Motherhood and slavery Essay

As a capable black woman and as a mother, Sethe feels obligated to provide Beloved, whether her daughter or not, â€Å"a bed to sleep in and somebody there not worrying you to death about what you got to do each day to deserve it† (Beloved 67-68). Therefore, her job as mother, as caretaker, as â€Å"life-giver† and â€Å"life-maintainer† is never-ending, and because it is never-ending, it has the potential to take her to her grave. Beyond that, Sethe fears losing Beloved before she can make her understand that worse than killing her own daughter, â€Å"—far worse—was what Baby Suggs died of what Ella knew, what Stamp saw and what made Paul D tremble. † (Beloved 251). Although not entirely true, for Sethe’s best thing is herself, the one thing about herself that she values, that slavery has not taken away from her is motherhood. This, for Sethe, is maintaining a mental survival for her children, preventive medicine for the ills of slavery. As Kubitschek notes, â€Å"On the plantations†¦ black women’s nurturance—from the physical (nursing milk) to the metaphysical (energy and patience)—is used up primarily in working fields and tending white children† (166). But for Sethe, who was able to have her children with her, â€Å"the major means of protecting children from slavery is to value them and to communicate this value to them† (Kubitschek 166). This is a sacrifice Sethe and many mothers, traditional and nontraditional, are more than willing to make. This becomes especially painful in part two of the novel. When Sethe thinks about Beloved and her own actions, she says she will explain it all to Beloved, reflecting, â€Å"How if I hadn’t killed her she would have died and that is something I could not bear to happen to her†¦ I’ll tend her as no mother ever tended a child, a daughter. Nobody will ever get my milk no more except my own children† (Beloved 200). Here we can see transforming and destereotyping potential of Sethe’s actions. She goes on thinking of how she will change, how she can mother now as a free woman. In this case, it is as if Sethe must be a nontraditional, unstereotypical mother in order to accomplish the traditional mothering role she wants to attain. She also reflects on her faults when Beloved returns, how she was distracted by Paul D and should not have been. But it is at this point that she demonstrates the difference between man and woman, between father and mother. Kubitschek argues that â€Å"In the twilight area of an illegal freedom, Sethe has immediately, upon being summoned back to slavery, acted on a slave definition of mothering: presence is all† (167). Being together, even if dead together, was enough. â€Å"Presence is all. † Lucille Fultz cites Marsha Darling’s interview with Morrison in which Morrison asserts: â€Å"Under the theatrical conditions of slavery, if you made that claim†¦ that you are the mother of these children you were claiming the right to say something about what happens to them. † Morrison terms Sethe’s commitment to her children â€Å"an excess of maternal feeling, a total surrender. † This surrender is configured in Sethe’s desire to protect her daughter from the ills she suffered as a female slave. † (40) Sethe takes her protection of her children one step further. Fultz contends that â€Å"Through desire and knowledge Sethe achieves subjectivity for herself and her children. She refuses to subscribe to the system that treats her and her family as objects† (38). She especially needs to make up to Beloved, perhaps because she killed her, or perhaps because the death separated them as Sethe had been separated from her own â€Å"ma’am. † Kubitschek asserts, â€Å"Still defining motherhood as keeping her children with her, Sethe cannot reject the ghost’s presence† (167). Perhaps it is more a loss of a time component than the actual murder component that Sethe regrets. Thus, because she spent so little time with her own mother, she must spend as much time with her daughters as possible, which leads to their month of playing together. Morrison visually paints their month, noting the â€Å"star-loaded sky,† â€Å"sweet milk,† â€Å"string puzzles in afternoon light,† â€Å"shadow pictures in the gloaming,† â€Å"a garden of vegetables and flowers† (Beloved 240). All of this serves Sethe’s purpose until Beloved decides it is not enough, and Denver realizes â€Å"that her mother could die and leave them both and what would Beloved do then? † (Beloved 243). Beloved has no life of her own, no name, and never did. She was never called anything but the â€Å"crawling already? girl† and â€Å"Beloved† as her gravestone marked her. Not a name to cling to. Morrison tells us that â€Å"Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name† (Beloved 274) because she is a representation of life, many lives, but does not get the opportunity to live her own. She can be the woman during the Middle Passage; she can be the woman in slavery; she can be the woman who escaped slavery; and she is all of these. She â€Å"embodies each and every woman of the African American motherline†¦ and†¦ is also linked to Sethe’s own mother who, like the murdered granddaughter, remains nameless† (O’Reilly 86, 87). But as a result, she is never herself. Morrison poetically crosses three generations of women, who learn and demonstrate survival skills, in a very matriarchally religious trinity—mother: Sethe’s mother; daughters: Sethe and eventually Denver; and â€Å"holy† ghost: Beloved. Each fights for survival of herself, and of future generations through different means. Sethe’s mother rebels and is hanged, but impresses upon her daughter what truly matters—the self and a sense of connection with one’s own matrilineal line. Sethe escapes slavery with her children and is willing to kill them so that they may â€Å"survive† maintaining their natural selves. Beloved is reincarnated. This is her survival, but it also leads to Denver’s ability to survive on her own, which further protects and preserves the potential for future generations. Essentially, all these women can fight for survival at this point in the novel because there is a sense of belonging, of necessity. Sethe gives herself inherence when she places complete necessity on herself for the responsibility of her children. Morrison describes Sethe as a free woman, as a free mother, writing, â€Å"Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another† (Beloved 95). But that is what Sethe is able to do. In the Clearing, she claims herself. At this point, she is finally able to attach herself to the self that she can create. As a result, she can also, hi her mother role, help begin to claim selfhood for those around her. Thus, she returned to 124, â€Å"opened the door, walked in and locked it tight behind her† and when â€Å"Sethe locked the door, the women inside were free at last to be what they liked, see whatever they saw and say whatever was on their minds† (Beloved 198, 199). This is all part of Sethe’s role as mother. She defends others, her own girls especially, with her whole body, her whole home. Yet, the one thing she does not immediately understand or establish for herself, until Paul D makes her realize it, is that Beloved, her â€Å"crawling already?girl,† was not her â€Å"best thing. † Sethe is a woman destined for survival early on because of the actions she takes and the decisions she makes as a mother, but she cannot see her personal value beyond powerful motherhood until the end, when she is a free woman: free of slavery, free of Beloved, beginning to be free of the past, free of the blame of murdering her daughter to â€Å"save† her, and free of the blame of making the ink schoolteacher used to assess their animal characteristics and measurements (Beloved 271). Then and only then does she fully comprehend the destereotyped notion of â€Å"best thing† as herself. Redefining motherhood for herself, Sethe also redefines the foundation of humanity. By making her character commit that horrible act, Toni Morrison asks her reader: is the inhumanity in Sethe’s killing of the baby or is it in the horrible system that drives her to commit this act? Playing with the reader’s mind, Morrison dislocates scenes of the slaves’ beating that are prevalent in narratives of slavery. For the image of the master holding the stick, she substitutes that of the slave committing a violent act on her own child. From now on the slave is given the opportunity to have a voice. Why murder her baby? With this infanticide, Sethe’s writing of history undermines the ideology that founded the white masters. This ideology, based on a racial and gendered duality, locates humanity within the white race. It is this vision and appropriation of humanity that Morrison attacks. If humanity lies in the empowerment of the white man who engages in a violent exploitation of the non-white, driving the latter to kill her child, where does inhumanity stand?

Digital Media Impact Upon Consumer Transactions Education Essay

Digital media are known to hold a differentiated impact upon consumer minutess, information assemblage and citizen engagement ( Long, Webber and Li, 2008 ) . As Frand ( 2000 ) points out, many concern sectors like banking and publication, are confronting an unsure scenario with the rise of the new coevals of Digital Natives: will anyone travel to a â€Å" bank † any longer? Will textbooks still be printed? Will libraries be on-line electronic aggregations? As mentioned in the debut of this survey, the Digital Natives are an of import mark for sellers because of their size and disbursement power, but their ingestion forms are today far from being to the full understood ( Baronial, Haytko, Phillips, 2009 ) . Furthermore, this coevals will shortly be portion of the work force and it is a cardinal issue for internal market oriented employers to happen the best schemes to actuate them in the workplace, by bettering the company ‘s internal selling ( Raines, 2002 ) . Digital Natives behaviors and penchants, like their scarce tolerance for holds, omnipresent connectivity and penchant for typing over authorship, are of import to houses who want to offer a good service to Digital Natives clients. In the epoch of eBay, on-line banking 24/7 and Amazon, Digital Natives expect high degree of reactivity from companies, every bit good as from self-service engineerings. Surveies by Long and McMellon ( 2004 ) proved that baffled definitions of clients ‘ outlooks are one of the most of import causes for electronic services to neglect in meeting quality demands. It has besides been proved that a consumer ‘s overall engineering beliefs have an influence on their leaning to follow new engineering ( Parasuraman et al. 2000 ) . In other words, â€Å" client specific properties might act upon, for case, the properties that clients desire in an ideal web site and the public presentation degrees that would signal superior e-Service Quality † ( Parasuraman et al. 2000, p.216 ) . The list of Digital Natives attributes employed in this survey is a first measure to assist developing a new set of penchants and beliefs among Generation Y consumers that might be need to be considered when planing effectual web sites and e-services. Digital Natives accomplishments are indispensable to employers ( Raines, 2002 ) and the other articles on their direction†¦ .add Irish bull here. It has been argued that as information is going more and more a trade good ( Openshaw and Goddard 1987 ) , the deficiency of cognition on how to utilize information engineering is a important barrier to employment ( Long, Webber and Li, 2008 ) . Investigating the motive and the school consequences of pupils who possess an Information age mentality is hence indispensable as those accomplishments, needed in the workplace, might necessitate to be leveraged by colleges and universities to break the pupils ‘ employability records and fix them to carry through the demands of modern organisation. If the simple accretion of cognition is going less of import and college dropouts such as Bill Gates become icons of the new coevalss, possibly Digital Native upholders are right in naming for an educational reform that taps into the pupils ‘ new accomplishments. Lack of accomplishments with engineering might besides convey to societal exclusion Acadamic public presentations of their pupils by tapping into their new digital accomplishments could besides assist to make full the Digital Divide that As information becomes progressively commodified the deficiency of entree to a computing machine, or a deficiency of cognition of how to utilize it, may in clip become as important a beginning of disadvantage as for illustration entree to or deficiency of entree to a auto or entree to or deficiency of entree to cardinal warming. Arguably, in footings of employability, a deficiency of competency in the usage of information engineering may go as important a barrier as a deficiency of higher educational makingsThe Digital Natives and the Information Age MindsetLiterature on e-Service quality measuring present several dimension like Access ( the ability to acquire on a website rapidly and to make the company when needed ) , Responsiveness ( i.e. speedy response and the ability to acquire aid if there is a job or a inquiry ) and Ease of pilotage ( Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Malhotra, 2000 ) that are related Today ‘s pupils are defined by Prensky ( 2001a, p.1 ) as ‘Digital Natives ‘ i.e. â€Å" native talkers of the digital linguistic communication of computing machines, video games and the Internet † . As a consequence of the fact that these pupils have grown up immersed in engineering and ne'er knew a clip without the Internet, e-mail and nomadic telephones, Prensky theorizes that they think and process information in a different manner from old coevals. To prolong this statement, he relies on neuroplasticity theories, which suggest that the encephalon is flexible and able to accommodate to alterations in the environment. Therefore, he argues, immature pupil ‘s encephalons are wholly different from grownups who grew up without engineerings. Following this lingual metaphor, in Prensky ‘s footings today ‘s grownups and instructors are Digital Immigrants â€Å" who speak an out-of-date linguistic communication † ( 2001a, p.2 ) . They might be able to larn the new linguistic communication, but they will ever retain their immigrant ‘accent ‘ . The Immigrant/Natives duality is believed to hold serious negative effects on pupil motive, attending spans, satisfaction ( Oblinger, 2003, Prensky, 2001a ; Levin and Arafeh, 2002 ) . For Prensky, instructors are fighting to learn these new coevalss, while pupils â€Å" cry out † for new attacks to instruction. Prensky ‘s definition of Digital Natives is partially derived from Frand ( 2000 ) who identifies ten properties of what he defines the Infomation Age Mindset. These properties are used in this survey as a base for an operational definition of the concept of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ and hence are worth a farther scrutiny. The first property ascribed to Digital Natives by Frand is that they view computing machines as a normal portion of life, instead than as â€Å" engineering † . If engineering is considered as â€Å" anything that is n't about when you were born † ( Frand, 2000 p.16 ) it ‘s easy to state why computing machines are non seen as engineering by the immature coevalss. Rather than being impressed by new, extremely sophisticated appliances, the Natives tend to hold a â€Å" what took so long? † reaction alternatively. A 2nd feature of Digital Natives is the belief that Internet is better than Television. Frand states that the Natives are utilizing the web as their primary beginning of information. On one manus the Internet is a more synergistic media compared to the Television and this should partially get the better of one of the Television major defects. On the other manus, the information overload and the fundamental hunt techniques adopted by the bulk of them makes it hard to separate facts and fiction, dependable and undependable beginnings. Information overload and deficiency of clip might besides be some of the ground why pupils ‘ engage in a test and mistake attack instead than utilizing traditional job work outing techniques ( see the Nintendo over Logic property ) . The 3rd characteristic of the Digital Natives is named by Frand Reality no longer existent. This attribute refers to the job of content genuineness on the Internet. Many Internet resources are non dependable and personal individualities can be stolen or cloned. Distinguishing between what is existent and what is non has become one of the major challenges for the Digital Natives. A 4th quality of the Digital Natives is their penchant for Making an activity instead than cognizing the theories behind it. This property is cardinal to this survey as it is straight related with pupil ‘s achievement end orientation ( command or public presentation orientated pupils ) . Frand observes that in a universe dominated by digital engineerings, where drastic alterations occur, the life span of information is measured in months. Therefore, cognizing many facts is going less and less of import, while the ability to cover with complex and equivocal information is cardinal for pupils come ining the work force. Another acquisition penchant is the 1 that involves the acceptance of a â€Å" Nintendo † attack to acquisition, that is, utilizing trial-and-error, to accomplish desired consequence instead than careful research. Frand describes this manner as typical of the new coevals of pupils, born with videogames, that tend to near jobs in a test and mistake manner instead than utilizing the scientific method attack, i.e. careful rating of the effects before trying a solution. Whether this might impact pupils ‘ capacity of in-depth analysis is a much debated inquiry. Prensky ( 2001b ) besides considers that Digital Natives have lost in contemplation and critical thought while they have enhanced parallel processing accomplishments ( see the Multitasking property ) . The 6th Digital Natives property identified by Frand is a authoritative of the Digital Natives literature and it describes their penchant for Multitasking, with no undertaking having full attending from the pupil. Along with the test and mistake attack, this is one of the most common scheme adopted by Digital Natives to get by with the information overload and the deficiency of clip for deep job rating. Harmonizing to Prensky ( 2001b ) , kids are now capable of administering their attending strategically while go toing two undertakings at a clip. The job with this new accomplishment, enhanced by digital engineerings, seems to be that Digital Immigrants pedagogues, who merely do non believe that pupils can larn while listening to music, ignore it. Detecting Digital Natives, Frand came to the decision that they prefer Typing on a keyboard instead than composing on paper. The power of word-processing goes beyond betterments in spelling and discernability and allows trade name new manner of playing with thoughts, leting non-linear thought. Similarly, spreadsheet and databases enable to work out job and do determination in a new manner. The typical Digital Natives pupil is ever connected, no affair what. Here the power of networking is considered as a map of the figure of people that take portion to that web. The more people, the more that web will be utile to its users. Love for squad work and networking is a trait of the Digital Natives that is good know and recognized by many surveies ( e.g Howe and Strauss, 2000 ) . Harmonizing to Frand, Digital Natives are besides impatient, demoing â€Å" zero tolerance † for holds. The cyberage has modified our demand for immediateness. We have already discussed that the clip to bring forth accurate in-depth analyses is a luxury that few people can afford and we mentioned multitasking every bit good as test and mistake as schemes used by the Digital Natives to get by with clip restraints. As effect, the new coevals of pupils besides expect zero holds when accessing to services or information. 24/7 banking services, instant messaging, omnipresent broadband connectivity are merely useless proficient agencies if the human constituent of the service act as a constriction in the information bringing processes. The â€Å" nothing tolerance for hold † property is more apparent when we think about electronic mails: people tend to apologise if they are non reacting instantly and follow a much less formal linguistic communication to rush up the communicat ing. The last consideration made by Frand is that the traditional differentiation between Godhead and consumer of information is film overing. This tendency is about omnipresent: User Generated Contents, Mash-Ups, Creative Commons licences, open-source motions, societal bookmarking. Everywhere users are acquiring involved in bring forthing, sharing and bettering contents, without copyright limitations. Where in traditional media the users where involved in co-create the significance of the content by construing it, now they are capable of modifying the content itself and portion it back with the audience. This is consistent with the â€Å" making instead than cognizing property † that already takes into history the Digital Natives penchant for taking portion into productive procedures instead than being inactive scholars. Similar positions on Digital Natives are shared by other writers ( Oblinger, 2003 ; Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005, Tapscott, 1998 ; Rainie 2006 ; Gibbons, 2007 ) . These surveies confirm that pupils nowadays demo distinguishable larning penchants such as squad working, multitasking, usage of engineering and experiential activities. Underbrush ( 2007 ) emphasis on the being of a Natives / Immigrants Digital divide and quote grounds from Hargittai ( 2002 ) that showed how immature coevalss are more skilled in seeking the web than people over 30s. However this duality has been to a great extent criticized by many observers: while it is doubtless true that immature people have familiarity with a greater scope of ICTs in their family, tend to utilize the Internet as a first port of call and multi-task more ( Cheong, 2008 ; Dutton, Helsper and Gerber 2009 ; Helsper and Eynon, 2010 ) , important differences found within cohorts of immature people undermine the thought of homogeneousness that prevarication at the base of the Natives / Immigrants resistance.The Digital Natives DebateWhen it comes to quantitative grounds, the Digital Natives definition becomes a controversial subject: Kvavik, Caruso and Morgan ( 2004 ) for illustration, surveyed 4,374 pupils across 13 establishments in the United States. On one manus the y found high degree of engineering ownership ( 93,4 % for personal computing machines and 82 % for nomadic phones ) and high degrees of academic and recreational activities based on Information Technologies ( 99.5 % users used word-processing, e-mailing and Internet browse for pleasance ) . On the other manus, pupils showed merely a moderate penchant for the usage of engineering in schoolroom and as Kvavik ( 2005, p.98 ) points out, â€Å" ironically, many of the pupils most skilled in the usage of engineering had assorted feelings about engineering in the schoolroom † . A much more extended follow up to this survey among 18,000 university pupils ( Caruso and Kvavik, 2005 ) seems to corroborate the fact that no important correlativity exists between usage and accomplishment of engineering and penchants for increased usage of engineering in the schoolroom. Some writers refuse the Digital Natives statements radically: Facer and Furlong ( 2001 ) point out that the differentiation between indigens and immigrants is non backed up by any empirical grounds. The writers besides warn about the possible dangers coming from instructors who assume a degree of digital cognition that is non accurate for all pupils. Similar statements are made by Bennett et Al. ( 2008 ) who quote several quantitative studies measuring that a important proportion of immature people do non keep the entree or the technologic accomplishments predicted by Digital Natives upholders. She deducts hence that â€Å" It may be that there is every bit much fluctuation within the digital native coevals as between coevalss † ( p.779 ) . This is confirmed by Krause ( Krause 2007 ; Kennedy et Al. 2008 ) who conducted a survey on 2,000 first twelvemonth university pupils in Australia whose consequence shows that the forms of entree and usage of a scope of engineerings and too ls ( e.g. computing machines, nomadic telephones, electronic mail ) alteration sanely across the pupil populations ( harmonizing to socio-economic background, age and gender ) . She concludes saying that the â€Å" premise of homogeneousness is misdirecting and unsafe † ( 2007, p138 ) . Significant differences in how and why pupils use information engineerings have been besides highlighted late by a figure of authors ( Livingstone and Helsper,2007 ; Hargittai and Hinnart, 2008 ) . More late, Helsper and Eynon ( 2010 ) analyzed secondary informations on UK pupils coming to the decision that coevals is non the lone forecaster of Digital Nativeness. From their research it seems clear that many other variables such as gender, instruction, experience and comprehensiveness of usage concur to explicate this behavior. Since coevals seem to be non the lone ancestor to Digital Nativeness, it is non surprising that many research workers criticized the Natives-Immigrants duality ( Bayne and Ross, 2007 ) or introduced extra classs based on a continuum ( Currant et al. , 2008 ) , to better reflect the fluctuation in Digital Nativeness that is considered to be cross-generational. In the visible radiation of the many surveies demoing deficiency of homogeneousness within the pupil population, the research design of this survey is presuming that the chosen sample ( a category of undergraduate pupils belonging, hence, to the same coevals ) is demoing important fluctuation in the grade of familiarity with engineering ( i.e â€Å" Digital Nativeness † ) , measured utilizing Frand ‘s ( 2000 ) definition of the Informational Age Mindset. A farther verification that a fluctuation in the concept is to be observed comes from Frand itself, who states that his 10 properties are wide generalisations, non all of which apply to each person. The above considerations have led the critics to be cautious about rethinking established learning methods and a call for a more mensural argument between skeptics and advocators of the Digital Natives thought has been made ( Bennett et al. 2008 ) . To cast more visible radiation into the Digital Natives argument, this research is looking at the motivational deductions of the Digital Nativeness property, look intoing whether pupils who respond to the Digital Natives definition show amotivated or work-avoidant behavior.AmotivationMotivation can be defined as â€Å" the physiological procedure involved in the way, energy and continuity of behavior † ( Bergin, Ford and Hesse, 1993, p.437 ) . As Prensky ( 2003, p.1 ) puts it â€Å" a sine qua non of successful acquisition is motive: a motivated scholar ca n't be stopped. † Research describing on high school pupils ‘ motive to larn argued that motive is a cardinal factor in the success or failure of instruction ( Natio nal Research council, 2004 ) . The motivated scholar position is frequently depicted as an ideal status, where pupils are enthusiastic, focussed and relentless. Constructivist larning theoreticians ( e.g. Piaget, Papert ) have ever stressed on the demand of prosecuting and actuating pupils, a undertaking whose troubles seems to be increased by the rise of new engineerings and videogames ( Carstens and Beck, 2005 ) . Digital Native upholders typically support the Immigrant/Native resistance as based on age differences ( Prensky 2001a ; Gibbons 2007 ; Underwood, 2007 ) . One of their most debated claims is that the spread between the technological accomplishments of the new pupils and the limited usage of engineering adopted presents by instructors has a negative impact on pupil motive, doing alienation, disaffection and letdown ( Prensky, 2005 ; Levin & A ; Arefeh, 2002 ; Oblinger, 2003 ) . â€Å" It by and large is n't that Digital Natives ca n't pay attending, it ‘s that they choose non to † ( Prensky, 2001b, p.4 ) . Students ‘ deficiency of motive and disaffection from school has received some grade of attending from educational research workers that recognize it as one of the most outstanding academic jobs ( Legault et. al 2006 ) . Harmonizing to the self-government theory ( SDT, Deci and Ryan, 1985 ) , amotivation is a category of behaviors that are either performed for unknown grounds or non executed at all. Amotivation is a province in which the individual can non comprehend the nexus between their behavior and the result of that behavior. As a effect, amotivated persons perceive their behavior as caused by forces that are non under their control. They feel detached from their action and hence will put small attempt or energy in its implementation ( Legault et.al 2006 ) . Traditional SDT attack defines amotivation as a unidimensional concept and in this signifier it has been used for mensurating pupils orientation toward the academic environment ( Vallerand et. al. , 1992 ) . However farther surveies ( Pelletier et. Al. 1999 ) showed the multidimensional nature of amotivation. Legualt et.al ( 2006 ) , in a series of surveies, developed a taxonomy of grounds that give rise to academic amotivation, consisting of four dimensions: ability beliefs, attempt beliefs, feature of the undertaking and value placed on the undertaking. For the intent of this survey, feature of undertaking and value placed on undertaking are the lone relevant amotivation dimensions that are included in the conceptual theoretical account. The features of undertaking dimension â€Å" denotes the specific characteristics of the academic undertaking that may take to amotivation † ( Legault et. Al. 2006, p.569 ) . Unappealing undertakings are likely to be neglected, taking to detachment. The value placed on undertaking evaluates the credence of an activity from the pupils. It has been proved that when a undertaking is non of import to the pupil, amotivation is likely to originate ( Ryan and Deci 1999 ; 2000 ) . Upholders of the Digital Natives/Immigrants resistance claim that new coevalss, born with videogames, should be engaged through the usage of multimedia or instructional games ( e.g. Carstens and Beck, 2005 ; Garris et Al. 2002 ) and are non paying attending because of the manner undertakings are really presented in category ( Prensky, 2001b ) . The undermentioned hypothesis is hence included in this survey: H1: Students with a higher grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ will be more amotivated than pupils with a lower grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ From a conceptual point of view, amotivation subtypes are associated with negative results such as hapless academic public presentations, low academic self-pride and purpose to retreat from high-school ( Legault et. al. , 2006 ) . As a effect it will be hypothesised that the amotivated Digital Natives pupils will demo hapless academic public presentations. H2: Students with a higher grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ will demo worse test public presentations than pupils with a lower grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘Work AvoidanceAcademic amotivation is non the lone concept that has been examined by motivational research worker interested in damaging behavior. Within the Achievement Goal watercourse of motivational research, the work turning away end ( besides named â€Å" academic disaffection † ) received a considerable sum of attending ( Meece et al 1988 ; Nolen, 1988 ; Nicholls et al 1985 ; Elliot and Harackiewicz, 1996 ; Seifert and O'Keefe, 2001 ) . Work turning away end is defined as an effort to acquire away with seting every bit small work or attempt as possible into achievement undertakings ( Elliot, 2005 ) . Similarly to amotivated pupils, pupils with a work turning away end are likely non try to make their work. Their chief concern is to acquire the work done with a minimal sum of attempt ( Meece et. Al, 1988 ) . However, work avoidant pupils unlike amotivated 1s, have a motive: which is to set small attempt on work. Work avoidant pupils hence do non comprehend the deficiency of eventuality between behavior and result, typical of amotivated pupils ( Seifert, 2004 ) . Work avoidant ends are besides to be distinguished from public presentation ends. In public presentation ends, success with small attempt is a prove of ability whereas failure with small attempt does non supply a cogent evidence of low ability. In work turning away ends, alienated pupils have their involvement and beginning of self-esteem exterior of the schoolroom and so deficiency of attempt is non used as a manner to hide deficiency of ability ( Archer, 1994 ) . The thought that Information and Communication Technologies are, in general, bring forthing disaffection in human acquisition and societal exchange has been sustained by many writers ( Cooper, 1995 ; Rintala, 1998 ) . Some pedagogues like Tell ( 2000 ) described Digital Natives as an anomic young person, surfing the cyberspace in societal isolation. As Knapp ( 1998 ) points out, the â€Å" computer-based information engineerings separate and alienate people from direct experience with nature and community [ †¦ ] and lead to inadequate course of study † ( p.7 ) Digital Natives upholders support the thought that the Natives/Immigrants divide, combined with deficiency of engineering in schoolroom, is the cause of pupil disaffection, whereas these observers ascribe disaffection to Information Technologies and modern-day society. While the latter positions are partially surpassed with the breakage of the Social Web, they offer a post-modernist account for the pupils ‘ acceptance of work-avoidant ends. Whatever the ground for this behavior might be, the literature offers adequate grounds to speculate that pupils with high grade of Digital Nativeness will demo amotivated and work-avoidant behaviors. H5: Students with a higher grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ will be more work-avoidant than pupils with a lower grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘Achievement Goal OrientationIn their reappraisal of the effects of computing machine based direction ( CBI ) on motive, Moos and Marroquin ( 2009 ) show that while a figure of surveies investigated effects of CBI on Interest, Intrinsic/Extrinsic motive and self-efficacy, there is a deficiency of research within the goal-theory model. Acknowledging the cardinal function of the achievement end orientation on academic public presentations, this survey is make fulling this spread with a deep probe of pupils ‘ goal-oriented behavior. As mentioned in the reappraisal of the Digital Natives literature, many observers, based on research grounds, made a call for a mensural argument on the Digital Native thought before rethinking the whole educational system. In fact, far from hungering for a complete digital experience, pupils seem to acknowledge the motivational function of instructors in instruction. Qualitative research from Oblinger and Oblinger ( 2005, p.14 ) , for illustration, reports the undermentioned pupils ‘ considerations: Teachers are critical to the acquisition procedure. Tech is good, but it is non a perfect replacement. Computers can ne'er replace worlds. Learning is based on motive, and without instructors that motive would discontinue to be. Similar considerations can be done looking at Kvavik, Caruso and Morgan ( 2004 ) quantitative research: if many of the pupils most skilled in the usage of engineering have mixed feelings about engineering in the schoolroom, they have less ground to demo the amotivated or work-avoidant behaviors theorized by Digital Natives upholders. Further uncertainties on Prensky ‘s thought of amotivated pupils ( Prensky, 2001a ) may lift looking at the pupils traits as depicted by Howe and Strauss in many of their plants ( Howe and Strauss, 1993 ; Strauss and Howe, 1997 ; Howe and Strauss, 2000 ) . It emerges a image of pupils comprehending themselves as particular and extremely anticipant. Ambitious, even though directionless ( Schneider and Stevenson, 1999 ) , they are besides described as really confident and have been encouraged to believe in themselves from parents and instructors ( Lancaster and Stillman, 2002 ) . Howe and Strauss besides point out that their parents have pushed Digital Natives to be the best they can, coercing them to execute and stand out. As pupils, they feel the force per unit area to conform to these outlooks and have developed one of their primary features that is their demand for accomplishment. They expect high classs as a wages for conformance to academic criterions, they like to hold changeless feedback ; they are competitory and goal-oriented. This sort of accomplishment, goal-oriented behavior has been analyzed extensively within the motive literature associated with the survey of academic accomplishment. The achievement end orientation is defined as â€Å" a set of behavioral purposes that determine how pupils approach and engage in acquisition activities † ( Meece, Blumenfeld and Hoyle, 1988, p.514 ) . For Dweck, â€Å" Achievement ends must lie at the bosom of any analysis of achievement motive † ( quotation mark ) Writers like Nicholss ( 1984 ) and Dweck ( 1986 ) identified two types of ends that have received great theoretical and empirical attending in the motive literature: Mastery end ( besides called learning end ) defined as a desire to derive competency or get the hang a new set of accomplishments or cognition ( Archer, 1994 ) ; Performance end ( besides called turn outing end ) defined as desire to execute better than others, showing one ‘s competency or avoiding to demo incompetency ( Elliott, 2005 ) . It was ab initio hypothesized that command ends led to positive results ( e.g. continuity in the face of failure, deep processing of survey stuff, enhanced task enjoyment ) , while public presentation end led to deleterious one ( backdown of attempt, surface processing, decreased undertaking enjoyment ) ( Nicholls, 1989 ; Nolen 1988 ; Dweck and Leggett, 1988 ) . A closer scrutiny at research surveies nevertheless, indicated that while command end seemed to take to positive results, assorted consequence were obtained when looking at public presentation ends ( Harackiewicz and Elliot, 1993 ) . As a effect, Elliott ( 1994 ) suggested the incorporation of another differentiation ( approach/avoidance ) to explicate the fluctuation in consequences for public presentation ends. â€Å" In attack motive, behavior is instigated or directed by a positive or desirable event or possibility, whereas in turning away motive, behavior is instigated or directed by unwanted event or possibility † ( Elliot, 1999, p.170 ) . A first, trichotomous accomplishment end theoretical account was introduced by Elliot and Church ( 1997 ) including command end, performance-approach and performance-avoidance end. Performance-approach end focal point on the attainment of possible positive result ( e.g. executing better than other pupils ) , whereas performance-avoidance end focal point on the turning away of possible negative result ( e.g. avoiding executing worse than other pupils ) ( Elliot, 2005 ) . A huge bulk of empirical surveies based on this theoretical account ( over 60 by the terminal 2003 harmonizing to Elliot ( 2005 ) ) clearly documented that the bulk of negative effects of public presentation ends were to due to performance-avoidance end orientation. Successively Elliot and McGregor ( 2001 ) extended the approach/avoidance differentiation to the mastery-goal, ensuing in the 2Ãâ€"2 Achievement end model and in the development of the Achievement Goal Questionnaire ( AGQ ) employed in this research. Mastery-approach ends entail endeavoring to develop one ‘s accomplishment and abilities ( Elliot, 2005 ) and are similar to the command end as antecedently defined in the literature. But as Elliot and McGregor point out, attack is non the lone signifier ordinance for command orientated pupils. For illustration, pupils might endeavor to avoid misinterpretation or neglecting to larn class stuffs, or avoid burying what they have learned. This is an avoidance signifier of ordinance, typical of perfectionists, who avoid doing errors or making anything incorrect ( Elliot and McGregor, 2001 ) . It is possible to reason that the performance/mastery differentiation relates with many of the properties refering to the Digital Natives as described by Frand ( 2000 ) , including the â€Å" making instead than cognizing † attack that is cardinal to this survey, as it should straight impact the accomplishment end that pupils will put. Furthermore, the performance-approach end orientation ( that is related to executing better than other pupils ) is instead consistent with the competitory and confident traits described by Howe and Strauss ( 2000 ) . By being confident of their competency, pupils are more likely to favor a performance-approach over a performance-avoidance or work-avoidant ends. These considerations lead to the undermentioned hypothesis: H3 Students with a higher grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ will demo a penchant for performance-approach ends In the visible radiation of the approach/avoidance differentiation a new form became clear and it is that mastery-approach ends frequently did non foretell positively public presentation attainment as originally believed, whereas performance-approach ends did, on more consistent footing ( Elliot, 2005 ) . Therefore the undermentioned hypothesis will be tested: H4: Students with a higher grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ will demo better test public presentations than pupils with a lower grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘Critical ThinkingExtra statements against the Natives/Immigrants resistance come from cognitive research workers that argue against the thought that immature people ‘s encephalons have changed in recent times ( see Herther, 2009 for a reappraisal ) . But whether or non we are confronting a revolution in encephalon constructions, it is however true that experience is able to change our cognitive capablenesss. What is still to be established is whether engineerings are doing us smarter, like Digital Natives upholders claims, or lazier and less able, like some observers ( Carr, 2008 ; 2010 ) suggest. Obviously there is no clear reply, but both Carr and Prensky agree on the fact that something got lost with the diffusion of Digital Technologies and the list includes deep processing, contemplation and crit ical thought. Similar observations are made by Frand ( 2000 ) in his analysis of the effects of the test and mistake attack. The writer expresses concerns whether pupils who can non deduce an reply from utilizing test and mistake are prepared to prosecute in deep analyses. The undermentioned hypothesis is hence stated: H6: Students with a higher grade of ‘Digital Nativeness ‘ will demo a lower grade of Critical Thinking Literature suggests that Digital Natives thrive when multitasking, parallel processing and surface thought. In a fast-paced universe, these accomplishments might possibly be more of import, as is suggested by Digital Native upholders. Are the current scrutiny and learning methods tapping those accomplishments? To happen out, this survey is besides looking at the correlativity between the Digital Nativeness concept and the pupils ‘ Academic public presentations.Academic Performances ( Grade Point Average )There is a whole organic structure of literature that investigated the relationship of academic motive with academic public presentation. Different motivational attacks have been used by different writers: anticipation value theory ( e.g. Berndt and Miller, 1990 ) end theory ( e.g. Meece and Holt, 1993 ) self-efficacy theory ( e.g. Zimmerman et al. , 1992 ) , and self-government theory ( e.g. Grolnick et al. , 1991 ) . In general, such researches reveal that academic motive pos itively influences academic public presentations. In this survey both the Self finding theory ( for the Amotivation concept ) and the end theory ( for the achievement end orientation and work turning away concepts ) models are employed. Amotivation has been proved to be an first-class index of GPA ( Karsenti and Gilles, 1995 ) and to be related with negative results ( Deci and Ryan, 1985, Vallerand 1997 ) . Similarly, work avoidant pupil are likely non to prosecute with schoolroom work and impact negatively their accomplishment. Furthermore, larning disaffection has been proved to hold an reverse relation to academic accomplishment ( Johnson, 2005 ) . Within the achievement end orientation model, performance-approach ends, as antecedently stated, have been proved to foretell positively public presentation attainment. Harackiewicz et Al. ( 2002 ) supply a reappraisal of a series of research that systematically demonstrates that performance-approach ends are the lone accomplishment ends that are positively related to existent public presentation ( e.g. semester GPA, exam public presentation and concluding class ) . This means that alternatively of favoring content command, pedagogues could really promote pupils to follow performance-approach ends in order to actuate them to win. Sing the direct relationship between Digital Nativeness and GPA, Kvavik ( 2005 ) found no important relationship between computing machine accomplishments and GPA. Similarly, in the same survey no relationship between GPA and penchant for engineering in the schoolroom was found. Unsurprisingly, pupils with lowest GPAs were found to pass more clip playing computing machine games, whereas pupil with highest GPAs pass more clip utilizing the computing machine in support of schoolroom activities ( Kvavik, 2005 ) . However, the effects that the Digital Natives ‘ mentality and survey penchants have on GPA have ne'er been considered before. By including the go-between consequence of amotivation, work-avoidance, critical thought and performance-approach end orientation, this relationship is investigated, ensuing in the undermentioned theoretical theoretical account: Amotivation H1 H5 Work Avoidance H2, H4 4 Academic Performance Digital Nativeness H3 Performance Approach H6 Critical Thinking As the theoretical account shows, viing hypothesis H2 and H4 are a consequence of the on-going Digital Natives argument and the opposite positions spliting skeptics and partisans. Rather than accepting one hypothesis over another, this survey investigates whether engineering is traveling to hold a positive ( H4 ) or a negative impact ( H2 ) on Academic public presentation, as a consequence of the considered go-betweens ( Amotivation, Work Avoidance and Performance Approach Orientation ) .Selling deductionsAchievement end orientations have been proved to be related with occupation Motivation i? Prosecuting worker through Digital Technologies = Internal Marketing Orientation. Technology spontaneously delight clients Herzberg ‘s two-factor theory [ 21 ] , Maslow ‘s hierarchy of demands [ 32 ] , and McGregor ‘s theories [ 34 ] F. Herzberg, Work and the Nature of Man. World, Cleveland, OH, 1966. A.H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality. Harper & A ; Row, New York, 1970. D. McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise. McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 1960. The theoretical foundation includes besides the work of Vroom

Australian Engineering Practice Free Samples

Engineering is the use or the application of knowledge which can either be scientifically acquired, socially acquired or even practically acquired purposefully to come up with new design or to an extension improve on the existing structures and design.it is a field that is broad and involves various engineering disciplines. Basically, as an engineer, the expectations that primarily come to mind is to be able to critically think of new design or improving on the existing ones so that the various problems within the society are solved. Hence, the knowledge learnt in the university is a reflection of the expected outcome of an engineer  (American Society of Civil Engineers, 2011, p. 643). The perspective of engineering remains the same both in the university and the real world since the expectation remains the same. However, there are new roles that one expects to play was an engineer in Australia which includes maintaining the technical competences, precisely solving the various challenges in the society and also enhancing great effectiveness at work. There are various competencies one needs to have to be an engineer including eligibility for membership and also immigration assessment .as an engineer, some of the values that I would add in the engineering field are professionalism, integrity, teamwork and also innovation  (Frankline, 2014, p. 975). An expert is someone that has a sustained experience in a particular field of practices or professionalism.   Generally, one is considered an expert when the person has a vast knowledge or skills pertaining to a particular matter of discussion.   It is derived from experience in that it is a direct function of time and also depends on the quickness of the person in question.   (Ronnie, 2011, p. 543). Reading through books and journals in various engineering helps one to acquire knowledge pertaining to engineering as a profession and also to develop some of the core values that are needed in life such as teamwork and integrity.   Innovation helps one to understand the importance of teamwork which helps one to take a short time to learn some particular concept rather than working on it alone which ends up consuming time and also one may not be able to completely perform a particular task within the stipulated specifications. This directly starts from the various group projects that are provided in class  (Ludden, 2008, p. 346). Listening, seeing and reading are very key in engineering. Listening helps one to understand various concepts.   Seeing helps one to be able to identify various problems within the society. It also helps one to be able to critically reason out on how solutions can be computed. On the other hand, reading is equally significant since it makes one be more knowledgeable and also gain new concepts that he or she was not aware of. The process used when carrying out a research is a qualitative and quantitative analysis that involves both collections of data and reading past articles on the subject under discussion.   This helps one to understand the concepts and be able to write them down or explain the various process in own words.   After doing a research, the noted down findings are electronically stored through computers in a paraphrased language. Paraphrased language involves first comprehending the concept and the various aspects involved and then noting them down in own understanding  (Pearson, 2007, p. 735). Collaboration is one of the key factors for success in every organization.   This is because all the members will be able to participate and share ideas on particular areas.   There are various skills that are gained as one grows particularly teamwork and commitment.   It becomes one of the major challenges more so with a teamwork whereby you will realize that some of the team members are not cooperative and also not committed in terms of handling certain things.   Thus it sometimes becomes a demoralizing factor Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competencies is based on three particular issues or competencies which defines its importance as described below. It helps to identify whether a person has the professional knowledge and the skills required for the engineering practices. Besides, stage one competency helps to determine whether a person possesses the professional and persona; attributes that are essential for engineering practice A situation that occurred once was when giving instructions to fellow teammates in a hockey sport. This came as a result of rules that had changed and were due to be effected on an upcoming tournament.   The situation was not difficult as the team members had learned to cope with new rules and were always flexible and dynamic.   The were no difficulties during issuing of the instructions Collaboration helps to achieve best results within a precise duration.   It makes work easier and also saves on time since the contrary which is a bit of resistance slows down a process.   Collaboration entails some behaviors which have been observed from great collaborators such as understanding, integrity and also patience  (Nottingham, 2009, p. 622). After the review of the various skills and attributes, I can comfortably award myself a 4 star in my various skills and attributes.   In particular, the skills that I feel competent in include listening, integrity, teamwork and also honesty. Conversely, there are some skills that I have not fully attained more so teamwork since I experience some challenges to do with handling my fellow team members there always arises issues relating to commitment Taking Thomas Edison as one of the engineers that greatly had a positive impact on the society by coming up with the first commercial light.   This was a light bulb that had many attributes including possessing a durable incandescent material and a highly resistant filament material. This he was to achieve after a series of tests without giving up. Presently, credits are still rewarded to Edison after successfully helping to bring a solution to the earlier situation of darkness.   Apart from the various technical skills, one factor that comes out in Thomas Edison is commitment and the urge to provide a solution. Besides, Edison was patient and ensures that quality time is applied on the project thereby coming up with a solution that is appreciated up to now  (Johnstone, 2009, p. 772). Projects vary in size but what matters is the success of any project. Thus there are some aspects that ensures that a project is properly managed. These include Strategic planning, Communication, Resources and the various personnel’s that will be involved in the success of the project –  (Brasier, 2008, p. 643). A project needs that quality time is dedicated towards it to ensure its success.   It involves the various stages of proper planning else it may not meet a certain deadline and end up being untrusted. Personally, I am good at managing my time since I always complete my tasks within the stipulated deadline. My best behaviors in terms of time management include completing my tasks on time and also always being updated  (Kazi & John , 2012, p. 352). However, I do find a challenge when managing my time due to a spirit of perfectionism whereby I would tend to ensure that all my answers and tasks are perfect hence this makes me spend much time on the tasks. This refers to the visual representations and techniques that are applied by both designers and engineers for the purposes of expressing and generating ideas. It generally deals with ensuring that all the ideas that an engineer has been placed down in a piece of paper to enable the person plan well before embarking on the engineering task  (Johnstone, 2009).   The tools that are required to perform an engineering mind mapping are very simple and easy to acquire. They include pen and a notebook. The process of engineering mind mapping entails placing the main idea or them in the middle part of a paper and then embarking on the generation of ideas .the ideas are placed just sketchily since there is no order and thus the persons doing the mind mapping just write down anything that comes up in his mind.   They may be informed of drawings, comments, questions, material listings a, statements among others as long as they are related to the central topic. Besides, there are no word limits hence the engineer should write everything that comes at the back of his mind. Thereafter the designer or the engineer should be able to link these thoughts together by interconnecting the graphics, pictures and the words  (Pearson, 2007).     This technique does not necessarily mean that it can only be written by the engineer or the designer starts to design. There are no limitations hence it can be written down at any stage of the process of design. One is able to do the kind mapping at the start in order to generate the problem that needs a solution and also at the middle of the task to generate other possible ways of providing the solution. It is most preferred to be done when one feels like emptying the thoughts that one has or when an engineer or a designer is stuck in the middle I the design process.   Below are examples of the mind map. It can also be applied in every aspect of life even in the day to day making of decision.it also helps in making one be more creative as it will give room for expression and expansion of the thoughts that a person has  (Johnstone, 2009). American Society of Civil Engineers, A. I. o. C. E., 2011. Engineering Solutions for Sustainability: Materials and Resources. 3rd ed. London: John Wiley & Sons. Edward F. Crawley, J. M. S. Ãâ€". D. R. B. K. E., 2014. Rethinking Engineering Education: The CDIO Approach. 1st ed. new york: Springer Science & Business Media. Harding, R., 2011. Environmental Decision-making: The Role of Scientists, Engineers, and the Public. 2nd ed. Chicago: Federation Press. Daniel A, 2017. Effective Communication at Work: Say what you mean and get what you want. 1st ed. Chicago: 50Minutes.com. Ludden, M., 2008. Effective Communication Skills: Essential Skills for Success in Work and Life. 2nd ed. Westminister: JIST Publishing, Nottingham, U. o., 2009. Sustainability & Engineering. 1st ed. Nottingham: University of Nottingham. Pearson, N., 2007. FCS Professional Engineering Practice L4. 2nd ed. Pretoria: Pearson South Africa. Stephen Johnston, J. P. G. W. J. K., 2009. Engineering and Society: Challenges of Professional Practice. 2nd ed. Carlisle: Prentice Hall,

The Customer Service Perspective Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Customer Service Perspective - Essay Example The SMEs hardly keep in align to these policy and it becomes difficult in applying the balance scorecard technique. But in larger enterprises it is not that difficult. There is larger number of employees, customers are well defined and they have a strong financial stability. Hyde Park Electronics focused upon one product category that provides the maximum of 80% of the sales. This company’s financial position is strong enough but from the point of view of BSC, the focus was only for short term and the company was required to develop strategy for the longer term purpose. Futura Industries is dealing with the high end niche variety of market. Southern Gardens Citrus is the subsidiary company of United States Sugar Corporation and competes in a consolidated market for not-from-concentrate (NFC) orange juice. The company was financially strong as it had a strong customer base. The sales were huge from the single product category. The BSC tool provided the opportunity for the company to grow. Apart from this perspective, the company focused upon learning and growing with quality and other issues for long run benefit (Robert, 2006). The company focused upon the retention of the talents to help growing in future. There were turnovers, more so a culture was developed and BSC provided the learning and growing technique to be better in achieving the objectives. As per the study of the three companies it seems that they have focused it basically upon customer. Looking at the Hyde Park Electronics and Southern Gardens Citrus it basically focused keeping the customer in the core. The application of BSC in the companies helped in maintaining the objectives and mission of the company. The overall performance of the companies has enhanced in different aspects. From the customers’ perspective the BSC have provided for the improvement in the companies. The implementation was done primarily on the basis of customers, which led to the success of the companies. For

Carter's Way of Knowing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Carter's Way of Knowing - Research Paper Example Ways of knowing are most apparent in situations where western notions regarding the attainment of information and knowledge comes into close contact and interaction with indigenous ways of knowing. Differences in the approaches that these two apply makes it possible to discern the significance of ways of knowing and its impacts on what is believed to be true in various societies around the world. This paper seeks to identify and discuss the theoretical basis of the conceptual theoretical framework of Carter’s Way of Knowing. Each discipline has a recognized body of knowledge that is specific to that particular subject and its content with regard to its domain or area of study. In each discipline, there is the aspect of knowing or being informed about the subject matter of interest, and this is what is referred to as conceptual knowledge or having the know-how about a particular discipline. According to Carter (2007), this is what is referred to as active ways of knowing or pro cedural knowledge that is related to the discipline of interest. Carter (2007) postulates that the notion of disciplinary ways of doing things is linked to the discipline-specific ways of knowing and the concomitant skills of writing within and across disciplines. Carter calls this bridging the outside/in gap and this can be contextualized by analysing relationships in ways of knowing. The relationship among knowing, writing and doing that is veiled by the disciplinary focus on conceptual knowledge (Munhall, 2011). The middle term that links writing and knowing is doing in the disciplines, which makes it challenging to reframe these disciplines as ways of knowing, writing and doing (Bonis, 2009). To achieve this entails finding a means of describing these aspects in convincing terms with regard to the ways of doing that characterize these disciplines. Research studies have indicated that to know and be able to do through the use of outcome based statements, there emerges certain way s of doing that are repeated in general terms across a variety of disciplines. Examples of these outcome-based statements are illustrated in response to academic learning situations that call for problem solving, performance, research, and for empirical inquiry (Munhall, 2011). Evidence from research has also established that despite similarities in ways of knowing across disciplines, there exist significant differences that enable the identification of discipline-specific ways of knowing. This revelation was achieved by analysing the different types of written activities that test participants’ produced as a requirement for the study. Ways of knowing in nursing offers a guidance and direction to holistic ad well rounded research, education and practice for health care givers (Bonis, 2009). According to Munhall (2011), Carter’s ways of knowing can be applied in nursing research from diverse epistemological perspectives that enhance the appropriateness and effectiveness of evidence based practice. Carter’s ways of knowing get their significance when they are applied to hope research with regard to grieved palliative health care givers with the ultimate objective of promoting positive outcomes and health (Meleis, 2011). Bereaved health care givers involved with palliative patients are characterized by having unmet necessities that

Nigeria Kidnappings Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Nigeria Kidnappings - Research Paper Example On the other hand, in the Niger Delta, schoolchildren are also victims of kidnapping. Noting that Nigeria will soon have its elections, it is an indication that with the rise of criminal acts and insecurity there is a possibility that the elections will fail to be free and fare. In the recent years, the state of Abia has had a plague of kidnapping, acts of hijacking and robbery. The only way that Nigerian government has been doing to ensure that such cases are curbed is by negotiating with the kidnappers to get back the victims and also the security forces have been involved in putting up new strategies to conquer the pervasive issue of kidnapping. In addition, the police forces are being trained to enhance their knowledge and skills to decisively deal with the kidnappers across Nigeria (Omonijo, 2011).The governments have a tendency of blaming the pervasive kidnapping wave away from the Niger Delta as a result of the increasing rates of unemployment across the country. The African c ontinent is the challenge with kidnapping cases since the police force is ineffective and corrupt. Furthermore, the police forces are inadequately equipped to stem such crimes and the relationship that exists between the kidnappers and politicians as well. These elements, however, seem to be more signs of a wide malaise, for instance, pervasive kidnapping is a major symptom failed and failing country. This feature is common in countries which are failing or had failed like Columbia since 19770s to 200.

Law - Directors Duties Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Law - Directors Duties - Essay Example With the existing emphasis on corporate social responsibility, traditional common law notions had to be revised with a codification by the Companies Act Review. The codification of the Companies Act focused on 9 main sections, which define the duties that the directors owe to their companies. The first codification is section 171, which requires the directors to act within their powers in association with the company. Section 172 sets out the duty of the directors to promote the success of the company in a way that benefits the shareholders of the company. Section 173 requires the directors to exercise independent judgment in their actions and decisions, while section 174 of the codified version of the Companies Act requires the directors to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence in actions regarding the company. Section 175 requires the directors to avoid conflict of interest, where the methods or authorizing such conflicts have to be sanctioned by either board or shareholder approval. Section 176 requires the directors not to accept benefits from any third parties, especially if the benefits could lead to conflict of interest with the company’s articles. ... Section 182 of the Company’s Act also clearly sets out the remedies available to the shareholders or the company if a director breaches the duty to the company. As already stated, the codified duties are performed by the director for the company, which means that only the company or statutory liquidator is able to act on the director’s breach of duty. However, a shareholder is also able to bring a derivative action against the director if needed. From section 260 of the Company Act 2006, a derivative action is one that can be brought by an interested party, mainly shareholder, against a director as a remedy for breach of fiduciary duty owed to the company. Section 175 of the codified Companies Act 2006 has generated a lot of debate and interest from different parties (Hannigan, 2009). Under this section, the director must avoid any situations which can have direct or indirect conflicts with the interest of the company (Companys Act 2009). This section overlaps with othe r sections of the Companies Act, for example, it is already required that the director act in the best interests of the company, which means that the best interest would not overlap with any other interests. Previously, the rule on conflict of interest required the director to take steps to mitigate the conflict. For example, the director would be required to remove himself from board discussions, and in extreme circumstances, remove himself from the board completely (Hannigan, 2009). However, the new rule requires the director to completely avoid areas where the conflict o interest might arise, unless the board has prior notice and authorization for the conflict of interest. From the codification of this section, it is evident that there has been a lot of

Techonology affects our life Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Techonology affects our life - Essay Example reading, and was now forcing me to carry out another action involving modern technology, in this case mostly referred to internet and cell phone usage. I always knew that technology referred to the application of scientific knowledge in the creation of a machine, tool, or a system, intended to solve a problem present in our life. But is it what modern technology accomplishing these days? I have been sensing this behavioral change for a while now; a persistent compelling to log in to my Facebook account in the middle of night, a severe drive to check my e-mail during a lecture, a relentless desire to steal a look at my cell phone for incoming texts during a group meeting, were few of the examples. From my modified conduct, I could claim that this modern technology, with its ever increasing presence and various mediums, was gradually enslaving me. But at the same time, I could contest that this panic is always adjunct to the emergence of all new technologies, and instead of fighting it , I should simply embrace it. In his article Writing Is a Technology that Restructures Thought, Walter Ong declared that â€Å"New tracks for thought are imposed by the newer technologies,† (30), but I do not strictly agree with his statement. Although, I consent that in the past ten to twelve years, my reliance on technology has increased to such an extent that it has altered how I connect with people around me, and perceive attainment and retention of knowledge, but it has not mutated my thought process. Technology has certainly transformed the way I connect with people, for example, the other day, I was thinking, when was the last time I sent or received a personal letter; not the bank statements, or solicitation pamphlets, I receive every other day, but an actual letter from an acquaintance of mine. Even the yearly season’s greeting cards I used to receive had reduced to one or two. Although, this gradual change, brought on by the increasing popularity and usage of new technological mediums, was relevant enough for me to notice, it was not profound enough to emotionally distraught me. It was probably because I realized that, for me, what matters, is the sincere and deep wishes of the sender, not the medium they are utilizing to send them. Therefore, I can say that technology has ended the ‘paper’ exchange of wishes, but it has not rendered the social interaction to be defunct. C.P. Snow once said in New York Times that ‘Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other,’ (Editors, 110). Few days ago I faced a situation, which left me feeling the same. I was supposed to travel to an unknown location with my grandfather, and I guaranteed him that I will get the complete address through Google maps, so that he does not need to keep the paper map with him. When we both sat in the car, he asked me whether I took the directions, and I assured him that yes I did look at them. He asked me if I memorized the directions, and I told him that whenever required, I will access Google through my I-Phone, and we will be able to look at the instructions. The look he gave me said a thousand words. He further playfully stated that if I kept on continuing like this, and did not put my brain to work by memorizing these minor things, my brain will gradually deteriorate. After this incident, I was

Should Games be Used for Education Purposes in the Classroom Research Paper

Should Games be Used for Education Purposes in the Classroom - Research Paper Example Today, educators are faced with varied alternatives on the method of teaching students. One such alternative is the use of video games in the learning process of a child. This paper will discuss the both the advantages and disadvantages of using video games for education purposes with the view in mind of coming to a conclusion as to whether or not games should be used for education in the classroom. According to Munoz, Kevitt and Lunney, unlike the traditional tutoring which depends on the subject taught and the knowledge and experience of the lecturer, educational games and virtual learning environments (VLEs), give the students the topic which they need to learn and at the same time they are able to attain the skills needed to manage the VLEs (Munoz, McKevitt and Lunney 2). They went on further to say that whereas traditional learning poses a problem in adaptability to the pace of each student; VLEs are able to adjust easily to each student’s pace. Bouchaut, Cig, et al concl uded that VLEs enriches a student’s education because of its â€Å"potential benefits in engagement, attitude, and learning intensity as well as increased collaboration, healthy competition, and detailed learning discussions† (Bouchaut, Cig and Dekker 9). Moreover, they stated that the â€Å"virtual world will help transform the classroom into a vibrant, energetic, and crucially learning focused place where students will actually want to learn more† (9). ... Having discussed the benefits gained from using VLEs, it is important to also look at the other side of the coin. A major drawback presented by critics of video games being used in education is the possibility that students might get too consumed by the games, thereby losing track of the real purpose which is to educate. Some even fear that it may cause addiction among students which will result in more time spent in front of the computer (Bakar, Inal and Kagiltay 2). Another disadvantage of using video games in teaching is that not all games are appropriate to the learning process (Bakar, Inal and Kagiltay 5). The probability of a mismatch between the game content and the educational curriculum exists (Munoz, McKevitt and Lunney 4). Appropriateness is not only concerned with the subject being taught. It is also concerned with the grade level of the students where the games will be used. Proponents of using video games say that its use increases motivation among students but this poi nt is contradicted by other educators who believe that it may also lead to problems in motivation because students have different likes and preferences (Bakar, Inal and Kagiltay 5). What may be a motivator for one student may turn out to be boring for another. The financial issues attached to using video games in the classroom are also major concerns of most schools. If they decide to use the VLEs, a huge part of their budget will have to be invested in computer systems which can accommodate the latest software available. Training of teachers is also inevitable which means additional costs for the schools. To close one’s eyes to the existence and usefulness of video games in the education of the current crop of students is

Project Management for General Motors Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Project Management for General Motors - Essay Example Contemporary business produces great stress, so facilities to reduce this stress are required. It would be very functional for leasers to have indoor sporting facilities in the same building they work. This saves their time and provides great opportunity to increase quality of their work. It also provides good choice for the place of various corporate parties. Developing a huge modern office complex with entertainment facilities allows General Motors to enter new market. General Motors is new in the office leasing market, but the originality of the idea may give company profit. One portion of the revenue is supposed to receive from office rooms leasing. It is supposed that small offices will give 35% of the revenue, medium offices will give 40%, and big offices will give 25% of the revenue from the office rooms leasing. The sporting and entertainment complex is supposed to be a source of another portion of the revenue. It is assumed that disco halls will give 10% of the revenue, bars will give 20%, playing machines will give 15%, billiard will give 10%, bowling will give 10%, pool will give 15%, gymnasium will give 20%, shooting gallery will give 5%, and ping-pong hall will give 5% of the revenue. The project is planned to build 40-floors office complex with various office rooms and 10-floors underground parking. ... High-Level Scope The project is planned to build 40-floors office complex with various office rooms and 10-floors underground parking. Offices for small companies will be situated at the lower floors: there should be from 1 to 3 rooms per office. Offices for medium companies will be situated at the medium floors and have from 4 to 6 rooms per office. Offices for big companies will be situated at the higher floors and have more than 7 rooms per office. Some great companies may rent the entire floor. A conference hall and a rest room should be also situated at every floor. There should be dining hall, supermarket, hairdressing saloon, dentist and other services at the ground floor. They should work to 10 pm, so that people could use them after work. Corporate entertainment floor is situated at the 40th floor of the office complex. It includes various indoor sporting and entertainment facilities such as disco halls, bars, playing machines, billiard, bowling, pool, gymnasium, shooting gallery and ping-pong hall. Measuring Success of the Project Useful project success measures are often hard to define. Many of the potential measures such as revenue and cost savings are beyond the direct control of the project team and will not be measurable until long after the project is finished. When this is the case, the project manager must determine what it can influence. (Duncan, 2004) Duncan suggests using the following checklist to help ensure that project measures are good measures. They should be: Complete-anything unmeasured is likely to be compromised. Relevant-variances clearly indicate a need for corrective action. Valid-measuring what you intended

Changes in family life since the 1970s Essay Example for Free

Changes in family life since the 1970s Essay Outline some of the major changes that have taken place in family life since the 1970s and discuss the concerns arising from these changes. In the past many families were similar, as traditional nuclear families were the excepted norm of society. Since the 1970s a number of major changes have taken place in family life. The traditional nuclear family is no longer seen as the norm as many other types of specialist families have developed to best suit the needs of the people within them. Family life is very complex and in recent years sociologists have sort to find new ways to understand it. However with these changes there have also been a number of concerns, which may suggest that not all changes have improved family life. One way in which the family unit has changed since the 1970s is the change in marriage rates. While marriage in the UK is still the majority among families, there has been a decline in the number of marriages, the age in which people are choosing to marry and the duration of marriages. In 1971 1% of all marriages in the UK ended after two years. In 1996 this figure increased to 9%. (Mark Kirby, 2000, p. 58). This suggests that marriage less important than it once was. There are a number for reasons as to why there is a change in marriage. It is argued that because women now have more freedom of choice than they did in the past, they may be choosing simply not to marry. Others suggest that women are now choosing to put off marriage till a later date so that they can focus on their careers and education. Another reason for the change in marriage could be due to the undermining of the need to marry, now that it has become socially acceptable to cohabit or be single, many people choose not to marry. As well as this women are no longer dependant on men to be a bread winner and provide for them. Lorraine Harding (1996) argues that the main decline in marriage occurred around the 1970s due to greater levels of unemployment. Strain may have been put on the breadwinner to support the family causing the breakdown of the marriage. On this basis it could be argued that it is not the decline of the conventional family since 1970 that should need explaining, but rather its unusual popularity between 1945 and 1970. (Mark Kirby, 2000, pp. 69-70) Another major change that has taken place in family life since the 1970s is the increase in the number of divorces. In 1970 80,000 couples got divorced in the UK, that figure has risen to 125,000 in 2003. (Scott, 2007, p. 466) It is argued that this increase is due to the 1969 Divorce Reform Act which made getting a divorce much easier. Women had more opportunity to work and therefor they were less dependent on men. State benefits gave women greater chance of leaving a marriage. (Scott, 2007, pp. 467-469). However with divorce there are a number of concerns that can arise in family life. It is believed that divorce is the main contributor to lone parent families who are considered to be at higher risk of poverty. This is considered an unhealthy environment to bring up children as they may feel unsettled. Children may lose touch with the other parent and gain step parents. This in extension can effect socialisation, education and their family life in the future. Some sociologists also argue that children whose parents have had a divorce are more likely to get a divorce when they are older. Giddens found that two-fifths of all marriages in the UK now end in divorce. The number of marriages has fallen while the number of divorces has risen. (Giddens, 2009, pp. 350-351) Cohabitation has increased sharply in recent years. It is seen as a prelude to marriage or an alternative and in some cases it replace marriage altogether. In 1986 11 per cent of non-married men under the age of 60 were in cohabiting relationships, but by 2004 this figure had risen to 24 per cent. The comparable figures for women were 13 per cent in 1986 and 25 per cent in 2004 (Social Trends, 2006) This goes to show that cohabitation is one alternative to the traditional nuclear family that people are choosing to take. In the UK today 73 per cent of women say they live with a man before they are married. However with cohabitation there have been a number of concerns suggested by sociologists. Some sociologists argue that because there is less commitment within a cohabiting relationship then they are less stable and more likely to break down. This could lead to poverty for the women and children involved. As well as this a cohabiting couple are more likely to seek state benefits and put a strain on the economy. Antony Giddens argues the idea of a pure relationship. He believes that  couples in Modern society choose now not to marry for love and intimacy but to cohabit and have a relationship that best suits them. He believes that in the past couples were bound by the contract of love and it would often be difficult to get and divorce and end a relationship. Giddens argues that divorce is increasing due to people having much more choice in their lives. If a relationship no longer continues to suit the interests of the people within it then it is easy to simply leave. Giddens says: What holds the pure relationship together is the acceptance on the part of each partner, until further notice, that each gains a significant benefit from the relationship to make its continuance worthwhile. (Holborn, 2004) The love within the relationship is governed by the amount of venerability the other is prepared to show. Giddens also saw that in the past families would have been headed by a single male breadwinner who provided for the whole family while the wife stayed at home. This has now changed and men and women have become more equal within contemporary society. This therefor suggests that men and women have also become equal within relationships. Pure relationships are quickly becoming more popular as our self-centred society develops. Within contemporary society we have more choice; this has now adapted the way we look at traditional till-death-us-do-part marriages and traditional nuclear families. (Elliott, 2008) Living apart together is a term that is used for a family where one of the partners may live away for work or simply to maintain their independence. This follows on from the idea of a pure relationship as it is more causal for the people involved and it meets everyone needs. A problem that may arise from LAT families is that it could be disruptive for children as they would not have a single home. It also shows a lack of commitment from the couple to move in together and get married. Although LAT families are becoming increasingly common, they may still often be not seen as the best way to live as a family. Lone parents families are becoming increasing common within the UK today. There have been significant increases in lone parent families since the 1970s. This could be due to higher rates of divorce and cohabitation break down. Lone parents also have a reduced likelihood for marriage in the future  with lone parent working class men having the lowest chance to marry. In 2004 73 per cent of lone mothers and 50 per cent lone fathers had dependent children. (Giddens, 2009, p. 355) This creates a concern with lone parents as it is believed that lone parents are more likely to be in poverty and dependant on state benefits. It is argued that the child from a lone parent household is less likely to do well in education and is more likely to become a lone parent in the future. With less time to get an education it is also common for a lone parent to have low or no qualifications and poor pay. Lone parents can get caught in a poverty trap as they do not have the time to earn good money and improve their education. Some lone parents may wait until their children have grown up, and go into higher education at a later date. With the increasing number of divorces and remarriages there has also be an increase in reconstituted families. Reconstituted families often bring two families together that have divorced parents. These types of family can generate some concerns as in many cases it is difficult for the children of the family to accept new relationships. In extension to this within reconstituted families there is a higher rate of child abuse. This could be due to the sometimes overwhelming environment of two families living together. They are also more likely to face economic hardship. Divorce rates in reconstituted families are higher than that of first marriages. Same sex partnerships have received a lot of media attention in recent years. This is due to the very idea of sexuality being a topic of interest within society. It is only since December 2005 that gay and lesbian couples could get a civil partnership. If they wish to have children then they have to choose from adoption, artificial insemination, fostering or if they had a child from a past heterosexual relationship. This can be good for the child as they may choose to counteract patriarchy. However on the other hand there are many aspects of a same sex partnership that could raise some concerns. For example the very nature of such a relationship challenges strongly held values and norms within society. This could therefor create conflict with other members of society. If there is a child involved this may not be the best environment to bring them up. In 2009 Elton John and his partner David  Furnish were looking to adopt a child from the Ukraine. They faced problems when EveryChild, an international childrens charity, said _it was concerned by the singers announcement that he and partner David Furnish wanted to adopt a 14-month-old boy called Lev. The organization said that while it praised Johns help in raising awareness about children affected by HIV in Ukraine, it said the answer did not lie in international adoption, arguing that more children might be left in childrens homes as a result of another celebrity adoption._ (Press Association, 2009) As well as this many people believe that it is inappropriate to bring a child up with same sex parents. It is believed that this will have an effect on their sexuality without giving them a fair choice. With society becoming more multicultural some people from other religions may condemn the idea of same sex couples. This could leave them marginalised on the edge of society. In some extreme cases there have been Honour Killings from some families in order to protect their image. With an increase in same sex couples there has also been more of a demand for fertility and reproductive technology. These men and women are looking to artificial insemination to help them to have a child. On the other hand however heterosexual men and women, may also require such technology if they have a problem with conception. This has helped women whom have put off parenthood in order to focus on their careers and education. As women get older their fertility rate falls, 1 in 5 women will reach the end of their fertile life childless. This new technology can help families to have children whereas in the past they may not have been able. There has also been an increase in younger women becoming surrogate mothers for older women who can no longer have children. Another technology that has had a large effect on family life is contraception. In the past, families often had many more children than in contemporary society. This was so their children could go to work and provide for the family, but also because they didnt have the technology. Contraception has become increasing important over recent years with youth  culture of today Drugs, Sex, Rock and Roll. In contrast to this idea, there has been an increase in teen parents over recent years, suggesting that more could be done to stop such families. Other generations within the family are increasingly having a greater influence. In the past due to poor healthcare many children would never have met their grandparents as they would have died at a younger age. In modern society grandparents and great grandparents are now increasingly part of the family. This can create tensions between caring for the older members of the family and the younger ones. It can also have a structural issue as the older generations of the family may become a burden if there is a break down in the relationship or a divorce. In conclusion there are a number of changes that have taken place in the family since the 1970s. Not all of these changes have had positive effects. There have also been a number of negatives. With such a large change within society concerns will arise, it is how these concerns are dealt with that will determine the future of the family unit. There are some sociologists that believe that the family is still just as strong as it has always been even with the loss of traditional families. _Family living also offers an opportunity for intimacy, a word with Latin roots meaning sharing fears. That is, as a result of sharing a wide range of activities over a long period of time, members of families forge emotional bonds. Of course, the fact that parents act as authority figures often inhabits their communication with young children. But as young people reach adulthood, kinship ties typically open up as family members recognise that they share concern for one anothers welfare_ (Plummer, 2002, p. 441) This suggests that it does not matter what shape or size a family is, but if it teaches the people within it to become good adults and care for others then it will have fulfilled its purpose. With the ever changing and diverse nature of the society in which we live families have simply become more specialised, and the people within them are no longer bound by what is  socially acceptable.

The History Of Integration Strategies Marketing Essay

The History Of Integration Strategies Marketing Essay Toyota employees a diversified business since it has spread its business operations all around the globe. The corporation tends to work in developed countries like America and developing countries like Pakistan. Therefore Toyota can deploy a number of techniques which could enhance the synergy created by diversification. The technique suggested here is that Toyota should further integrate related diversification by manufacturing motor-bikes, Scooties, bi-cycles since these are fuel efficient and eco-friendly transportation means. They can also focus on niche markets like manufacturing metropolitan buses. Building on the topic above, determine how diversified the company you research could become before it created a negative impact on the companys bottom line. Explain your rationale.   According to researches it is found that related diversification is more profitable than unrelated diversification and that there exists a non-linear relationship between diversification and the value created since after an optimal point diversification tends to become value-destroying (Galvan, 2007). Looking at the perspective of Toyota if the company diversifies on the markets it penetrates along with the related product line diversification it will tend to thrive. For example Toyota right now is focusing on diverse automobiles like hybrid, electric, SUVs etc. However if Toyota tends to start manufacturing totally unrelated products like leather shoes, bags etc. it would be a disaster since the corporation does not have sufficient competitive knowledge and competencies for competing in this market. Galvan, A. (2007). Diversification: Value-Creating or Value-Destroying Strategy? Evidence from Using Panel Data. Retrieved from http://gredos.usal.es/jspui/bitstream/10366/17425/1/DAEE_04_07_Diversification.pdf Victory Motorcycles From the case study, evaluate the business-level strategy of Victory Motorcycles to determine whether you believe the strategy is appropriate to offset forces in the industry. Provide specific examples to support your response. The business level strategy which has made Victory Motorcycles so famous around the globe is its diversification strategy. The business is highly diversified with a wide variety of products manufactured like motorcycles, snowmobiles and watercrafts. This makes the organization a highly diversified one. Furthermore the company also targets a diverse market across the globe. Their target market ranges from America all the way to China, Russia, Brazil and Australia. They tend to target customers through a variety of innovative designs and high quality motorbikes. Make recommendations for improving this strategy as well as describing any challenges you foresee in executing those recommendations. Provide specific examples to support your response. Since there are several other automotive firms in the market who have the tendency, capacity and technology to manufacture even better and highly efficient motorbikes the company need to take potential competition in check. What the company needs to do is formulate strategic plans for new automotive design and improve the efficiency. Along with that the company needs to manufacture environment friendly motorbikes like electric cars so that this challenge can also be met. Integration Strategies Explicate how the first company you researched was either helped or harmed by the integration strategy it chose. There are several ways in which companies can integrate for example mergers, forward/ backward vertical integration and horizontal integration etc. The company we researched is Dell.com. Dell has integrated the concept of forward vertical integration in its business model by selling to the consumers directly through its web portal thus calling for a virtual forward integration. This strategy has helped Dell in a variety of ways like increased consumer satisfaction by providing them with customized product right at their doorsteps and an approach to study consumer patterns. Magretta, J. (1998). The power of virtual integration: an interview with Dell Computers Michael Dell.  Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://autodesarrollate.vitro.com/PORTAL/cdh/thunderbird/files/Power%20Virtual.pdf Recommend at least one way this strategy could have been improved. This strategy could be further improved by reducing the price of the products since due to forward integration the distribution and placement cost decreases thus the company should also benefit its consumers with the reduced prices. Justify how the first company you researched could benefit from the vertical integration strategies it has not implemented. Include at least one advantage and one disadvantage of each strategy. The company could further take advantage from backward vertical integration strategy in which Dell can focus on manufacturing its own operating system, application software and chips. In this way the company can target a broader market segment along with providing customization in the personal computer internal environment as well. However this strategy might increase the cost of manufacturing along with complexity since there might be bugs in the newly developed programs due to incompetent software developers and company might lose its customers.

Increasing Visual Comfort with Blue Light in Video

Increasing Visual Comfort with Blue Light in Video Adjusting the blue light of the video to increase the visual comfort belong to the changed of light environment Abstract: This paper is an approached method adjusting the blue light of the video to reduce the eye strainwhen people watching video on digital devices such as computer display, smartphone screen or tablet in different luminance of the environments light. The method is using the light sensor getting the luminance values of the light, then sending these values immediately to our program to process the frame of the video. The videos frames will be processed based on lightings values and given the new videos frames which are reduced the brightness light. The video with reduced the brightness and blue light will increase the visual comfort to the human eyes when people watch the video in different light environments from brightness to darkness. Keywords: blue light, eye strain, lighting environment, video, visual comfort. 1. Introduction In recently years, digital devices are very popular in the world because they are very useful in the humans life. The digital display of devices is produced from a variety of technology called light emitting diodes (LED). From this technology, the digital display exposes to blue light that is a primary factor causing the eye strain and visual discomfort. Some electronic device displays such as computer screen, laptop, smartphone device or TV emit a lot of the brightness light contained the blue lights which bring to people the eye symptoms. As we know that, the blue light has a short wavelength in the area of the visible light spectrum. The blue lights wavelength has a range from 380nm (nanometer) to 500 nm; it is one of the shortest and highest energy wavelengths. The sources of blue light include the sun, computer display, smartphone screen, television, fluorescent and LED lighting. The eye strain is asthenopia in the medical term. When people concentrate their eyes on the digital display overtime, they will get the symptoms of ocular as fatigue, tired eyes, blurred vision, headache, neck pain and dry eyes. In the report of the vision council, there is 44% activity associated with the digital device used for work and 43 % for recreational reading. Besides, nearly 30% of the adults spend more than half of waking hours (> 9 hours) using a digital device. By using the most commonly digital devices as computer, smartphone, tablets, television,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the symptoms of digital eye strain are 32,8%, that is the highest symptom. When doing the jobs or watching video on the computer more than two hours, people will get stress or some other symptoms. The reason is that some frames of the video have many brightness lights that will expose the blue lights to make people feel uncomfortable. In addition, if the people watch the same movie on day or night with the glare, they will tired eyes, general fatigue, blurring or headaches. As we are known that the brightness video is normal to the eyes at day because the daylight is brightness also, but it is glaring when watching at night or in darkness environment condition. To filter or adjust the blue light, there are many ways to decrease the brightness light and increase the visual comfort such as using blue light filter applications, changing text and background color on the screen, or using the glasses. These methods have some advantages and disadvantages. In our research, we propose the system to process the color of videos frame belonging to the luminance value of the light environment. Our method is set up a system to perceive the light environment. Based on the darkness or brightness light, we will process the collected value from sensor directly to the videos frame and display on the digital display after filtering blue light on the video. From this method, the color and histogram of videos frame will be rendered immediately when the environment changed. It means that if the video is taken from another environment, it will be processed adjusting the blue light to reduce the eye strain and enhance the visual comfort in the current environment o f light when the viewer watching. 2. Related works In previous researches, there are many research papers talking about the blue light that is affected to the human eyes. From the blue light exposed website, they are talking about what is the visible light and blue light. Then, they also talk how the important of protection the humans eyes from the harmful effects of the blue light rays. Besides, this website also presents which symptoms effect to the eyes such as blurry vision, dry and irritated eyes, neck pain and difficulty focusing. They apply the rule 20-20-20: watching every 20 minutes, focus and object about 20 feets and ways for 20 seconds. They also propose some solutions to filter blue light from digital devices. Kuang-Tsu Shih[3] and his coworkers show the solution to reduce harmful blue light and optimize the spectral transmittance and minimize the color distortion in the blocking harmful blue light while preserving image color appearance. Yong-Woo Kim[1] and coworkers introduce the method to decrease the visual discomfort by reducing blue light component. They survey perceived symptom before and after watching a movie and measure the eye-blink rates of the participants, saccadic movements and near the point of convergence in his analysis effects of the blue light. Yoon-Suk Kang[2] said that the brighter video gives more discomfort than the darker video after making the comparison on stereoscopic 3D display, auto-stereoscopic 3D monitor and HDM devices. Additionally, there are some research papers about reading luminance of the light and turn on the light in the darker environment or turned off it in bright. In the tutorials point, they introduce about the histogram of an image and help to know which image is dark or bright from the histogram. From the histogram equalization article, Robert Krutsch and David Tenorio[4] said that which histogram covers all the possible values in the grayscale used is a good histogram. It means that the histogram will be a good contrast and details in the image will be observed more easily. 3. Theory Information 3.1. Blue light and visual comfort Visual comfort is a metric that is used to rate the lighting senses. In the recently years, several people make the research about the visual comfort and the relation from the lighting environment to the visual comfort. According to the International Commission on Illumination (CIE), the standards on lighting environment with many parameters as relevant for visual comfort including color rendering index and correlated color temperature. Therefore, there is some research papers are considered on surfaces brightness and color, light distribution and appearance of light and luminaires. The Unified Glare Rating (UGR) system that is developed by CIE in 1995 to evaluate the visual comfort glare by lighting sources as follow: Where: Lb is the background luminance(cd/m2), Li is the luminance (cd/m2), Pi is the position of each luminance. From the CIE, the higher UGR value suggests the higher visual discomfort glare. Besides, the researchers consider that luminance arrangement, LED lights quantity and lighting source surface distribution can be the factor causing discomfort. They said that if the number of LED increases then the glare is decreased. In many case studies research, people recognize that the color affects to the visual comfort in the mood and performance. As we known, the visible light has a wavelength from 400nm to 700nm (nanometer). It is visible for the human eye and responsible for the sense of the sight. In this range, the longer wavelengths are a red light and the shorter wavelengths are blue light. The blue light has a wavelength spectrum of between approximately 380nm and 500nm. It is one of the shortest and highest energies of wavelength. Fig. 1. Light spectrum with visible light (400-700 nm) and blue light (380-500 nm) Where is the blue light? And, what effect of the blue light to the human life? The blue light actually exists anywhere. It is stored in the light of the sun and traveled through the atmosphere. Furthermore, the blue light is exposed from the digital devices such as PC monitor, smartphone screens, TVs, laptops, tablet displays, fluorescent and LED light. Today, the LED display is very popular. It is used the LED back-light technology to enhance the brightness of the screen and clarity. Unfortunately, the LED has the very height energy of the wavelength or blue light. Because of the development of PC, smartphone,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦.the digital devices with this technology are used on them. Therefore, people will watch the blue light too much. Besides of some benefits of blue light as boot alertness, help memory and cognitive function and evaluate moods, if people get the blue light emitted from the digital devices, they will get stress and eye strain. There are many kinds of eye strain as blurry vision, dry and irritated eyes, difficulty focusing, headaches, back pain,à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ They also increase the risk of depression, permanent eye damage or loss vision. There are the research from Harvard said that if people work the night shift and exposure to the blue light to get several types of cancer diabetes, heart disease or increased risk of depression. 3.2. Hardware circuit and Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) sensor In our research, the hardware used to process and transfer luminance of lighting environment is Arduino circuit board. Arduino is an important circuit board that communicates with the computer and other electric devices via USB port. It also gets output data from electric devices and sends to the computer to process. Arduino is very famous microcontroller board with many categories. Arduino Uno is used in our research based on the ATmega328. The board has 14 digital output pins including 06 digital pins used as PWM output. It has the operating voltage of 5V and limitation of the input voltage from 6V to 20V. Additional, DC current of each I/O pin is 20mA. Flash memory has a capacity 32KB. Arduino read inputs from a sensor, finger on the button, data from USB or a Twitter message, then turn it into an output as activating motors, turning on a LED or publishing something online. There are a lot of projects in many fields and worldwide community of makers using the board to set up their projects. To do something, you can tell what you want to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board. Arduino is changing to adapt to new need and challenges with simple 8-bits boards to products for Internet of Things (IoT), wearable, 3D printing, and embedded environments. Fig. 2. Arduino board (left),LDR sensor (center) and characteristic of LDR sensor schema (right) LDR sensor is a light sensitive device. It is made up of semiconductor materials having high resistance. It operates based on the resistance. If its resistance is very high, the LDR is kept in dark and brighter when its resistance decreases. When the light is incident, it takes 8 to 12 ms for the change in resistance to taking place and takes one or more seconds for the resistance to rise back again. LDR has a low cost and simple in structure. People use it as a light sensor. It is used for lamps on street or light intensity meters, etc. 3.3. Making image contrast A histogram is a graph. It presents the frequency of anything that is provided in the dataset. The graph has two axes: y-axis presents the counting number of frequency and x-axis is the values of things in the dataset. In image processing, the histogram displays frequency of pixel intensity values. While x-axis is the gray of intensities, then y-axis shows the frequency of these intensities. The histogram is very useful in image processing. It can be used in medical to predict something from X-ray picture, adjusting the contrast of an image or using in thresholding, Therefore, equalization histogram is necessary to get the balance in the image. To enhance the contrast, we make the histogram equalization. After equalization, the intensity of the image is better distributed on the histogram. There are some methods to equalize the histogram such as histogram expansion, local area histogram equalization, cumulative histogram equalization, par and odd sectioning. Fig. 3. Histogram equalization 4. Algorithm and results In the previous section, the blue light is a primary to make the people getting eye strain and visual discomfort when they work on the digital display devices. The eye strain will make people get stress or some other diseases. If people work or watch image/movie long time on the computer or digital devices at the night, the eye strain and discomfort will be increased more and more. This is very dangerous to the human eyes and their mental. With the blue light exposed from the PC monitor, people work on the screen of the computer or the laptop will increase the stress or eye strain. Especially, it will be increased more and more visual discomfort if people watch image or video at the night. At that time, the light of environment is too dark, and the video may have much lights of the blue color. So, reducing the eye strain and increasing visual comfort that synonym to reduce the blue light on each frame of the video is very necessary in this case. The problem is how to reduce it? From our research, we propose the solution to help people reduce the eye strain when they watch the video in the darkness environment of light. Our solution is a system with two parts including electric devices and image processing program. Our systems structure is described in the following figure: Fig. 4. The structure of reducing blue light and increasing visual comfort system. In the process, if we have the video that is captured from brightness environments. As we known that, the brighter frames of the video caused more visual discomfort than darker video. So, when we watch the brighter video in the dark lighting environment, we will get more visual discomfort. How to know which is the brighter or darker lighting environment? We use the LDR sensor. LDR sensor with the resistor to get the intensity of the environment and Arduino board collects the values of LDR. On the other hand, we get the information from the input video (videos frames) via histogram. We process every pixel from the input video (videos frames) with the value collected by Arduino. In the next, we are mapping the pixels color after processed into (255,255,255). Then, we make the equalization histogram for the image to enhance the contrast. Finally, the new output video (videos frames) is rendered and reduced blue light in the new environment. In generally, our algorithm is presented as following: Read luminance value of current environment by LDR sensor (E). Calculate and send to the program value of (E). Read the desired video by sequentially frames. Calculate the value of (E) on each pixel of videos frames. Process color of the videos frames after calculating in the fourth step. Equalize histogram to enhance the contrast of the videos frames. Display new rendered video after reduced eyestrain or visual discomfort (increasing visual comfort). The LDR light sensor gets the lights luminance of the environment and process that value by using Arduino board. The computer read the video and the lightings luminance values sent from the Arduino board based on the lightings luminance values, we calculate the histogram and process above videos frames, then rerender that video suitable to the environment light. The output video is reduced the blue-light and reduces the eye strain of the viewer. Finally, the viewer will watch the video in less visual discomfort in the different lighting environments (from brightness to darkness). Based on the algorithm and processing video, we try to work on the day and night with the same video. For easy imaging, we choose an image frame of video and process on it with the luminance value from lighting environment. The result has some different images that are different to the original image. The results are depicted as follow: Original image frame Result image frame on the day Result image frame at the night in less darknessResult image frame at the night in very darkness Fig. 5. Output image frame in different values collected from light sensor For the 3D stereo images, we also process the left and right images belonging to the light values that are collected from the LDR light sensor via Arduino circuit board. In this case, re-rendered the images by calculating a color based on environment light is very important because it is strong effected to the eye. If the blue light is not reduced, the eye strain will be stronger and visual discomfort more increasing when watching 3D stereo movie. 5. Conclusion Today, the digital devices are very popular. It always exists parallel in the humans life. Therefore, watching video on the digital display devices in a long time will get stress, eye strain, and visual discomfort. Our paper has proposed the solution to the viewer when they watch the video by using light sensor-LDR. The LDR light sensor perceives the current light environment, the system processes to make an output video belonging to the environment that is reduced eye strain and visual discomfort. Our solution gives the result depending on correspondence environment brightness or darkness. References Yong-Woo Kim and Hang-Bong Kang. (2016). Analysis of blue-light effects in reducing visual discomfort from watching stereoscopic 3D video. Society for Imaging Science and Technology. Yoon-Suk Kang and Sungho Cho. (2016). Comparison of visual discomfort when viewing 3D videos with various contrast changes on a stereoscopic 3D display, an autostereoscopic display, and an HMD. Society for ImagingScience and Technology. Kuang-Tsu Shih, Jen-Shuo Liu, Frank Shyu, Su-Ling Yeh, and Homer H. Chen. (2016). Blocking Harmful Blue Light while Preserving Image Color Appearance. ACM Trans. Graph, Vol. 35, No. 6, Article 175, 10 pages. Takashi Shibata, Joohwan Kim, David M. Hoffman, Martin S. Banks. (2011). The zone of comfort: Predicting visual discomfort with stereo displays. Journal of Vision, 11(8):11, 1-29. Gordon Wetzstein, Wolfgang Heidrich1 and David Luebke. (2010). Optical Image Processing Using Light Modulation Displays. Computer Graphics Forum, vol 29, issue 6, pp. 1934-1944. Monica Sà ¤t. (2010). Colour And Light And The Human Area For Visual Comfort. Colour and Light in Architecture_First International Conference 2010_Proceedings, 285-291. Robert Krutsch and David Tenorio. (2011). Histogram Equalization. Technical Report, Microcontroller Solutions Group, Guadalajara, Rev.0. Paola Iacomussi , Michela Radis, Giuseppe Rossi, Laura Rossi. (2015). Visual Comfort with LED Lighting. The 6th International Building Physics Conference, IBPC. Energy Procedia 78 ( 2015 ) 729 734. The Vision Council. (2011). Protect your eyes from Digital devices. Digital eye strain report, unpublished. Effect of blue light technology, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_blue_lights_technology. Eye Strain, http://www.medicinenet.com/eye_strain/article.htm. Arduino Tutorial,  Ãƒâ€šÃ‚   https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Calibration. Visual comfort probability, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_comfort_probability Authors Viet Tran Hoang is a PhD candidate in Global School of Media, Soongsil University, Seoul,Korea. He had received his B.S degree in Computer Science from Cantho University, Vietnam, in 2000. He hold a M.S degree in Information System Management from HAN University, Netherlands, in 2011. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Computer Graphics at Soongsil University, Seoul, Korea. His research interests include image processing, 3D real-time rendering and 3D stereoscopic rendering.