancy of the market and partly in response to pressure from the private sector to expand their sphere of activities – began to relinquish control over the delivery of social goods. Everything began to be viewed as a commodity that could be produced and delivered by the private sector in line with market forces and according to the principles of supply and demand. One by one – water, electricity, postal services, health, and now education, have been turned into a commodity. The withdrawal of state from higher education has also been helped by economists, who have had an overly simple way of assessing the return on investments in higher education. The basic problem is that they have measured the return on education exclusively through wage differentials. With reference to someone who has no education, someone who has been to primary school, someone who has completed secondary school, and someone with a university degree, one can ask how much more each earns than the previous. These differences are then compared to the incremental amounts invested in their education to find the return. The results generally suggest that higher education yields a lower return than primary or secondary education – and they have been used to justify the skewing of government budgets and development funds away from higher education institutions. The rate of return calculations are flawed because they do not take account of the full range of benefits to those who receive higher education. For example, higher education can enhance health, openness, peace, and social development, and at the same time reduce disease, bigotry and blind nationalism – so the private benefits to the individual and to society are not just the direct labour productivity benefits, as the rate of return analysis suggests. Higher education confers benefits above and beyond enhancing the incomes of those who receive it. And many of these benefits take the form of public goods, such as the contribution of higher education to enterprise, leadership, governance, culture, and participatory democracy, and its potential for lifting the disadvantaged out of poverty. These are all vital building blocks for stronger economies and societies and all routes by which the benefit of investment in higher education multiplies throughout society. Liberal democracies have traditionally operated on the principle of separation of activities in the social sphere just as they have on the principle of separation of powers in the political sphere. The private sector had been given a relatively free hand in the production and delivery of economic goods while the state concentrated on the provision of healthcare, education and other infrastructure goods, also known as public goods. Globalization has changed all that. The rapid expansion of the influence of the private sector at the global level necessitated a corresponding expansion in their sphere of activities by diversifying into the production and delivery of public goods that had always been within the purview of the state. The takeover was swift and remarkable in the sense that the effort did not meet much resistance. One of the major consequences of the globalization of education has been commodification and the corporatization of institutions of higher learning. It is said that the for-profit education market in the United States is worth more than $500 billion in revenue for the involved corporates. More than one thousand state schools have been handed over to corporations to be run as businesses. But there is a fundamental problem with the way business models have been applied to the delivery of education and other public goods. Unthinking adoption of the private sector model prevents the development of a meaningful approach to management in the public services in general or to the social services in particular based on their distinctive purposes, conditions and objectives. There is another, more serious, problem with corporatization of education. Corporations operate on the principles of cost reduction and profit maximization. These require introducing standardization and the packaging of product in compact, measurable, byte-like, configuration. Applied to education, these approaches would possibly negate its basic fabric and purpose. Education has always encouraged and represents openness, inquiry, diversity, research and limitless learning. Corporatization of education would make it elitist – the one provided by corporations for the masses and the poor who cannot afford going to the traditional institutions of learning, and the other for the rich and the affluent. The delivery of public goods and services is and should remain the primary responsibility of the state. Representative government may not be the ideal or perfect arrangement for governance but it represents the best that is available, and certainly more desirable than the private sector management of public services such as education. If the state relinquishes its control over education and education policy, we run the risk of diminishing it to the status of a packaged for-profit product which it is not. Openness, diversity, scholarship, research and disinterested learning will be its biggest victims.

Black Working Poor vs. Black Middle Class

The article examines the relationships between the black working poor and the black middle class. The black middle class is defined as being fragmented, comprised of an array of incomes, professions, and educational levels. The article also states that black middle class experiences economic shifts that move back and forth between blue-collar and white-collar income levels and occupations. (Shawn A. Ginwright 2002) The black middle class experienced dramatic growth in the post civil-rights era.This growth raised questions about how social and cultural capital among the black middle class has helped the conditions of the black working poor. The author demonstrates through materialist and culturalist frames of the community how black middle class members of a small organization frame community failed to address the needs of the working poor. Materialist frames are rooted in day-to-day material conditions. They are informed by the lived reality of low wages, high rents, and or poor qual ity schools and focus on immediate change of concrete conditions. (Shawn A.Ginwright 2002) Culturalist frames challenge ideas and values, rather than power and people. Through a shared set of ideas and values, culturalist frames focus on symbolic meaning and abstract theories of the social world and attempt to change social meaning and personal identity. They promote specialized ideas about community and social issues and encourage expert-based social change through highly skilled, educated professionals. (Shawn A. Ginwright 2002) His argument is that the middle class use their skills, and other forms of human capitol to define community issues, while overlooking the interests of the working poor.Then Ginwright used a case study to affirm his theory. The case study was of a middle class community’s use Afrocentric ideology to ameliorate a working class neighborhood high school; the middle class misdiagnosed an obvious problem through culturalist framing resulting in no signif icant improvement in the high school. Afrocentric ideology is a modern concept in response to racist and attitudes about black people. It is a black inspired ideology that affirms blacks in a white dominated society.In the efforts to improve McClymonds High School in Oakland California a group of community advocates, The Black Front For Educational Reform (BUFFER), started coalition with working class parents and concerned citizens to transform the high school. Then BUFFER grew in size from roughly 30 local community individuals to 125 individuals from professors to attorneys. With the original BUFFERS the plan was simple, improve specific issues related to the day-to-day experiences of students, what the school lacked, but also what students at the school needed to survive.First, although many of its members shared the same ideology about the need to improve the conditions for black students at McClymonds High School, there was conflict about which strategy would best serve the nee ds of the students. (Shawn A. Ginwright 2002) The original working class members of BUFFER wanted to address the material issues such as textbook, facility structure, college prep courses, etc†¦ The new BUFFERS convinced that the problem was from lack of positive ethnic identity and racial pride. They wanted to address educational inequality by implementing an Afrocentric curriculum. This gave the idea of self-esteem issues.The Afrocentric curriculum did get approved and was implemented in the curriculum. For many students the new subject was not understood and Afrocentrism did not have any relevance to their day to day life experiences. The emphasis they placed on Afrocentric education diverted valuable resources to what could have been an effort to redress the pervasive inequality at the High. (Shawn A. Ginwright 2002) In reading the article it disclosed a serious gap in understanding of society needs between the middle class and the working poor class. Since the article was based on one case study, the results were skewed in favor of the author’s theory.The reading does not provide the benefits obtained by the high school from incorporating an Afrocentric curriculum or another case study that shows similar results. The author made an argument and used only one case study to verify his theory. The reading did provide some insight into the relationship between the two but it only provides inferred reasoning as to why there is a difference between the two. With two different social classes within the same organization, communication was really the necessity that was lacking to have a better outcome in the transformation of the high school. I would definitely recommend this read to a classmate

Free Essays on Death Valley

Death Valley By: Kandis Jessee I am doing my presentation on Death Valley. It is located in California and it’s the driest, hottest place on earth. Death Valley was established in February 11th of 1933. In my presentation I will be covering four main points: Basic Information, The Surrounding Mountains, The Geology of Death Valley, and Interesting Facts. Death Valley is the lowest point on the western coast of the United States. It is two-hundred and eighty-two feet below sea level. There are nine mountain ranges that surround Death Valley. With 3.4 million acres of the park it is labeled as the biggest national park in the United States. The temperatures in Death Valley are excruciating. In the summer months, which range from May until October, the temperature gets up in the hundreds. In 1913 the highest temperature was recorded at an all time high of 134 degrees. Normal ground temperature in Death Valley is 201 degrees. In the winter and most nights the temperature can drop to almost zero degrees. The name Death Valley really doesn’t give the valley any justice because there are over a thousand plants that grow there. There are nine surrounding valleys and mountain ranges around Death Valley. Two of these are the Black Mountains and the Funeral Mountains which lie east of Death Valley. Amargosa Valley is one of Death Valley’s neighboring valley’s which lie’s near also. There is a lot of geology history with Death Valley. Death Valley was created mostly by powerful forces from water, wind and gravity. Also the heat and pressures from the earth have formed it, too. Tilting, faulting and erosion have a big part in the earths surface in Death Valley, too. Even today Death Valley is still being formed by earthquakes, and the earth is constantly eroding to form new basins and ranges in Death Valley. Here are a few references that I found on the internet: www.death-valley.us, http://earthview.sdsu.edu,... Free Essays on Death Valley Free Essays on Death Valley Death Valley By: Kandis Jessee I am doing my presentation on Death Valley. It is located in California and it’s the driest, hottest place on earth. Death Valley was established in February 11th of 1933. In my presentation I will be covering four main points: Basic Information, The Surrounding Mountains, The Geology of Death Valley, and Interesting Facts. Death Valley is the lowest point on the western coast of the United States. It is two-hundred and eighty-two feet below sea level. There are nine mountain ranges that surround Death Valley. With 3.4 million acres of the park it is labeled as the biggest national park in the United States. The temperatures in Death Valley are excruciating. In the summer months, which range from May until October, the temperature gets up in the hundreds. In 1913 the highest temperature was recorded at an all time high of 134 degrees. Normal ground temperature in Death Valley is 201 degrees. In the winter and most nights the temperature can drop to almost zero degrees. The name Death Valley really doesn’t give the valley any justice because there are over a thousand plants that grow there. There are nine surrounding valleys and mountain ranges around Death Valley. Two of these are the Black Mountains and the Funeral Mountains which lie east of Death Valley. Amargosa Valley is one of Death Valley’s neighboring valley’s which lie’s near also. There is a lot of geology history with Death Valley. Death Valley was created mostly by powerful forces from water, wind and gravity. Also the heat and pressures from the earth have formed it, too. Tilting, faulting and erosion have a big part in the earths surface in Death Valley, too. Even today Death Valley is still being formed by earthquakes, and the earth is constantly eroding to form new basins and ranges in Death Valley. Here are a few references that I found on the internet: www.death-valley.us, http://earthview.sdsu.edu,...

Ludwig von Bertalanffy Systems Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Ludwig von Bertalanffy Systems Theory - Essay Example "It is frequently noticed that general aspects, view points as well as isomorphic laws exists in different fields, irrespective of the nature of entities involved. Thus, there appears to exist a general system law. Conventional physics define itself only as a closed system, i.e. systems which exist as isolated from their environment. But, systems by their nature and definition are not closed one, but an open one. Every living being is an open system and it maintains its life in a continuous inflow and outflow, a building up and breaking down. Only in recent years, to include open system into physics has been considered. Open system theory was advocated by this theory. Modern theory of communication is another development of the system theory. The main idea behind communication theory is information and in many cases the flow of information can be elicited by the reaction. Another way of measuring information is in terms of decisions. The second concept of theory of communication is that of feedback. Diffusion is the process which communicates innovation to members of social system through certain channels. Otherwise, diffusion of innovation studies how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology are spread through cultures. Everett M. Rogers theorized in his book, Diffusion of Innovation, 1962 that innovations would spread through society in an S curve. Roger was of opinion that people's attitude towards a new technology, idea, product, or practice will be accepted by society members. "Given that decisions are not authoritative or collective, each member of the social system faces his/her own innovation-decision that follows a 5-step process - Knowledge, Persuasion, Decision, Implementation and Confirmation." (Orr G., 18 Mar 2003) The innovation-decision theory is based on a cost-benefit analysis. An individual's innovation-decision is largely depended on their personal characteristics. Diffusion scholars divided system member innovativeness into five divisions based on how early they adopt new changes than other members. They are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. The innovators are easily excited by the possible benefits and their opinion regarding new idea helps the potential adopters. Here, the well informed leader communicates their acceptance or non acceptance based on their experiences to the rest of the society members. Mass media seems to be a powerful tool to have a direct and immediate effect on the mass audience. But, according to diffusion theory, since the opinion leaders are the direct encouraging agents of an innovation, a powerful way for changing the agents to affect the diffusion of an innovation is to affect

Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Policy - Essay Example Hence, the department has decided to come up with a program whose main aim is to educate members of the public on the importance of food safety. This program fits in the mission of my department in a number of ways. The main goal of my department is to protect all consumers who purchase fresh of processed farm produce in various outlets in the country. Hence, providing them with all relevant information on what they are supposed to do or check while making their purchases is very important. Furthermore, my department ensures that all products in the market are inspected and labeled before being offered for sale (Lancet 1). In relation to this, food borne illnesses cases have greatly increased in this 21st century (Food Drug and Administration 1). Therefore, my department has come up with various policies that aim at combating this threat. Firstly, it is the role of the agriculture department to ensure that consumers of both fresh and processed farm produce are protected. This is the reason why my department ensures that all products are inspected and labeled. Secondly, the department is also supposed to play the role of educating all consumers on the importance of food safety in their households. From a recent study, most households are affected by food borne illness. Most of them are not ignorant, but they lack they required information on what they are supposed to do or check when making their purchases. Hence, creating awareness on this issue will help to combat this threat. This new program aims at creating awareness in all states on issues related to food safety. The department plays it role by ensuring that all products offered for sale are inspected and labeled properly. However, most consumers lack information on issues that come up with issues of food poisoning. Therefore, my department wants to enhance public education as well as outreach