Bussiness message Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Bussiness message - Essay Example This message is very critical to the success of the sending supplier but the manner of its formatting and structure fails to make it comprehensible and meaningful to the recipient. The design is out of context due to its poor organization while the content is vague with a number of meaningless remarks. The sentences are randomly written with total disregard to business message rubrics and this makes the connection of ideas in the letter incomprehensible. The message ought to take this format to be relevant in the business field for which it is meant â€Å"We would like to inform you that we have received you 6 DVDs order and promises to deliver them by March 25th, 2013 as per your request. We give you 100% surety that you will be satisfied with our products and kindly mail us to this effect once you have used our products. We believe the 6 DVD’s are going to meet your desires of achieving the best from your firm’s employee appraisal project, recruitment criteria, and subsequent improved performance.Take note that each DVD has slide show Tips and techniques that will make it easy when training the employees.Each DVD is accompanied by a booklet that will assist the trainers in maximizing the value of the procurement and achieve the goals of your organization.These booklets contain participants materials that can freely be copied for in-house seminars and workshops Enclosed with this order is our catalog of the latest training DVDs materials offer which are user-friendly and have a warranty of 30 days.

Science Fair Necessities for Project Essay Example for Free

Science Fair Necessities for Project Essay 1. Fill each of the plastic cups  ¾ full with potting soil and plant each seed  ½ inch deep in the soil. 2. Cut a pie-sized hole in each side of each box and leave the top open – cut the flaps off the top so it cannot be closed. 3. Label each box and tape two layers of the desired color of cellophane on four of the boxes over the holes and over the top. Make sure you are able to get at least one of the corners of cellophane up for watering later. 4. You should now have five boxes, four of them covered with red, blue, yellow and green cellophane and one without cellophane, each with a plastic cup holding a bean plant seed. The box with no cellophane will get no colored light and will be used as the control. 5. Place the boxes in a designated area that gets plenty of sunlight during the day. Water each plant with a  ¼ cup distilled water each day, watering at night so the plants are not exposed to light other than the light filtered through the cellophane. 6. Continue watering plants for four to six weeks. Note You can take pictures if you wish, as photos will better illustrate the growth quality of the plants. Observation Keep a record of the plants’ growth every day, taking measurements and noting color when the plants begin to germinate. Descriptions of the plants fullness, leaf size, etc. are key when jotting down information in the journal or log book. Result The plants will grow best under the red and blue light, as the hypothesis predicted. The green light will hinder plant growth as plants naturally reflect green wavelengths of light and therefore, the plants absorb absolutely no light.

Enlightenment from The Tao Te Ching Essay -- Tao Te Ching Essays

Enlightenment from The Tao Te Ching The Tao Te Ching can be helpful to all, and the reading of it may be enlightening. Reading the Tao can give much insight on the challenges and dangers that humans must face in this world, how a person should live his life, the dangers of a powerful ruler, how the state should rule, how citizens should serve the state, and the messages or forewarnings for us today. Mankind has the tendency to be self-conscious, greedy, and materialistic, and human history shows this to be the case in all societies. Even in China they suffer from the selfish aspects of humans. The Tao states on page 9, â€Å"Chase after money and security/and your heart will never unclench.† It is natural for people to want things, but the Tao is saying that the chasing after money is the danger. In our society this materialistic attitude is apparent, for when people buy expensive things they cannot afford, they immediately say, â€Å"Charge it!† If the Tao was written today it would read, â€Å"Credit cards are for those who chase after money/their pocketbooks will never be s...

The mystic drum

Lyrics† (2011). African Studies Faculty Publication Series. Paper 12. Http://schoolwork. Numb. Deed/African_faculty_pubs/1 2 This Article Is brought to you for free and open access by the African Studies at Schoolwork at Amass Boston. It has been accepted for inclusion in African Studies Faculty Publication Series by an authorized administrator of Schoolwork at Amass Boston. For more information, please contact library. [email  protected] Deed. ‘The Mystic Drum': Critical Commentary on Gabriel Okra's Love Lyrics: Checksum Ozone, PhD Professor of African & African Diaspora LiteraturesIntroduction In the course of reading a chapter entitled â€Å"Empty and Marvelous† In Alan Watts fascinating book, The Way of Zen (1 957), a serendipitous key was provided, by the following statement from the teachings of Chinese Zen master,l Aching Yuan Weighing (1067-1120), to the structure and meaning of the experience traumatized in Gabriel Okra's most famous love poem, â€Å"Th e Mystic Drum†: 2 Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters.When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw the mountains are not at rest. For it's Just now that I see mountains once again as mountains and waters once again as waters. What is so readily striking to anyone who has read â€Å"The Mystic Drum† is the near perfect dynamic equivalence between the words of Aching Yen and the phraseology of Okra's lyric.In line with Aching Yuan's statement, the lyric falls into three clearly defined parts?an initial phase of â€Å"conventional knowledge,† when men are men and fishes are fishes (lines 1-15); a median phase of â€Å"more intimate knowledge,† when men are no longer men and fishes are no longer fishes (lines 16-26); and a final hash of â€Å"substantial knowledge,† when men are once again men and fishes are once again fishes, with the difference that at this phase, the beloved lady of the lyric is depicted as â€Å"standing behind a tree† with â€Å"her lips parted in her smile,† now â€Å"turned cavity belching darkness† (lines 27-41).The significance of this closing phrase will be discussed in the appropriate slot in the final section of the paper, below. But because of the complexity of the imagery and symbolism by means of which progression of the lover's understanding of the nature of reality is developed, it seems necessary to visit the lyric in its entirety before proceeding to a phase-bypass analysis of its structure: The mystic drum beat in my inside and fishes danced in the rivers and men and women danced on land to the rhythm of my drum But standing behind a tree with leaves around her waist she only smiled with a shake of her head. One of the major schools of Buddhism that originated in 12th-century China with current strongholds in India and Japan, Zen strongly emphasizes enlightenment through meditation and vehemently denies the value of conventional thinking in favor of an attempt to understand the paradoxes of reality by â€Å"direct pointing† unfettered by what it sees as arbitrary customary compartmentalizing of phenomena.Since the middle of the twentieth-century, the exciting and fresh insights provided by Zen masters have been a source of inspiration for many non- Asian writers, artists and intellectuals throughout the world, especially in North America. 2 The present commentary is a revised and updated version of a paper originally entitled â€Å"Zen in African Poetry: Gabriel Okra's ‘The Mystic Drum† and shared privately with several of my students and academic colleagues at Abidjan, Lagos and Nausea (Nigeria) and Boston (Massachusetts), USA.Checksum Ozone / The Mystic Drum: Critical Commentary angora's Love Poetry: 2 rippling the air with quickened tempo compelling the quick and the dead to dance and sing with their shadows? Then the drum beat with the rhyt hm of the things of the ground and invoked the eye of the sky the sun and the moon and the river gods and the trees began to dance, the fishes turned men and men turned fishes and things stopped to grow? 10 15 20 25 And then the mystic drum in my inside stopped to beat? and men became men, fishes became fishes and trees, the sun and the moon found their places, and the dead .NET to the ground and things began to grow.And behind the tree she stood with roots sprouting from her feet and leaves growing on her head and smoke issuing from her nose and her lips parted in her smile Then, then I packed my mystic drum and turned away; never to beat so loud any more. 35 Aching Yuan's Zen experience is epistemological?pertaining to a step-by-step initiation of the passionate lover into an understanding of the nature of reality, in particular â€Å"the foundations, scope, and validity of knowledge† (Online Enchant).It can thus be surmised that â€Å"The Mystic Drum† is not Just a conventional amatory lyric, revoked by the storm and stress of Okra's passionate love for his adored and adorable second wife (an African-American with Caribbean roots, Diamond Carmichael, who died in Port Harcourt in 1983). 3 It is more decidedly a philosophical poem in which the dynamics, directions and management of â€Å"the mystic drum† of passion that beats in the poet's â€Å"inside† are dramatically reenacted, in a tripartite ritual and initiatory pattern reminiscent of Aching Yen.From a conventional phase, at which the lover's understanding 3 Okra's first wife, a fellow ‘Jog from the Niger Delta and the mother of his son, Dry. Ebb Okra?a clinical psychologist in Randolph, Massachusetts, who lives in Canton, Massachusetts?was divorced when Ebb was only two years old. There is hardly an reference to her in either Okra's lyrics or interviews. Nor do we have any information about the cause of her separation from Okra. Of the nature of knowledge conforms to s ocially accepted customs of behavior or style (lines 1-15), the lover's progresses through a more intimate phase, at which this knowledge matures from a close, thoroughgoing, personal relationship (lines 16-26), to an ultimate substantial phase, situated in the optimum zone of epistemological perception, at which what the lover has come know about the nature of reality is not only solidly built but considerable in amount or importance (lines 27-41), culminating in the lover's self-imposed decision not to allow his â€Å"mystic drum† ever â€Å"to beat so loud so loud any more† (line 41).The poem concludes, in other words, with a firm decision by the lover to put strong reins on the unbridled flights of his amatory imagination, having become wizened by the knowledge and experience he has acquired. Because the tropes (â€Å"mystic,† â€Å"drum,† and â€Å"inside†), two of which appear in he title of the present paper, are recurrent in all of Okra's l ove lyrics (â€Å"Diamond,† â€Å"To Pave,† and â€Å"The Mystic Drum†), it seems necessary to pause awhile to reflect on their meaning and significance.For Okra, the word â€Å"mystic† is indeed connotative of the spiritual, the numinous, the magical, the supernatural, and the shamanistic. But it is more meaningful as a poetic code for the supervisory powers that enable the human personality to tap into hidden strengths buried in the innermost recesses of the psyche. In addition to any other signification carried over by the poet from his he theories of Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology, Carl Gustavo Jung (1875-1961), as comprising the collective unconscious?the innermost recesses of the psyche, populated by archaic or primordial images which Jung calls archetypes and which, as he posits, are shared in common by all humankind. See Ozone (1981), for a more detailed discussion of the collective unconscious and its archetypes, with ref erence to the poetry of Okra's transnational, modernist, contemporary, Christopher Skibob (193()-1967).This innermost level of the psyche is operated from the outermost level?the conscious mind (the seat of our everyday thoughts and emotions) ?by the personal unconscious (the seat of repressed traumatic personal experiences or complexes which may be re-lived by the individual if and whenever memories of the original trauma that gave birth to the complex are awakened by new trauma of the same kind). In its relation to â€Å"mystic† and â€Å"inside,† the word â€Å"drum,† in Okra, generally refers to the vibes felt by an individual when there is an intense surge of subconscious promptings from any of the two levels of his â€Å"inside. Further research is needed to ascertain the consistency f all these with the idea of â€Å"the inside† in Okra's native ‘Jog language and traditional system of thought. In â€Å"The Mystic Drum† as well as in à ¢â‚¬Å"Diamond† (a lyric also provoked by Okra's love for Ms. Carmichael) and in â€Å"To Pave† (a lyric provoked by the â€Å"fire† and â€Å"flame† of an unrequited love for a mysterious paramour about whom Okra is most reticent to say anything in interviews with him), the intensity of these subconscious psychic pulsations often reaches fever pitch.The three lyrics are thus not only of enormous interest as conventional love lyrics, fusing the commonalities of oral-wide traditions of love poetry and the peculiarities of indigenous African love songs performed as part of moonlight dances; they are also worthy of critical analysis as a windows into Okra's struggle for rapprochement with the presiding lady of his poetic inspiration, his muse.The muse has been described as the source of inspiration that stimulates the art of a poet. In postcolonial discourse, it has been studied as an archetypal female figure (watermark, great mother, earth goddess, water godd ess, and dancer) embodying cultural nationalist affections and idealizations of the colonized earth of the poet's Malden (see Thomas, 1968, and Ozone, in Nonnumeric, 2011).As I have stated in the later citation, 4 For the purposes of the present paper, I retain my earlier understanding of psyche (Ozone, 1981 : 30) as â€Å"the totality of the non-physical components of the human personality' (extrapolated from Jung, 1959). 5 In this paper, I use the terms traumatic and trauma to refer to â€Å"emotional shock† or â€Å"an extremely distressing experience that causes severe emotional shock and may have long-lasting psychological effects† (online Enchant). Jung defines complexes as â€Å"psychic entities that have escaped from the control of unconsciousness and split from it, to lead a separate existence in the dark sphere of the psyche, whence they may at any time hinder or help the conscious performance† (see 7 see Ozone (2006 and 2011). 4 The idea of the muse is often invoked in the scholarship on modern Nigerian literature; but it is often shrouded with a mystique that tends to reduce it to something abstract or far-fetched, or, at any rate, to a kind of African imitation of the classical muses of Garage-Roman antiquity.But our renascent muse was not only concrete and manifest in our postcolonial practical engagement with our indigenous ultras; she was also an embodiment of the highest cultural ideals of our ancestral traditions as we perceived them in the heyday of colonialism. She appeared to each and every one of us in multifarious guises. But whatever her emanation was, she was unmistakably a personification of the earth of our ancestors?the earth goddess, Ala, the supreme light (chi) that nurtures all creation, an embodiment of the eternal bond that unites the living and the dead.When our early devotional poems to this great spirit and those of our predecessors and successors are collected and published, traders will be better able to understand the ramifications of the power of this great goddess who appeared to us, as to our predecessors in the early sass's (Skibob, Window, And, Egged, Insanely, Majoring, Okapi, Kook, etc), as a dancer, spirit maiden, water maid, and other exciting feminine figures?in all cases as embodiments of our communal and individual apperception of the superiority of our indigenous cultural heritage to every single superimposition of the postcolonial order.Like Skibob and other members of the Nausea school of modern Nigerian poetry (see Thomas, 1968 and 1972; Cherub, in Landforms, 1973 and 1974; and Modulator, 1980), Okra is a votary of the watermark or mermaid, whose inspirational â€Å"songs† we hear in â€Å"The Fisherman's Invocation† (Part II and Ill) as the voice of a presiding lady (or ladies) of poesy whose presence and participation are repeatedly invoked to mediate the claims of the what is passing (the Back), is passing (the Present) and to come (the Front).I n Part II (The Invocation), the â€Å"water song† of an â€Å"assembly of mermaid† in linked with the â€Å"midwifes† that would officiate in the delivery of the Child-Front the brave new world beyond colonialism)?rubbing â€Å"gently down/the back† of the great mother past (â€Å"Back), symbolizing age-old traditions: O midwifes rub gently down the back of your Back while the sun play his play and the Back dance its dance and assembly of mermaids sing their bubbling water song beneath the river waves.And in Part Ill (The Child-Front), â€Å"the mermaids† are invoked to participate in the shaping of the future as cleansing agencies that must â€Å"carry†¦ On their songs† and embarrassing negatives of the pre-colonial past) rearing up its ugly head from a anatomically cherished past, in a situational irony reminiscent of Whole Saying's early ritual drama, Dance of the Forests (1960): Where are your Gods now Gods of the Back that have br ought forth this monster? Throw it away, throw it into the river and let the mermaids carry it on their songs.Throw it away to the Back and let the Back swallow it in its abyss And let the Gods remember their lives are in my hands In these lines, the â€Å"Gods of the Back (past) that have/brought forth this monster† (embarrassing negatives of Africans pre-colonial history) are reminded on he ‘Jog custom known as uremia, in which?as traumatized in â€Å"The Revolt of the Gods†?the fate of the gods, which are traditional in the hands of their worshippers, must be determined by humans in accordance with their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their providential conduct.In concluding, in Part IV (Birth Dance of the Child Front), the â€Å"songs of mermaids† are 5 given pride of place in finale of â€Å"our dance/ of the Front† (of the future), again stressing the primacy of the muse as an agency for shaping the future of a troubled land: Let's leave n our dance of the Front with rhythms of the Back and strengthen he fragile songs of the new with songs of mermaids Much later, in his mature post-war, political poetry set at the heart of the future envisioned in â€Å"The Fisherman's Invocation† and collected under the title The Dreamer, His Vision (2006), the mermaid reappears in â€Å"Mamma Water and Me† as the presiding lady of the poet's anguished cry for succor in the midst of the triumph of disorder (â€Å"embers.. Moldering†, â€Å"in memoriam ashes†, â€Å"flames I cannot temper†, â€Å"whirling vortex, helpless†) in post-civil war Nigeria: The embers are smoldering?once again? They've refused to die into in memoriam ashes. And have burst into flames I cannot temper. They draw into their whirling vortex, helpless? Mamma-water & me. There we stand, hand in hand, Like Starch and company, the faithful, Calmly waiting for the redeeming flames Then we shall step out with solemn steps To silence offended eyebrows and daggered tongues and walk on calm waters?still, serene?Free! Clinched by the refrain (â€Å"Mamma-water and me†), the poet expresses strong optimism that, by keeping faith (standing â€Å"hand in hand†) with his muse, â€Å"redeeming flames† that would effect â€Å"the cleansing† and â€Å"free us of earthly dross† would surely mom in the end.By contrast to â€Å"Mamma-water† (a supernatural being under whose divine shadow the poet appears helpless to offer anything but total devotion), Diamond and Pave are human objects of love to whom Okra, in his love lyrics, projects the archetype of the muse in an unconscious recognition of their place in his â€Å"inside† as his soul mates or psychic alter egos (representing, from the Jungian psychological perspective, his anima). The anima, for Jung, is one of the most powerful archetypes of the collective unconscious that participates in the all-important process of individuation. As med up in my essay on Skibob and Jung (Ozone, 1981: 37), â€Å"the anima is the primordial image of woman in a man, a counterpart of the animus, the primordial image of man engraved on the mind of a woman. The anima appears in dreams, visions and fantasies as in literature and myth in the form of a mother, a loved one, a goddess, a siren, a prostitute and an enchantress, or a femme fetal.The impact of these latent images of woman can be as destructive to the psychic health of the man who projects them as they can be beneficent. They often give rise to an obsessive pursuit of the elusive and the intractable. Because of their appearance in the mind of the poet in forms consistent with the well-established characteristics of the archetype of the anima, Diamond and Pave tend to feature in Okra's lyrics in patterns of relationships reminiscent of the kinds of poet-muse relationships described by Robert Graves in The White Goddess (1959) and exemplified in the life and poetry of Okra's contemporary, Christopher Skibob (1930-1967).As Skibob learned from his reading of Graves, and as parsed by Among (1972), â€Å"one phase in the relationship between the muse-poet and his goddess-woman is that in which the toe becomes more consciously aware of cruelty. † This lesson, also learnt by Okra and 6 embodied in the myth's of â€Å"The Mystic Drum,† â€Å"Diamond,† and â€Å"To Pave,† is writ large in the imagery and symbolism of Skibobs second sequence, Limits, especially Limits IV in which the beloved female figure metamorphoses into a ferocious lioness that gores the over-excited lover to death or, at any rate, tranquilizer him into an unconscious state from which he would awake to complete the writing of the poem at hand with a mature mind truly informed by experience: An image insists From flag pole of the heart;Her image distracts Oblong-headed lioness? No shield is proof against her? Wound me, O sea-weed Face, blinded like a strong-room? Distances of her armpit-fragrance Turn chloroform enough for my patience? When you have finished & done up my stitches, Wake me near the altar, & this poem will be finished†¦ (Limits ‘V, lines 71-84) Thus, as stated in The White Goddess, â€Å"Being in love does not and should not, blind the poet to the cruel side of woman's nature?and many muse-poems are written in helpless attestation of this by men whose love is not longer returned† (Graves, 1959: 91). As stated above, this archetypal pattern is amply reenacted in Okra's â€Å"To Pave,† â€Å"Diamond†, and â€Å"The Mystic Drum. In â€Å"To Pave,† the â€Å"fire† and â€Å"flames† of passion reduce everything between the lover and the beloved into â€Å"ashes†: And as before the fire smolders in water, continually smoldering beneath the ashes with things I dare not tell erupting from the hackneyed lore of the beginning. For they die in the telling. S o let them be. Let them smolder. Let them smolder in the living fire beneath the ashes. Through the infusion of the myth's of â€Å"the hackneyed lore / of the ginning† (evoking the sexual overtones of the relationship between Adam and Eve in â€Å"Den's farm,† as subtly recreated by Michael Cherub in his early lyric, â€Å"Sophia† (see Ozone, 2011) his personal story, Okra's â€Å"To Pave† is transformed into an archetypal tale of poet-muse relationship as predicted in Graves theory of poetry.Not surprisingly, in â€Å"Diamond,† the poet-spouse-and-lover presents itself as one in which the artist is possessed by the divine afflatus, theorized in his treatise, On the Sublime, as the primary source of inspiration for poets, by the Greek teacher f rhetoric and literary critic, Longings (ca. 1st or 3rd century AD). Akin to the notion of â€Å"spirit arrest,† in transatlantic African communities in the Caribbean and the Americas, the idea of the divine afflatus is common among the ‘Jog and elsewhere in Africa where artistic and professional creativity is often attributed to possession by a deity of madness and creativity such as Gaga (the patron of medicine-men), among the Gobo (See Mum, 2009).The speaker in â€Å"Diamond† is not only maddened by his love but clearly possessed by the ‘Jog congener of the Gobo deity of creative madness, Gaga: eke it's said a madman hears; I hear trees talking like it's said a medicine man hears. Like ABA, the hero of Herman Melville Mobs Dick, he is not Just maddened by his monomaniac complex (or neurotic fixation of on a single passion), he is indeed â€Å"madness maddened. † But Okra's wifeless is imbued with the kind of tortuous coyness that has provoked, in global amatory poetry, some of the most sublime evocations of the â€Å"cruelty of the rose† (in other words, the cruelty of the alluring object of love, as depicted in Skibobs Limits ‘V, quoted above). She is singularly unyielding: And I raised my hand? y trembling hand, gripping my heart as handkerchief and waved and waved-and waved but she turned her eyes away.The reader who turns to â€Å"The Mystic Drum† from â€Å"Diamond† and â€Å"To Pave† will immediately recognize the reification of the tension between the lover and the beloved as an extended metaphor for the exploration of something that lies in the pits of epistemology, already defined above as the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, in particular its foundations, scope, and validity. Far beyond the realms of the tremulous stirrings of the love-struck heart, the lyric takes us into he highest cerebral realms of abstruse philosophy. As the poet's muse, the beloved is not only the presiding lady of the poet's art but his link to the ultimate source all knowledge of reality?his link to the world beyond the quotidian, the wellspring of true knowledge of the essence of rea lity.From a deep structure analysis of the meaning of the poem, it seems evident that the epistemological underpinnings of â€Å"The Mystic Drum† go well beyond the culture wars of African postcolonial nationalist search for identity through such ideologies as Negritude, Pan Africans, the search or the African Personality, the African Renascent Movement, and the like. The deft modernist deployment of tropes in the poem is one that cuts across cultural and national boundaries, inviting comparison with systems of thought which Okra himself may not have ever even contemplated, including the statement from the Zen philosopher Aching Yen, with which the present commentary begins. There is, of course, no intention here to suggest that Okra was directly influenced by the oriental philosophy of Zen or that he was schooled under any Zen master.Although I have enjoyed close personal friendship with Okra since 1967 and have elsewhere remarked on the Zen mode of apperception in his poetr y (Ozone, 1991), it never occurred to me to ask him about any contact he may have had with Zen philosophy as I did not think that it was necessarily of any value to establish any such a contact, until my most recent interview with him at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (August, 2011). After listening attentively to my reading of Zen master. Aching Yuan's statement with which the present article begins, Okra readily agreed that it applies very well to his intention and the structure of the experience of the

Fostering Critical Thinking through Effective Pedagogy Essay

Acquiring knowledge is a basic social need and essential commodity for survival. It is a common belief that knowledge can empower an individual for the notion of facts and truths guides a person on how to proceed on things that must be attended to. In every decision an individual makes, comprehension and weighing of information play a vital role on what and how certain actions and attitudes will be conceptualized and performed. When the complexity of the nature, source and limit of a particular knowledge is exposed in terms of the perspective used by a person, conflict on what point of view to follow along with the beliefs and values a person holds, most often than not determines the behavior, given that the person is a ware of the possible principles and truths he or she could consider. In any professional discipline, it is notable the relevance of development and progress not just of knowledge that governs the field but most importantly of the application and benefits of the implementation as well as sharing of a particular body of thought. The teaching profession is considered greatly in terms of professional development since the future of all other professions is very much dependent on the efficiency and effectiveness of the people in the academic discipline in their responsibility to impart knowledge. Professional development helps teachers eliminates the discrepancy between the current teaching programs and strategies employed in the academic community, and the ideal setting of being able to achieve and benefit from the set goals and objectives which are most ideal for the improvement of the teaching profession. Such will not only be an advantage to the teaching fellows but also to the students from whom much will be expected. Astleitner, Hermann. (2002). Teaching Critical Thinking Online. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 29(5). 55-65. With the bulk of information available at present due to the development and advances in communication as well as information technology, critical evaluation of the materials that enhance learning should be practice in the whole academic community. But such proposal proves to be problematic when it comes to training an educating the students on how to critically process and assess a particular reading material. The rapidly changing lifestyles in a highly technological and global world as well as the changing societal structures brought about by increasing social and cultural diversity wherein marketing of ideas and products whose primary target are the teenagers calls the need to impart critical analysis among the students for the society to benefit from the advantages of upholding critical thinking. Critical thinking has been defined as â€Å"a literacy that encourages a reflective, questioning stance toward the forms and content of print and electronic media† (Tyner, 1998). The ideal of critical thinking supports the claims of rhetoric criticism which deals with the social construction of meaning or the way the public perceive and understand the information presented by different channels of communication. Rhetorical criticism likewise tackles and examines how the messages are constructed and presented to the public which are reflective of the interests and motives of the source of information. In here also comes the issue on commercialism and the ways in which information are distorted, sanitized, designed and delivered in order to get the thinking and behavior that the source intends the audience to take as implicit ideologies are made explicit. The fast changing, social, cultural and technological structure of the society poses a challenge in the whole educational system to examine and reflect the positive and negative effects of the uses and manipulation of information and be critical members of the community. Critical thinking in this regard, should be taught and practiced as a whole school approach so as to equip the students with the skills and knowledge that they need as literate members of the civil society. As teachers push students to access and avail of so much information while ignoring the need to provide students with instruction in how to effectively use the resources available in the school the phenomenon which Richard Wumen calls â€Å"non-information explosion is observed. This describes how the availability of so much information could lead to more misinformation and disinformation. He highlights the present condition of information management skill of every individual’s access to excess information as provided by the Internet which does not give us better knowledge nor characterize us with better information use. In this regard, members of the academic community call the attention of school libraries to be initiator of upholding the principles of critical thinking as primary source of information to the students. The nine information literacy standards by the American Association of School Librarians and the Association for Educational Communication and Technology (1998) upholds the importance of information literacy and acknowledge the need to incorporate the ideals of critical thinking in the prevalent access and evaluation of the content and messages provided by the current information technologies. The standards are divided into three: subcategories: (a) information literacy, (2) independent learning, and (3) social responsibility: Rudowicz, Elisabeth. (2002) Assessing University Students’ General and Specific Critical Thinking. College Student Journal, 363(11), 120-125. Other means of incorporation critical thinking especially into the information literacy knowledge and skills of the students should be widely implemented and supported by the whole educational system and the government in order to realize its aims and objectives to provide quality and critical information management among the students. Intense debates about literacy education are long been issues of social importance with its normal wide media coverage. In these debates, we have frequently heard from politicians, policy makers, members of the community, key media representatives, and language educators. Critical thinking is a combination of using a set of general dispositions and abilities, along with specific experience and knowledge within a particular area of concern-in school, often the subject-matter area. This view might lead to the teaching of general critical thinking principles (e. g. , conflict of interest, denial of the consequent) both as a separate course (or within an existing course sequence such as English or social studies), and as infused into the existing subject-matter instruction, where general dispositions and abilities would be applied. It is not known which approach is most effective. The numerous attempts at infusion or immersion include content areas such as social studies, chemistry, geometry, general science, and the physical sciences. They have generally yielded higher experimental group gains in critical thinking ability, and sometimes even in content areas Henig, R. (1994). Rethinking School Choice: Limits of the Market Metaphor. Princeton Journal of Higher Education, 73 (16) 35-42. The call for such radical educational reform in the United States is rooted on several strongly stated claims. The first argument is that the performance of American schools, especially American public schools, is so poor that unless strong and dramatic steps are taken, the nation risks a serious and irreversible shift into eventual economic stagnation and mediocrity. The second claim is that conventional remedies of increased spending and budget to attract better teachers, mandates on higher and tougher standards of academic performance as well as improved and redesigned curriculums have been tried and implemented yet, all have failed. Meanwhile, the final claim traces the fault for past failures in the very political processes and governing institutions that the public mistakenly turn to search for a remedy. The current curriculum followed by educational institutions at present should be able to adapt the need to incorporate and teach critical thinking. The students should be given opportunities to undertake deeper appreciation of the information that are accessible to them by teaching them how to think critically. Exercises that enhance critical assessment and evaluation of facts and claims should be provided to the students for them to demonstrate their abilities to judge and contemplate on the content and subliminal messages buried in between lines of literary pieces, presentation and delivery of the message, and the credibility of the sources of information. Academic researchers that will cultivate assessment in the use of resources among students could be assimilated to the different subjects that they are taking. The application of critical thinking for the students to inherent the skill should be exercised in all aspects of the students’ lives for them to become life-long critical learners and users of information. Warnick, B. (2002) Critical thinking in a Digital Era: Technology, Rhetoric, and the Public Interest. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 23(2), 109. Once critical thinking is applied and practiced in the educational system, other means of applying its principles, especially in the use of school libraries as information banks, should be able to accommodate the changes needed to foster the appreciation of being critically literate amidst the mass of information offered in the libraries. Facilities inside the li9braries should provide for the information of the students while at the same time should be able to provide caution and constant guidance as to how to critically evaluate the available information. Incorporating the proper skills and knowledge in utilizing the information available in the libraries to the academic curricula should be considered by educational reformers to serve as preliminary field of applying critical thinking. Good researching and cross-referencing skills in using the facilities in the library should be able to inculcate critical thinking among the students. The emphasized that coming up with better program ideas simply does not work because the reigning decision-making processes systematically screen the good ideas that were presented and proposed and that implementing present programs more effectively will not succeed either because the existing institutions of school governance are neither willing nor able to make the sustained and serious efforts that are required. He proposed instead a call for public action for a radical restructuring in which the educational institutions especially those in public nature should take the initiative as significant movement of intervention in the said issue by intensifying the degree rather that the direction of change. In this respect, it is evident that there is a need to imbibe optimistic outlook in pursuing reforms in the educational system. The unforeseen challenges that may confront and hinder the realization of maximizing the advantages of practicing critical thinking should be embraced and overcome by the significant leaders and authorities not just in the educational system but also among policy-makers and the public in general.

Explore Neptune’s Frigid Moon Triton

Explore Neptune’s Frigid Moon Triton When the Voyager 2 spacecraft swept past the planet Neptune in 1989, no one was quite sure what to expect of its largest moon, Triton. Seen from Earth, its just a tiny point of light visible through a strong telescope. However, up-close, it showed off a water-ice surface split by geysers that shoot nitrogen gas up into the thin, frigid atmosphere. It not only was weird, the icy surface sported terrains never before seen. Thanks to Voyager 2 and its mission of exploration, Triton showed us just how strange a distant world can be. Triton: The Geologically Active Moon There arent too many active moons in the solar system. Enceladus at Saturn is one (and has been studied extensively by the Cassini mission), as is Jupiters tiny volcanic moon Io. Each of these has a form of volcanism; Enceladus has ice geysers and volcanoes while Io spouts out molten sulfur. Triton, not to be left out, is geologically active, too. Its activity is cryovolcanism - producing the kind of volcanoes that spew ice crystals instead of molten lava rock. Tritons cryovolcanoes spew material out from beneath the surface, which implies some heating from within this moon. Tritons geysers are located close to whats called the subsolar point, the region of the moon directly receiving the most sunlight. Given that its very cold out at Neptune, sunlight isnt nearly as strong as it is at Earth, so something in the ices is very sensitive to sunlight, and that weakens the surface. Pressure from material below pushes out cracks and vents in the thin shell of ice that covers Triton. That lets the nitrogen gas and plumes of dust blast out and into the atmosphere. These geysers can erupt for fairly long periods of time - up to a year in some cases. Their eruption plumes lay down streaks of dark material across the pale pinkish ice. Creating a Cantaloupe Terrain World The ice depots on Triton are mainly water, with patches of frozen nitrogen and methane. At least, thats what the southern half of this moon shows. Thats all Voyager 2 could image as it went by; the northern part was in shadow. Nonetheless, planetary scientists suspect that the northern pole looks similar to the southern region. Icy lava has been deposited across the landscape, forming pits, plains, and ridges. The surface also has some of the weirdest landforms ever seen in the form of cantaloupe terrain. Its called that because the fissures and ridges look like the skin of a cantaloupe. Its probably the oldest of Tritons icy surface units and is made up of dusty water ice. The region probably formed when material under the icy crust rose up and then sank back down again, which unsettled the surface. Its also possible that ice floods could have caused this weird crusty surface. Without followup images, its hard to get a good feel for possible causes of the cantaloupe terrain. How Did Astronomers Find Triton? Triton is not a recent  discovery in the annals of solar system exploration. It was actually found in 1846 by astronomer William Lassell. He was studying Neptune just after its discovery, looking for any possible moons in orbit around this distant planet. Because Neptune is named after the Roman god of the sea (who was the Greek Poseidon), it seemed appropriate to name its moon after another Greek sea god whose was fathered by Poseidon. It didnt take long for astronomers to figure out that Triton was weird in at least one way: its orbit. It circles Neptune in retrograde - that is, opposite to Neptunes rotation. For that reason, its very likely that Triton didnt form when Neptune did. In fact, it probably had nothing to do with Neptune but was captured by the planets strong gravity as it passed by. No one is quite sure where Triton originally formed, but its quite likely it was born as part of the Kuiper Belt of icy objects. It stretches outwards from the orbit of Neptune. The Kuiper Belt is also the home of frigid Pluto, as well as a selection of dwarf planets. Tritons fate is not to orbit Neptune forever. In a few billion years, it will wander too close to Neptune, within a region called the Roche limit. Thats the distance where a moon will start to break up due to gravitational influence. Exploration After Voyager 2 No other spacecraft has studied Neptune and Triton up close. However, after the Voyager 2 mission, planetary scientists have used Earth-based telescopes to measure Tritons atmosphere by watching as distant stars slipped behind it. Their light could then be studied for telltale signs of gases in Tritons thin blanket of air. Planetary scientists would like to explore Neptune and Triton further, but no missions have been selected to do so, yet. So, this pair of distant worlds will remain unexplored for the time being, until someone comes up with a lander that could settle down among the cantaloupe hills of Triton and send back more information.

Sociology Research Paper Topics & Step-by-Step Writing Guide

Sociology Research Paper Topics & Step-by-Step Writing Guide How to Write a Good Sociology Research Paper Every student gets the assignment to write an academic paper during his or her studies. In particular, this concerns sociology students. To create a good term paper on this discipline is quite a difficult task, especially if you do not know where to start. Besides, sociology is an extremely broad subject that covers multiple topics, such as education, politics, medicine, law, crime, etc. For this reason, many students are confused when they have to choose topics for a sociology term paper. Anyway, a sociology term paper has to follow the same requirements as any other academic paper, so there is nothing particularly complicated here. Here are some pieces of advice that will help you choose one of sociology term paper topics and produce a quality paper. Research As sociology covers complicated topics, you will have to narrow it to one specific point to write a sociology research paper. Researching stage is the first and the most important part of the work as this is when you have to come up with your argument. You have to gather the facts, which will support your idea, and come up with a certain conclusion. You will have to read a lot and take a lot of notes. You might want to take notes of certain pages or make quotations as you read them. This will help you when you will need to cite a quote in your paper or reference the sources in the bibliography. Reflect If you read any research paper sociology example, you will see that there are often several questions stated there. The more you answer the better. It will be very beneficial if you address a couple of topics throughout an essay. If you are going to address one issue, you will have to put a lot of thought into it. As soon as you come up with the balance between your topic and answers to it, this is the bulk of your essay. You will have to research your way to the answer to provide solid support to the thesis statement and present good arguments. Write In the introductory part of an essay, you have to address the problem. In the body part, you should explain your point of view and provide factual information, which supports your opinion. Also, make sure to provide quotations from the published works and reference them in the bibliography. Start your paper with a strong introduction, which includes a thesis statement and familiarizes readers with what you are going to tell in the body of an essay. Finish your writing piece similarly, providing a brief review of everything stated throughout the paper. Topic Ideas Now, when you know how to write a sociology paper, you might need some topic ideas to write an essay. If you are assigned to write a paper about feminism, you may like the following ideas: Should men have more rights than women? Feminism movements in the world during different periods Is anti-sexism an integral part of feminism? The power of womens art Modern manifestations of feminism When one is assigned to complete a paper about marriage and children, there is a plenty of topics to write about. This issue refers to everyone, as almost every person is about to create a family or currently has particular issues in the marriage or wants a piece of advice on bringing up their kids. Here are some ideas you can use: The idea of an ideal marriage Ways to avoid harming children when divorcing Consequences of remarriage What are the consequences of gay marriages? Problems in multicultural marriages Ways to avoid divorce The ways parents provide role models for their children How to become a good parent? What way is better for bringing up a child: to be strict or to be a friend? The challenges which single parents have to deal with One more important and spread topic that concerns everyone today is social problems, including crime, gambling, alcoholism, etc. Among good topics to discuss there are: Whose problem is the issue of juvenile delinquency? Is it possible to stop alcoholism? How can todays terrorism be compared to the terrorism centuries ago? Can prison be considered an effective corrective method? If not, what are the alternatives? You can also touch upon the topic of social life. Your topic may concern education, culture, development, environment, etc. Try choosing one of the following topics: Best pieces of advice on reaching outstanding results in education What are the main problems in the relationship between students and their professors? The issue of globalization and the way it affects people in modern society Major aspects of social change What is the best way to develop oneself? The way social change influences an average person Now, when you know some sociology term paper writing tips and have some topic examples, make every effort to generate a great paper. When selecting the topic, make sure you choose the one you are interested in or have solid knowledge about. Only in this case, your reader will be interested in your writing.

Hawaiis Volcanic Hot Spot

Hawaiis Volcanic Hot Spot Under the Hawaiian Islands, there is a volcanic â€Å"hot spot,† a hole in the Earth’s crust that allows lava to surface and layer. Over millions of years, these layers form mountains of volcanic rock that eventually break the surface of the Pacific Ocean, forming islands. As the Pacific Plate very slowly moves across the hot spot, new islands are formed. It took 80 million years to create the current chain of Hawaiian islands. Discovering the Hot Spot In 1963, John Tuzo Wilson, a Canadian geophysicist, introduced a contentious theory. He hypothesized there was a hot spot under the Hawaiian Islands - a mantle plume of concentrated geothermal heat that melted rock and rose up as magma through fractures under the Earth’s crust. At the time they were introduced, Wilson’s ideas were very controversial and many dubious geologists were not accepting theories of plate tectonics or hot spots. Some researchers thought that volcanic areas were only in the middle of plates and not at subduction zones. However, Dr. Wilson’s hot spot hypothesis helped to solidify the plate tectonics argument. He provided evidence that the Pacific Plate has been slowly drifting over a deep-seated hot spot for 70 million years, leaving behind the Hawaiian Ridge-Emperor Seamount Chain of more than 80 extinct, dormant, and active volcanoes. Wilson’s Evidence Wilson worked diligently to find evidence and tested volcanic rock samples from each volcanic island in the Hawaiian Islands. He found that the oldest weathered and eroded rocks on a geological time scale were on Kauai, the northernmost island, and that rocks on the islands were gradually younger as he went south. The youngest rocks were on the southernmost Big Island of Hawaii, which is actively erupting today. The ages of the Hawaiian Islands gradually decrease as seen in the list below: Niihau and Kauai (5.6 - 3.8 million years old).Oahu (3.4 - 2.2 million years old)Molokai (1.8 - 1.3 million years old)Maui (1.3 - 0.8 years old)Big Island of Hawaii (less than 0.7 million years old) and it is still expanding. The Pacific Plate Conveys the Hawaiian Islands Wilson’s research proved that the Pacific Plate has been moving and carrying the Hawaiian Islands northwest off the hot spot. It moves at a rate of four inches a year. The volcanoes are conveyed away from the stationary hot spot; thus, as they move farther away they become older and more eroded and their elevation decreases. Interestingly, about 47 million years ago, the path of the Pacific Plate changed direction from north to northwest. The reason for this is unknown, but it might have been because of India colliding with Asia at approximately the same time. The Hawaiian Ridge-Emperor Seamount Chain Geologists now know the ages of the undersea volcanoes of the Pacific. In the farthest northwest reaches of the chain, the underwater Emperor Seamounts (extinct volcanoes) are between 35-85 million years old and they are highly eroded. These submersed volcanoes, peaks, and islands extend 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers) from the Loihi Seamount near the Big Island of Hawaii, all the way to the Aleutian Ridge in the northwest Pacific. The oldest seamount, Meiji, is 75-80 million years old, whereas the Hawaiian Islands are the youngest volcanoes - and a very small part of this vast chain. Right Under the Hot-Spot: Hawaii’s Big Island Volcanoes At this very moment, the Pacific Plate is moving over a localized source of heat energy, namely, the stationary hot spot, so active calderas continually flow and erupt periodically on the Big Island of Hawaii. The Big Island has five volcanoes that are connected together – Kohala, Mauna Kea, Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Kilauea. The northwestern part of the Big Island ceased erupting 120,000 years ago, whereas Mauna Kea, the volcano in the southwest part of the Big Island erupted only 4,000 years ago. Hualalai had its last eruption in 1801. Land is continually being added to the Big Island of Hawai’i because lava that flows from its shield volcanoes is deposited on the surface. Mauna Loa, the largest volcano on Earth, is the most massive mountain in the world because it occupies an area of 19,000 cubic miles (79,195.5 cubic km). It rises 56,000 feet (17,069 m), which is 27,000 feet (8,229.6 km) higher than Mount Everest. It is also one of the world’s most active volcanoes having erupted 15 times since 1900. Its most recent eruptions were in 1975 (for one day) and in 1984 (for three weeks). It could erupt again at any time. Since Europeans arrived, Kilauea has erupted 62 times and after it erupted in 1983 it stayed active. It is the Big Island’s youngest volcano, in the shield forming stage, and it erupts from its large caldera (bowl-shaped depression) or from its rift zones (gaps or fissures). Magma from the Earth’s mantle rises to a reservoir about one-half to three miles under Kilauea’s summit, and pressure builds up in the magma reservoir. Kilauea releases sulfur dioxide from vents and craters - and lava flows onto the island and into the sea. South of Hawaii, about 21.8 mi (35 km) off the coast of the Big Island, the youngest submarine volcano, Loihi, is rising from the sea floor. It last erupted in 1996, which is very recent in geological history. It is actively venting hydrothermal fluids from its summit and rift zones. Rising up about 10,000 feet above the ocean floor to within 3,000 feet of the water surface, Loihi is in the submarine, pre-shield stage. In accordance with the hot spot theory, if it continues to grow, it might be the next Hawaiian Island in the chain. The Evolution of a Hawaiian Volcano Wilson’s findings and theories have increased knowledge about the genesis and life cycle of hot spot volcanoes and plate tectonics. This has helped to guide contemporary scientists and future exploration. It is now known, that the heat of the Hawaiian hot spot creates fluid molten rock that consists of liquefied rock, dissolved gas, crystals, and bubbles. It originates deep below the earth in the asthenosphere, which is viscous, semi-solid and pressurized with heat. There are huge tectonic plates or slabs that glide over this plastic-like asthenosphere. Due to the geothermal hot spot energy, the magma or molten rock (which is not as dense as the surrounding rocks), rises through fractures from under the crust. The magma rises and pushes its way through the tectonic plate of the lithosphere (the rigid, rocky, outer crust), and it erupts on the ocean floor to create a seamount or underwater volcanic mountain. The seamount or volcano erupts under the sea for hundreds of thousands of years and then the volcano rises above the sea level. A large amount of lava is added to the pile, making a volcanic cone that eventually sticks out above the floor of the ocean - and a new island is created. The volcano keeps growing until the Pacific Plate carries it away from the hot spot. Then the volcanic eruptions cease to erupt because there is no longer a lava supply. The extinct volcano then erodes to become an island atoll and then a coral atoll (ring shaped reef). As it continues to sink and erode, it becomes a seamount or guyot, a flat underwater tablemount, no longer seen above the water’s surface. Summary Overall, John Tuzo Wilson provided some concrete evidence and deeper insight into the geological processes above and below the surface of the Earth. His hot spot theory, derived from studies of the Hawaiian Islands, is now accepted, and it helps people understand some ever-changing elements of volcanism and plate tectonics. Hawaii’s undersea hot spot is the impetus for dynamic eruptions, leaving behind rocky remnants that continually enlarge the island chain. While older seamounts are declining, younger volcanoes are erupting, and new stretches of lava land is forming.

Government responsibility Vs Individual responsibilty Essay

Government responsibility Vs Individual responsibilty - Essay Example This is quite evident in George Orwell's short story, A Hanging (first published in 1931 and reprinted in James and Merickel, 2001), the author describes a European's experience of watching a Hindu man's execution in Burma. As he acknowledges, he has never known what it feels like to destroy a perfectly healthy human body. Throughout the story, there is no inkling that the executioners know what the prisoner is accused of or why he is being hanged. It is simply the Europeans' duty to carry out orders in the name of the law. They go about doing their duty mechanically and go for their drink after the execution is over, quite oblivious of what the dead man could have felt like in his last minutes. The executioner, in his role as the government's representative, is simply carrying out his assigned role even when personally, the act is disgusting to him. In Things They Carried (reprinted in James and Merickel, 2001), Tim O'Brien describes the things that a group of soldiers carried with them when they went to the World War II. While most of them carried things of utter necessities, like can openers, pocket knives, wrist watches, mosquito repellants and so on, some also carried letters of their loved ones, diaries and books. None of the soldiers knew whether they would return home alive. Neither were they necessarily aware of the real reasons of the war. They simply knew that they had to fulfill their responsibilities as soldiers. Each one of the soldiers remembered their loves, the mistakes that they have committed in their personal lives and wished that they had behaved differently. Yet, there was no way to go back from their official responsibility and had to march on. Typically, authoritative show of power is exerted by states in order to maintain peace and individuals are nothing but pawns in the state machinery. In The Prince, a most commanding and widely read discourse on government, Niccolo Machiavelli prescribes the government's social and political stance on power and authority. Even in situations, when the individual sense of responsibility may come in the way, the government may need to adopt strategies that curtail free will. In an advisory tone, Machiavelli recommends policies that would dissuade mass political upheaval, directing subjects' energies into personal quests so that that the monarch could best protect his power. He advises sensible use of violence, reverence to private possessions and the traditions of his subjects without being politically rigid as being dictated by a fixed set of moral or religious standards. The monarch, from his perspective, may now and then be forgiven for taking resort to violence and dishonest deeds albeit morally unforgivable behind closed doors (lucidcafe.com). A new prince can get a principality: by his own arms, by the arms of others, by immoral ways, and by civil approaches. A principality won by a prince by his own arms is most safe. Citing the examples of Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, and Theseus, those princes who prevailed to power through their own skills ruling well, he points out that they were all armed, unlike Savaronola, who lost his command as he did not take resort to arms. According to him, a principality acquired by the arms of others requires a prince with both luck and high merit. Cesare Borgia was lucky to have

Researched argument essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Researched argument - Essay Example uch individuals has been depicted in several literary books and articles with a view of informing the entire nation and the world, at large, about the unlucky population in the United States. One of these books is Ehrenreich’s â€Å"Nicket and Dimed†. The book has its settings in Florida, Maine and Minnesota (Ehrenreich 38). People normally work to get money and make their lives better. However, what most of the workers in Florida experience is opposite, or contrary to what a reasonable person would think of. Most of the people in this area work hard but poverty still remain the greatest challenge to their existence and lives. Most of the workers strive to do their best but they do not achieve their target of affording a good lifestyle. The same is experienced by workers in Twin Cities in Minnesota and Maine. Another contradicting issue on the poverty life among people in these regions is that the demand for labor in most industries and companies is high, but the wages are very low and there are no increments. This is against the normal law of economics whereby an increase in demand naturally leads to an increase in the price of the product, or labor in this case. In addition to the above, the workers work tirelessly under these low wage rates. It is uncommon to find people commit themselves working on a peanut pay. Ehrenreich says that she grew with a belief that the secret of success was hard work and nothing else (E-notes.com). What she experiences in the mentioned areas makes her doubts her beliefs and the childhood teachings. ‘Hard work’ was the secret of success: ‘Work hard and you’ll get ahead’ or ‘It’s hard work that got us where we are (Chazelle & Chainani)†. She remembers this, through flashback, and believes that it is only t hrough hard work that she will achieve her life dreams and consequentially succeed in his plans. The reality that unveils the low-wage workplace is like a mockery to her (E-notes.com). She does not believe it

The new education style Scholarship Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The new education style - Scholarship Essay Example b. The relationship between reflection and critical thinking is important. In fact critical thinking cannot take place without reflection. One must understand self and that around self in order to apply knowledge to critical thinking. a. Previewing is an important exercise in learning. Instructors know that getting the student to read their textbook and preview essential materials will prepare them to be able to critically think and discuss during classroom, allowing for a better learning atmosphere. When you preview, you give your mind a general framework of main ideas and structure, you will be better able to comprehend when doing a thorough job of reading. d. Reflection is how we retain the information that we have learned. By asking the student to do a reflective journal or write a reflective paper at the end of the course, helps them to be able to think about how the information that they have learned should be or could be used. This allows the student a better chance of retention of the information that has been learned. Patricia Bizzell (2005), believes that first year students are entering, in a sense, a different world. There are many things that are different but suddenly the learning needs of this individual change rapidly. The student must learn, "the stances of fairness, objectivity, and formal courtesy that smooth the surface of academic disputation."(Bizzell, 2005). It is not known when they arrive, how they think, write, or what their ability with words is. It is not known whether they can articulate in such a way as needed to write an essay for example. This paper will review that thought According to Patricia Bizzell, Mina Shaughnessy once said, "The rituals and ways of winning arguments in academia are sometimes difficult to learn" yet we have always expected that students must win their arguments in order to learn. Ms Bizzell believes that this clash in discourse, coupled with the clash that new students have with the forms necessary for their education process and the methods that they use when they arrive cause many of first year issues. Clashing in ways of thinking becomes very important for the student must be able to critically think in order to work through many of the course needs in a University. Critical thinking is founded on reflection and most of these students, at least traditional students, have not had to critically think problems before. This immediately becomes a problem for them as they must move quicker through the curriculum than they are used to. In conclusion, first year students are stressed for many reasons but some of those reasons are the changes in culture that cause a clash with previous experience. Helping the student learn to handle those issues will make a much more successful student. Section D: Reading Comprehension and Critique Question 8 b. The author of this work believes that education in the past has been a situation of benign neglect and that philosophy is changing. The government has stepped up to influence that change. The author indicates to us that in the past adult education in the UK has been developed and taught as a literacy

The Sequestration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Sequestration - Essay Example One of the challenges that I have had to deal with is the introduction of unpaid off days as one way of reducing budgetary allocations at my work place. One requirement of the sequestration is to carry out deductions on employees pay on the total number of days the employee was off from work. As a result of this move by the government, it has become a necessity to look for part time jobs in order to compensate for the reduced income. Maneuvering between my workplace and my part time job is a real challenge. The second challenge is that I have to make reductions on expenditures on certain luxuries I and my family used to like. This poses a psychological challenge based on the fact that it is difficult to accept that I can no longer afford some services that were part and parcel of my life. Therefore, my performance at the workplace becomes compromised because I can no longer perform to the maximum. Some of the areas that I have been forced to make reductions on include expenditures on cell phone services, movie night and restaurants, cancelling vacations, and general reductions on family expenditures. Servicing mortgages, car loans, and other loans have become real challenges since the introduction of the sequestration strategy of dealing with budgetary deficits. This is as a result of the unexpected reduction in income at a time when mortgages and other loans were under servicing. This is frustrating in the sense that members of the congress who are imposing the sequestering policies may not be subjected to pay cuts similar to those of federal workers (Lee et al, 2012). The fact that reductions on budgetary allocations on government programs are likely to cause layoffs of government workers keeps every government worker with a lot of worries. It is projected that thousands of government workers are likely to lose their jobs as a result of the

Engineering Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Engineering - Research Paper Example It is essential that appliances which were introduced earlier (with usage of old technologies), prevail in energy consumption distribution; see Table above. For instance, energy consumption of the light bulbs, the kettle, and the electric oven takes over than 50% of total energy consumption. Simultaneously, usage of notebook, TV, and CD/DVD player takes less than 10% of total energy consumption in the household. Then, introducing of numerous appliances with high power inputs reflects in ecology due to necessity to make more electric power stations. It is essential that energy consumption can be reduced significantly without compromising human needs. There are several means to reduce adverse effects of usage of appliances with high energy consumption. First step is in limited usage of such appliances, e.g. switching-off non used light bulbs, unplugging seldom-used appliances and chargers for cell phone and other personal gadgets, setting computer to "sleep mode" or "hibernate mode", etc. Next step is more radical. This is replacement of appliances with high power inputs by equivalent appliances with less power inputs. For instance, replacement of old CRT monitor or TV by new TFT monitor or TV panel can significantly reduce energy consumption because these appliances are often used. ... However, these appliances need for enormous power supply and engineering support of appropriate infrastructure. It is essential that appliances which were introduced earlier (with usage of old technologies), prevail in energy consumption distribution; see Table above. For instance, energy consumption of the light bulbs, the kettle, and the electric oven takes over than 50% of total energy consumption. Simultaneously, usage of notebook, TV, and CD/DVD player takes less than 10% of total energy consumption in the household. Then, introducing of numerous appliances with high power inputs reflects in ecology due to necessity to make more electric power stations. 3. How to save energy in the household It is essential that energy consumption can be reduced significantly without compromising human needs. There are several means to reduce adverse effects of usage of appliances with high energy consumption. First step is in limited usage of such appliances, e.g. switching-off non used light bulbs, unplugging seldom-used appliances and chargers for cell phone and other personal gadgets, setting computer to "sleep mode" or "hibernate mode", etc. Next step is more radical. This is replacement of appliances with high power inputs by equivalent appliances with less power inputs. For instance, replacement of old CRT monitor or TV by new TFT monitor or TV panel can significantly reduce energy consumption because these appliances are often used. Replacement of standard light bulbs (100W) by low-energy fluorescent bulbs (less than 20W) is another example of such strategy. Many of new appliances use half the energy of those from decade ago. It is necessary to note that usually new appliances ar e more ergonomic and safe. Finally, there are

The Sequestration Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Sequestration - Essay Example One of the challenges that I have had to deal with is the introduction of unpaid off days as one way of reducing budgetary allocations at my work place. One requirement of the sequestration is to carry out deductions on employees pay on the total number of days the employee was off from work. As a result of this move by the government, it has become a necessity to look for part time jobs in order to compensate for the reduced income. Maneuvering between my workplace and my part time job is a real challenge. The second challenge is that I have to make reductions on expenditures on certain luxuries I and my family used to like. This poses a psychological challenge based on the fact that it is difficult to accept that I can no longer afford some services that were part and parcel of my life. Therefore, my performance at the workplace becomes compromised because I can no longer perform to the maximum. Some of the areas that I have been forced to make reductions on include expenditures on cell phone services, movie night and restaurants, cancelling vacations, and general reductions on family expenditures. Servicing mortgages, car loans, and other loans have become real challenges since the introduction of the sequestration strategy of dealing with budgetary deficits. This is as a result of the unexpected reduction in income at a time when mortgages and other loans were under servicing. This is frustrating in the sense that members of the congress who are imposing the sequestering policies may not be subjected to pay cuts similar to those of federal workers (Lee et al, 2012). The fact that reductions on budgetary allocations on government programs are likely to cause layoffs of government workers keeps every government worker with a lot of worries. It is projected that thousands of government workers are likely to lose their jobs as a result of the

Consumer behavior apply to e-dating Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Consumer behavior apply to e-dating - Essay Example The study will take an investigative approach, which involves the use of conceptual models aimed at boiling down to the aptitude to endow with appropriate matches through successful business to customer services enhanced by the internet and based on the sound customer relations administration practices. The models used in this survey include the Nicosia model, the HowarthSheth Model, and Bettman processing model, which facilitate privacy and secure oriented environment for customers. It is imperative to note that the whole study of consumer behaviour blends diverse opinions and views from sociology, social science and anthropology, psychology and economics (Rosenthal & Knighton, 2002). On the other hand, consumer behaviour can be defined as the process or study aimed at understanding diverse decision-making procedures embraced by buyers at dissimilar situations. Similarly, the buyer’s individual features are included in the consumer study (Conti, 2009). Such characteristics in clude demographics and other variables correlated to the behavioural variables aimed at determining what the consumer wants. It is observed that the customer behaviour analysis has re-discovery of the real meaning of marketing through the reaffirmation of the significance of the buyer (Out of Pocket, 2009). For instance, a lot of emphasis is given in the customer relationship management, customization and consumer retention. Nicosia model Consume e dating refers to courting a partner with an anticipated aspect over the internet. The Nicosia model describes the relationship amid the firms and the consumers. The model focuses on the conscious decision making behaviour of the consumers, where the act of purchasing is only one stage of the wholly ongoing decision process of consumers. The flowcharting perception by Nicosia simplifies and systemizes the variables, which affect the consumer decision making. Consider the illustration below, which help in understanding the process of e dati ng Courtesy of HAINES, G. H. (1969). Consumer behaviour: learning models of purchasing. New York, The Free Press [etc.]. The internet complements the conventional business strategy in business to customer relations establishment, and this is particularly the online dating. The web-enabled expertise does not eliminate the need to design a sustainable cutthroat benefit and does not revolutionize the configuration of an industry (Gao, 2005). It is imperative to note that, the internet and online business fits well in the Nicosia model. The internet serves well in as a tool and firms are required to share this perspective for the successful application and maximum benefits. This study establishes that, five forces determine the configuration of any industry (Gao, 2005). They include the level of rivalry amid contenders’ barriers to entry, peril of proxy products, the bargaining power embraced by buyers and the bargaining power of suppliers. It is observable that, numerous compani es, which have been, designed exclusively on the internet, with no authentic value and lofty price ratios have remained dotcoms, which have failed miserably (Gao, 2005). On a similar note, a couple of successful online companies have fallen victims of similar situations,

Birthright citizenship in the United States of America Essay Example for Free

Birthright citizenship in the United States of America Essay In â€Å"Americanism,† Theodore Roosevelt describes the meaning of hyphenated Americans and their lives in the United States. There was no room in Roosevelt’s America for immigrants or sons of immigrants, who cling to the speech, the customs, the way of life, and the habits of thought from the old world which they have left. The hyphenated American is not an American at all. Those immigrants who hyphenated their Americanism, modifying it with the land of their or their parents’ birth, were and could not be true Americans. These Americans also can vote and be the primarily citizen of a foreign country. Roosevelt writes that the foreign-born population must be an Americanized population. They must talk the language of its native-born fellow-citizens; possess American citizenship, American ideas and maintain an American standard of living. The immigrants must not to be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. According to Roosevelt, America cannot afford to keep a lot of immigrants as industrial assets and not as human beings. We also cannot pay low wages to immigrants, and keep immigrants working on American mines, railways or working in our munitions plants because it is dangerous. All United States citizens must stand shoulder to shoulder for the elimination of race and religious prejudice. We must also improve maintenance of the American standard of living; direct every national resource, material and spiritual, and train our people to overcome difficulties. We can do all this work in a democratic country where all people have equal rights and hopes for a good future life.

The use of the loose coupling theory

The use of the loose coupling theory Loose coupling theory proposes that different parts of an organization are loosely related to one another. This can be understood as that different divisions of an organization are loosely coupled with one another, i.e. activities in the higher education department are loosely coupled to those in the English department activities in one department have a minimal impact, or take a long time to show up, in the other. The main thesis of his article is to argue that there are seven pros and corresponding cons of loose couplings. According to Weick (1976), loose coupling is a cognitive response to an environment of constant change, in which connections, networks, diffusion, imitation, and social comparison are less prevalent. The loose coupling systems (LCSs) are uncoordinated and have greater differentiation among components, high degrees of specialization among workers, and low predictability of future action, including change. In general, loosely coupled systems probably are cheaper t o coordinate, but are very difficult to systematically change. The goal of Weicks article is to show that all organizations do not function with tight linkages some organizations, like educational systems, are more loose, which may create more difficult problems for researchers. The loosely coupled approach has a strong parallel in more recent approaches to viewing organizations as complex systems, which has attracted considerable interest among management and organizational theorists. Birnbaum argues that complex systems such as collegial or bureaucratic institution models provide insights to the analysis of LCSs. Complex systems are bottom-up phenomena, also defined as systems comprising large numbers of agents in highly connected webs, can display both high levels of order and disorder. Importantly, order in complex systems is usually a result of micro-structuring processes that provide for robust self-organization. This form of order is not dependent on hierarchical control but is distributed, and it can lead to system-wide stability (or instability). Complex systems do well when they engage in a search for healthier and better-off states, otherwise searches are directed from the top down, and system will likely settle into only moderately fit states. Al so systems must be relatively free to interact with other systems until good fitting strategies are found. Complex systems have slow response times not because they are any slower than simpler systems in detecting environmental threats and opportunities, but because the process of adjustment takes longer. Educational systems demonstrate considerable robustness and resilience in the face of both environmental and intended change, thus the key is to focus on relationships and the building of similar behavior based around trust. Weick (1976) notes that more loosely coupled organizations offer advantages in complex environments. More autonomous groups may be more sensitive to environmental change, and offer more simultaneously adaptation to conflicting demands at the institutional level. If problems develop in one part of the system, it can be sealed off from the rest of the system. Efforts to create a less loosely coupled system or to control and centralize have not altered the overall complex system, which still remains loosely coupled. The concept of LCS is crucial to Rhoades argument about strategic activity. While Weicks strengths and challenges related to LCSs are positioned in difficulties to change organizations systematically, Rhoades approach calls for development of strategic activity through managerialism. Rhoades emphasizes that managerialism and market approaches are two sets of ideas that recently have influenced educational decision-making processes. The problem with these ideas, especially in loosely tight educational organizations, is that although it provided some change, it may not provide a basis for future improvement in education, especially in student learning. Within this model there is an assumption that there is a tight coupling between education policy (e.g. curriculum) and how teachers teach. Where improved performance is sought it is pursued through the manipulation of formal mechanisms such as rules, procedures, rewards or changed evaluation. Bureaucratic hierarchies have however been in creasingly criticized for being non-responsive and inefficient means for organizing public administration. With respect to education, they have certainly proven resistant to change. Managerial initiative is important to Rhoades in moving the universities forward, which is in contrast with loose couplings assumption where planned change has a low predictability as is unlikely to be successful within loose coupling environment. Loose coupling concept also poses some problems for leaders who want to change their organizations. Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) were well aware of this problem of change in loosely coupled systems. They argued that administrators could get around it by finding ways to tighten the coupling patters in their organizations, such as reorganization and stabilization of exchange relationships. The idea was to reduce internal and external variability in the system so that it could be more easily controlled. Thus, loosely coupled organizations can embrace change because its impact is limited. For instance, the English department can change without any punishment if no other departments are affected by its changes the loosely coupled organization as a whole isolates and neutralizes disturbance; however, change is slow. External as well as internal influences are absorbed by this organizational structure. So, the individual departments are not themselves typically difficult to change; rather, the problem lies in getting the entire organization to change, in diffusing the change across the networks. Birnbaum (1988) clearly articulates that to strengthen academic leadership, one must reform structures, adopt more rationalized management systems, and increase the power of executive leadership to make faster, more efficient, and more effective decisions, but for leadership to be effective within LCS, communication has to be present as a sense of general openness in institutional governance and climate. Leaders create organized disorder in which dynamic things happen at multiple locales within the system, thus creating a new behavior rather than controlling organizational activities. Also, the application of data to interaction permits information to influence preferences and possibilities, and that leads to decisions grounded in reality. It is not only about collection, analysis, and dissemination of data, but also about different constituents being interested in that data a nd how it interacts (Birnbaum, 1988). The interaction leads not only to positive administrative decision-making, but also to being rational and looking for consensus among loosely coupled units. Complex organizations cannot function effectively over the long term without leaders to coordinate the activities, represent them, and symbolize the institutional purpose (Birnbaum, 1988). As to administrative decision-making, Weick (1976) notices that LCSs are difficult to change systematically, thus any decision-making change that has to be discussed will encounter a problem of systematic change. The issue with implementation of any administrative change will always come down to the fact that teaching is isolated work and improving instruction is strictly a matter of individual initiative. Thus, the problem with administrative decision-making in LCS is that colleges do not show any collective impact on student learning. The problem with it is also that decision-making is explicitly and directly concerned with the instructional core of education by arguing that educational institutions and their faculty and staff need to be accountable for student learning. Moreover, loose coupling implies that the source of an effect may be located at a considerable distance in time or organizational structure from the effect itself, thus amplification of non-linear cycles makes it p ossible for an insignificant decision to have a major effect as it moves through the system over time (Birnbaum, 1988, p. 71). Birnbaum describes this as butterfly effect and indicates that cause and effect are difficult to predict or determine in loose coupling model. Moreover, circular systems that he describes may also imply about administrative decision-making. He encourages thinking in circles as thinking of unintended consequences that may arise with complexity of how things interact. Although, institutional prestige, faculty morale, student enrollment, and sense of community are crucial for this model, the feedback loops are missing from this model as well as culture of the organization. Also, local adaptations will not always assist with generating efficient responses to system-wide challenges in a decision-making process. Loose coupling implies slow diffusion of central initiatives. As a consequence, the administrator would have to start projects earlier, start more project s, start projects in a greater variety of places, and even talk more frequently about those projects that have been started. The perspective of educational systems as being loosely coupled seems to be weak at explaining one major decision making fact that approaches to schooling have remained remarkably uniform across geography and time. If education systems are loosely coupled, diverse practices should emerge in response to differing local needs and differing ideas about education. Loose coupling can account for the diversity of ways in which units implement different decisions; for instance, the RCM is the way to find innovative options to strengthen individual units where the center does not correlate with units (Rhoades, 2000). In order to improve administrative decision-making, the administrator should emphasize the role of interaction among an organizations members, as well as collaboration and negotiation as methods to determine how decisions should be carried. 2. The Mode 2 knowledge production model is perhaps the most well-known term used to indicate the impact of changes for the university sector. Gibbons et. al.(1994) in the mid-1990s presented their Mode 2 theory saying that university researchers, who previously most often worked on internal disciplinary Mode 1 problems, were now more inclined to involve themselves closely in industrial and governmental research collaborations. Economical factors were seen to be the drivers, as closer relations between university research and industry developed to meet competition from the growing economies. This trend prompted new organizations such as think tanks or hybrid organizations, which often were places where the new front research was to be found. Gibbons et. al. referred to these as Mode 2 organizations, seeing them as generic for the whole research landscape. It seems that Mode 2 model especially in research area was a result of a general economic development towards post-industrialism. Moreover, mode 2 knowledge production model is application-based, and can be explored in an interdisciplinary fashion. As such, the emergence of Mode 2 production would not eclipse Mode 1 methods entirely. In a resource-seeking environment, Mode 2 would likely be more attractive to outside funding agencies and investors due to its application-based principles. Mode 2 may not lead to increased social accountability rather than being held to social values, Mode 2 knowledge would respond to market values, thus will privilege certain kinds of knowledge over others. In this sense, Mode 2 is related to academic capitalism that proposes market-relevant knowledge production. From an academic capitalism perspective, Mode 2 can have a tendency to focus on disciplines with well-known possibilities for commercial use, i.e. technology and medicine, whereas other disciplines may be mostly ignored. By the same token, since both concepts are normative, the system of norms may be well affected especially among traditional researchers within social sciences. In this area, internal interests for research questions seem to be far away from industrys interest for commercial products or the governments interest for useful results. However, one can make an argument supporting Mode 2 and somehow against the notions of academic capitalism. It has to be noticed that Mode 2 would not push research outside of the university, but rather that applied science and the facilities for training researchers would make university-industry relations stronger. For instance, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and related intellectual property legislation profoundly affected the commercial poten tial of government-sponsored research and still allowed research to be conducted within the realm of universities walls. Thus, technology transfer was quite symbolic and the Act was a step toward developing a social exchange between university science and society. In this sense, Mode 2 can be seen as a positive engine that transformed the public research model. Moreover, knowledge production is crucial because knowledge society seen through the lens of academic capitalism would focus more on the activities of higher education institutions in the two countries in a particular regional sphere. Thus, the argument may take us to propositions of globalization and internationalization. A critique that may arise from academic capitalism proponents is the fact that there is no support for a merger of interests between researchers and industry. Researchers at the institutes (or centers of excellence) instead devote their precious time to a shorter research perspective that is strictly coming from the industry or directed toward it. This process was seen as influenced by reductions in state-support, an explanation quite close to the one put forward by Slaughter Leslie (1997). Thus, Mode 2 may jeopardize a strictly public focus of research universities when these start heavily getting involved with the industry. Even though Mode 2 involves multidisciplinary teams brought together for short periods of time to work on specific problems in the real world, this concept, from strictly academic capitalism critique, may not show any organizational diversity, which is at the core of academic capitalism. Also, academic capitalism may criticize Mode 2 as a concept of political i deology rather than a descriptive theory that academic capitalism claims to be. As for similarities, both concepts apply that there are three major actors in science university, industry and government and these extend beyond their former specific areas and change their former roles in closer collaborations for the benefit of economic development of society, thus academic capitalism partly confirms the claims of rising Mode 2. From the perspective of institutional theory, Mode 2 is a problem related to institutional structures. From an institutional theory standpoint, there are templates for organizing institutions that are implicitly understood and translated to new members of an organization. Moreover, these templates are interpretive schema, underlying values and assumptions, similar to mental models (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Scott, 1995). Templates of institutional behavior create resistance to change. One concept within the institutional theory that has regularly been applied to higher education institutions to explain change is institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), which suggests that institutions do not change as a result of a competitive market, external pressures or efficiency, but rather through the force of homogenization, striving to be like other types of colleges perceived to be elite. Mode 2 contrasts with institutional theory in the sense of the concept of change because influence of market and other external forces (such as NGOs or TNOs) create a high degree of heterogeneity among institutions. Institutional isomorphism also suggests that institutions tend not to be distinctive in their identity development or image, while Mode 2 emphasizes on organizations that do not have to necessarily conform to the rules and belief systems prevailing in the existing environment. For instance, older and well-established universities with strong cultures will have more specific power to resist change, while other institutions may be more vulnerable to market ideas. Since universities are complex and conflicted organizations, the institutional isomorphism that is projected by institutional theory may be one of the limitations of this theory to encourage distinctiveness and diversity of HED institutions. A critique that might arise from the institutional theory perspective is that the institutions have to learn to share their resources (physical, intellectual and  ¬Ã‚ nancial) with other kinds of knowledge producing institutions. According to Janson (2002), this task may be very difficult to accomplish considering that universities have held the monopoly among knowledge producers. Mode 2 is a threat to this status quo by encouraging alliances as well as collaborative relationships with other knowledge producers. Another critique from an IT standpoint is that Mode 2 would change standards of evaluation and accreditation as well as success and progression that would encourage more of a multidisciplinary context. For IT proponents, disciplinary boundaries are important, thus not only is traditional career path model being challenged by Mode 2, but also the nature of the undergraduate curriculum. Mode 2 is not the only knowledge production model that is challenging the more traditiona l, basic sciences model, but globalization and internationalization as well. According to Gibbons (1994), knowledge is transdisciplinary, problem-oriented, application-based, team-driven, multi-sited, partnership-based, socially useful, heterogeneous, quality controlled, re ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å¡ective and responsive, and less hierarchical than disciplinary knowledge of the kind produced in universities, that is being characterized as typically centered on disciplines, with academic hierarchies, more norm-concentrated, authoritative in regards to social behavior as well as concerned with homogeneity. Another critique is that it will be hard to protect academia from worldwide economic trends as well as production of knowledge in purely economic terms. Because Mode 2 is strictly defined in economic terms, all institutions may have a tendency for duplication and may follow one economic trend in order to survive. Scott (1995) indicates that, in order to survive, organizations must conform to the rules and belief systems prevailing in the environment because institutional isomorphism, both structural and procedural, will earn the organization legitimacy (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Meyer and Rowan, 1977). The institutional theory claims that change is less likely to happen within or among organizations, while Mode 2 encourages change especially toward the private sector being more entrepreneurial and challenging the traditional values found especially in higher education institutions. While institutional theory supports traditional values of HED institutions, Mode 2 encourages growth o f those hybrid organizations that capitalize on connections to teaching, research, and service. 4. The most important differentiation is that the concepts of globalization and internationalization that are characterized by glonacal agency heuristic (GAH) are situated above the level of nation-state. GAH as a method of thought focuses on institutions, positions, agency, and structure at three levels: national, local, and global. The concept focuses on colleges and universities (and units and faculty within them) as global agents, encouraging studies of activity and stratification regionally and internationally. However, it is not a method of positioning yourself relative to others. Globalization is not universal, because it does not feel the same for everyone, thus it is not inevitable. In this respect, globalization is uneven and asymmetrical. Moreover, the pressure that it is felt as an institution most of the time mediates. For instance, even if the pressure comes from a national or global context, the local arena may be able to mediate things. For instance, Raytheon company has a heavy involvement on the University of Arizona, however does not have hardly any on Pima Community College. On the other hand, the PCC has a pressure from auto repair industry in cooperation with Jim Click to have mechanics to fix cars. Thus, GAH provides a different response of institutions to globalization. It seems that for GAH there is no separation between globalization and internationalization because both are a total of complex interactions of human and institutional agencies at local, national, and global levels. Marginson and Rhoades (2002) define two types of agency: human agency and institutional agency. For them, it is all about positioning things not individuals. For instance, a supranational agency such as the World Bank has an im pact in developing countries, and the whole impact is being driven by market forces; thus individuals do not shape the globalization process. It takes a lot of agencies to understand what is going on and understand and find a point of where we could resist the impact. According to GAH there is limited analysis of the complex agencies and processes that define them; no global dimension to analyze yet. Thus, with it more comparative studies need to be conducted to know human agency better and also local dimensions institutions and agents. While depicting GAH, the authors base their concept on Clarks description of academic profession that is structured by a triangle, in which market-state is a starting point, from which everything spills over to disciplines and professions as well to government and management. Knight (2004) replies to this issue with the process of internationalization that is supposed to be happening on a continuum basis. Her concept of internationalization is chara cterized similar to Clarks description as a triangle, in which interactions may be of hexagonal shape, but the whole process of internationalization will happen on a continuum basis. For Knight, globalization/internationalization is binary and is an omnipresent force that institutions have to respond to. It is similar to the Newtonian account of action and reaction. However, unlike Marginson and Rhoades, she is interested in institutions approaches (the ways in which they internationalize) and their rationale (why you are doing it explanations and goals), and how they interconnect (by preparing students to exist in global society or bringing in faculty from around the world). Thus, reciprocity is of important value to this concept. It is up to you how you are changing the world. So in that sense, Knight disagrees with Marginson and Rhoades that there is opportunity for everyone to progress. It is worth mentioning that the concept of internationalization is often confused with globalization (Altbach, 2004). The main difference is that globalization may not be unalterable, but internationalization is a process involving many choices. Globalization tends to concentrate wealth, knowledge, and power in those already possessing these elements, thus diminishing the importance of peripheries. International academic mobility similarly favors well-developed education systems and institutions, thereby compounding existing inequalities. Initiatives and programs, coming largely from the north, are focused on the south. The key here is that Altbach summarizes programs and activities relevant to the American study abroad tradition while Knight emphasizes on internationalization as a process. For Knight, internationalization is a two-way street that serves important needs. For Altbach, the concept is focused largely on the south-north spectrum, where students move primarily from south to north, where north controls the process. In this sense, Altbachs approach is based on radical dependency theory that relies on neo-colonialism core. Also, I got an impression that Knights concept of internationalization is not focused on economic (mostly financial) ends. Instead, internationalization is supposed to enhance research, knowledge, and cultural understanding. For instance, one of the initiatives may include study-abroad experiences or enrichment of curriculum through offering a major in international studies or other area studies. Deeply in the core, it does not seem that the process is intended to bring financial profits, but strategically implemented will enhance competitiveness and institutional prestige. However, the process itself, if not controlled, may focus too much on institutional strategies and policies while excluding national governments. In the same aspect, I could sense a tint of skepticism in Altbachs approach in regards to an economic trend of globali zation. Even though he acknowledges the trend and claims it is inevitable, he emphasizes on negative aspects of internationalization as a process that will further diminish the intellectual as well as cultural sides within the developing countries. In addition, Knights definition of internationalization seems to limit itself to the teaching function of the institution by concentrating on the expansion of international curriculum. Although both articles of Altbach and Knight are written in the same year, it seems that Altbach hardly mentions supranational organizations while Knight already acknowledges the new trend proclaiming that not only institutions and national policy makers alone are driving the internationalization, but supranational organizations as well. The tendency for Knight is to look at challenges that globalization presents us from an insider perspective how institutions as well as individuals react to globalization through internationalization, while Altbachs approach can be seen from the outsider perspective that acknowledges institutions, but not the processes and individuals within.