Children and the Internet Essay

Think about how much time your children spend on electronics and what it could be doing to their health and intelligence. Instead of reading books and learning from experiences they’re glued to a screen that’s leaving them unable to react in real life. â€Å"Hands on experiences are vital to the developing of conversation and cause-effect relationships† (Negative effects of Internet usage on Child Development). Internet Influence on kids is becoming a problem with prolonged exposure to technology ending in Physical, Cognitive and Social Maladaptation. It is important to realize that a child’s body is just beginning to develop and that a sedentary lifestyle can lead to obesity and health issues. â€Å"Computer use can cause carpal tunnel and eye strain.† (Physical and Social Effects of Internet Use in Children). Leaving children with health issues alone on the computer is even worse and unexpected popups can cause a lot of problems. â€Å"It can also cause seizures if there are rapidly flashing games and websites† (). There are so many ways children can get ahold of the internet: computers, smartphones, iPads, iPods, gaming consoles, etc. It’s leaving them feeling instantly gratified and entitled to things that aren’t theirs that causes lots of trouble as they get older. In addition to physical effects there are cognitive ones as well. â€Å"Easy access to internet may become less able to separate fact from fiction. Internet has no filter and no peer review so anyone can publish what they want. Informal communication common to chat rooms is a worry and can carry over to their academics† (Physical and social effects of Internet use in children). The multitasking that many children engage in while online reduces attention span, making intense concentration on a single task more difficult. â€Å"Rapid nature of internet stimulation alters the way children see the world, and it creates boredom.† (Physical and Social effects of internet use in children). Information posted on the Internet is lawless. Young children depend on adults to validate what they see, hear and feel. The information on the Internet is uncontrolled and there is no way to check its reliability, and further, often no practical way to ensure referability.  Ã¢â‚¬Å"Increased use among children may result in feelings of loneliness and depression† (Physical and Social effects of Internet use in children). â€Å"Also results in less time spent with family and friends or working on hobbies† (Physical and Social effects of Internet use in children). Another key point refers to the social side of the effects of the internet. â€Å"Violent images, foul language and a lack of social rules common to the internet don’t help a child succeed in the real world† (Physical and Social effects of Internet use in children). â€Å"Instead of hanging out with friends they show a trend that a computer is more important† (The influence of the Internet on our younger generation). â€Å"Causes desensitization to violence. Both violent and pornographic imagery can fundamentally alter a developing child’s perspective of the world† (Negative effects of Internet usage on child development). â€Å"They lose the skills and patience to conduct social relattions in the corporeal world† (Physical and Social effects of Internet use in children).

Self-storage began in America Essay

The Shurgard concept of self-storage began in America in 1970 when cofounder of the company Chuck Barbo identified a gap in the market for both homeowners and businesses with a requirement for extra space. He came up with the notion of mini-warehouses for people with excess belongings and businesses with long forgotten records or documents. Twenty years later Shurgard began to expand into Europe and in 1995 the first European store opened in Brussels. Four years later the first UK store opened in South London and earlier this year the company was bought for $5bn by Public Storage, the world’s largest owner and operator of self-storage facilities. The challenge The growth and success of Shurgard in Europe meant that increasing demands and expectations were being placed on the company’s operations middle managers who were wrestling with a growing number of stores, an ever-larger geographic area of responsibility, increased numbers of employees, decentralisation of country and panEuropean support centres, greater autonomy and reorganisation of roles. Terry Whitney, European Learning and Development Manager of Shurgard SelfStorage Centers, said: â€Å"The business of self-storage was very different in Europe than it was in the US and there were different points of maturity in the market so there were many challenges to face. Most of our attention was focussed on buying property and building new facilities. Suddenly we realised we had a management team that was bright and hard working but had suffered from a lack of development focus.† â€Å"The best result of our partnership with SHL is that the district managers are now motivated because they know what is expected of them, how they will be held accountable and have focused training and development in place. Importantly, they also know what success looks like.† Terry Whitney, Shurgard shl.com Case Study | Shurgard Typical of many fast growing companies, Shurgard realised that it had no consistency of job titles, roles or responsibilities and no standardised job descriptions or job competencies for its staff. In addition there was no formal evaluation, training or development and no succession planning. What Shurgard wanted to create was a consistent layer of district managers across Europe. Some people already had this title but their job seemed little different to a market manager, operations manager or area manager. â€Å"We were promoting great operations people from store managers to more senior job titles with responsibility for profit and loss accounts for specific districts. We also wanted them to lead, inspire and motivate and the more senior roles had a completely different set of skills requirements which we had not measured or trained for,† said Whitney. District managers were identified as the operations critical layer with which to start work. Shurgard felt that if these people could not understand and accurately report on key occupancy and rates figures for stores, then shareholders would not have the confidence to invest money for expansion and more storage sites. The solution This client places people development high on its list of organizational priorities. With an agreed name for the role, the company needed to align the title with expectations and competencies that could be used across Europe and which would accommodate future growth of new stores. The people had to more effectively lead and manage an ever larger number of store personnel at a time of reduced centralised support. They were also required to operate at a higher managerial level than had previously been demanded. Faced with this challenge, Shurgard partnered with SHL – global experts in workplace assessment – to conduct a performance assessment of the mid-management team in Europe. The programme was designed to: †¢ Establish a benchmark of current managerial talents †¢ Undertake a gap analysis to determine the strengths and limitation of the management team against the new job competencies †¢ Recommend how the current managerial team could achieve the new expectations for the district manager role †¢ Assess the leadership potential of the current team †¢ Identify the ideal profile of a district manager for use in future recruitment. Supporting more than 10,000 customers every year Organisations that understand and maximize their people’s potential achieve outstanding results. SHL gives you the insights to make better decisions about your people. We call this People Intelligence, Business Results. â€Å"With SHL’s Universal competency Framework cards, we were able to define the critical behaviours required for the district managers role†, comments Whitney â€Å"This competency model was the hub around which SHL was able to design an appropriate development centre programme.† Individuals were invited to a one-day assessment at an SHL diagnostic development centre in order to see how they fitted the need and behavioural competencies of the district manager role. The assessment included exercises aligned to specific competencies, psychometric tests in local languages, management scenario role-play and numerical, verbal and abstract reasoning tests. Each attendee received feedback from a senior SHL assessor who took them through their results and talked about their development needs. The Results As a result of the assessment, Shurgard found that its mid-management team had a wide spectrum of skills and abilities but also specific patterns of managerial strengths and weaknesses. Recognising these areas enabled the company to target the appropriate training and development to address specific competencies and behaviours. â€Å"Shurgard really learned the critical importance of aligning the district manager job description, job competencies, hiring profile, training activities and performance management processes to create improved motivation and performance,† said Whitney. He added that using the competencies created by SHL also changed the recruitment and promotion process. New recruits are now given competency-based interviews focused on certain experiences whilst promotions are no longer based on length of service and performance alone but on potential against the required competencies. â€Å"For me it’s the competencies – everything ties back to them,† said Whitney. And he adds: â€Å"The best result of our partnership with SHL is that the district managers are now motivated because they know what is expected of them, how they will be held accountable and have focused training and development in place. Importantly, they also know what success looks like.† Case Study | Shurgard Shurgard’s need to focus on developing its managers was being hampered by a lack of consistency in job titles, roles, responsibilities and competencies for its staff. SHL worked with the firm to assess its midmanagement team in Europe and identify the ideal profile for district managers. Shurgard is now able to target management development and recruit more effectively for improved motivation and performance 25 million assessments every year. Organisations that understand and maximize their people’s potential achieve outstanding results. SHL gives you the insights to make better decisions about your people. We call this People Intelligence, Business Results.

AS Level Sociology - Culture and Identity Families and Households Essay

AS Level Sociology - Culture and Identity Families and Households Wealth, Poverty and Welfare - Essay Example However the connection of income to consumption is not wholly simple. The lower class will use up greater fractions of their income on needs and the elite on wants, but the lower class also give excessively to charitable and religious groups (Haworth 2004). The equivalent of the overwhelming selection of products and services introduced in the late twentieth century is the condition that for a significant percentage of consumers some part of their spending is ‘discretionary’ (Haworth 2004). This discretion entails not only brand preferences, or one clothing style or form of diet or residential architecture rather than another. It reaches the entire notion of ‘lifestyle’ (Haworth 2004). Several families will be penny-wise and prudent, saving for their future; others will adopt a lifestyle that exceeds their means. Several families will continue buying things such as summer homes, home workshops, automobiles, and swimming pools—and other will buy experi ences such as participation in sports, concerts, plays, or operas. Veblen’s notion of ‘conspicuous consumption’ is very accurate at the turn of the 21st century (Haworth 2004), but not limited anymore to the ‘leisure classes’. ... Among the most significant concepts for categorising social life are those that assign social statutes or positions, or socially acknowledged classifications of individuals that denote position in structured social activity or social character (Ellemers, Spears & Doosje 2002). Aside from characterising and positioning individuals in social conditions, social divisions communicate identity or behavioural expectations. The latter are named roles by sociological classical role theory, a tradition applied by identity theory in social psychology (Ellemers et al. 2002). Hence, when individuals use social divisions to identify and acknowledge one another in social circumstances, they bring in role expectations for the behaviour of each other; if they use positions submissively to identify and categorise themselves, they create role expectations or purposes for their personal behaviour (Cote & Levine 2002). Perceived as self-conceptualisations, these reflexively employed positional labels ar e the emphasis of identity theorists, in which they are called ‘identities’ or ‘role-identities’ (Cote & Levine 2002). The theory of social identity in social psychology raises a comparable identity construct, but underlines identities on the basis of wide-ranging social classifications such as social class, ethnic status, and sex, instead of those related to job-related and other roles in the society’s social structure (Ellemers et al. 2002). In Mead’s and symbolic interactionism’s cognitive tradition, identity theorists define identities as â€Å"cognitive responses to oneself [or other] as an object [of consciousness]† (ibid, p. 49). From

Film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Film - Essay Example This was because they aimed at putting across to many people about their philosophy, as they worked on a minimal budget. For this reason, they used techniques like jump cuts. These are strident edited cuts, which occur unexpectedly. It was done by changing the angle of the camera to less than thirty degrees, and it had a disturbing effect on the viewer (Greene 45). This was for saving costs but not to rush the movie. Another technique is the improvised film making. This is whereby shooting was usually done in public places, constructed plots on the go and dialogues were constructed. This captured a spontaneity and vibrancy, which no other film could match. There was also the use of natural sound, whereby, the New Wave did not remix their sounds. A natural sound, recorded during the shoot was used instead. Even  though, it had intrusions and mistakes, it was still used. This gave the films a sense of energy and freshness. It also uses hand held devices that are easy to maneuver with. This enabled them to take long shots and flow the camera, they could also shoot in tight areas that gave an illusion of bulkiness and intimacy. The term auteur was coined to mean that a movie of a particular writer, director or author was not similar to any other movies. Therefore, the New wave directors strived to make unique movies. They also placed homage to films that were before their work. This is evident in movie genres like Jerry Lewis comedies and crime movies (Greene 84). In conclusion, these techniques have been widely adopted by film makers, and have proved to be beneficial to them and to the audience. However, the question to be answered is whether the techniques used in the French new wave are still relevant

7 SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS ONLY Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

7 SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS ONLY - Assignment Example (PLEASE FEEL FREE TO USE YOUR OWN RESOURCES) 1. What is orthography and how does it differ from phonetic spelling? Explain why linguists use a phonetic alphabet to represent speech sounds instead of regular spelling. Include specific examples in your answer. (125 WORDS) Orthography means literally correct writing and it refers to the rules and conventions of the written language. It includes the way that letters are used to spell out a word, punctuation, and the use of capitals and lower case letters, as for example the use of capital letters for all nouns in German, but only for proper nouns in English. Orthography alone is not a good system for linguists because it does not represent accurately the actual sounds that are produced in spoken language. Two speakers from different parts of the United States might pronounce the same word differently and this is not recorded in orthography. A phonetic alphabet has one symbol for each sound and this allows accurate analysis of sounds. Suprasegmentals are a linguistic feature that can be found in the spoken language. Linguists look at the small segments of speech, such as vowels, consonants and syllables and analyze how these are formed and how they fit together into words and phrases. Suprasegmentals are features that transcend these tiny pieces and range over several syllables. An example of a suprasegmental is the way that intonation and stress patterns operate. It is important to identify these features because they can change the meaning of an utterance, for example a rising intonation can mean a question in English whereas a flat or falling intonation is a statement. Stress on a word can mean emphasis. The word â€Å"desert† has different meanings, depending on which syllable is stressed. Answer the following questions in your own words. Your answers need to be complete enough to demonstrate mastery of the lesson objectives. A brief paragraph (5 sentences)

Summary of the Article - Government and Poverty Research Paper

Summary of the Article - Government and Poverty - Research Paper Example In the scenario, the author also makes a mention of the more recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The author defines poverty as the dearth of the necessary resources that enable the people to meet their basic needs and extends the commensurate statistics regarding the urban, suburban and rural incidence of poverty. The author does support the extension of government aid to the deserving, while taciturnly mentioning that many people suffer from poverty because they are lazy. The writer also blames the indulgence in substance abuse like tobacco and alcohol as the reason as to why the poor remain poor. Yet, the writer again contradicts one’s assertion by saying that a great number of the poor receiving the government aid do tend to be employed. In the end, the writer conclusively asserts that the government should spend money on imparting skills and education to the poor, rather than wasting the taxpayers’ money on extending nutrition, health and housing. Overall the approach of the writer seems to be discernible against the government funding of the poverty alleviation programs. The poor tend to remain poor because they simply do not have a place in the national financial chain and many times, as said by the author, they lack the skills, education and connections to be able to fit into the national financial dynamics. Hence the government spending on the poverty alleviation programs is the most efficient way to make way for the allocation of the national wealth in favor of the impoverished segments of the society. The government has a self-interest in doing so in the sense that allowing the poverty to rise beyond a certain limit could lead to an unstable society marred by political unrest and crime (Lal & Myint 8). It is rightly said that the hungry minds are angry minds. Hence, state expenditure in poverty alleviation programs allows the government to channelize the skills, abilities and energy of poor sections of the society towards self-development and nation-building. State sponsoring of the poverty alleviation programs is not a choice but an important n ecessity and requisite. Hence, there is no scope or possibility for casting doubts on the relevance or necessity of the government spending on the poor or poverty alleviation programs. The writer himself conveyed that a majority of the poor people receiving government help does have jobs and they tend to work. Hence, the tongue in cheek assertion that the poor people are poor because they happen to be lazy is utterly nonsensical and biased. Poor people, in fact, happen to be poor because they do not have a say in the national and international policy-making procedures and frameworks, where they could chalk out the apt policies that would help them have a share in the process of wealth generation and allocation (Global Issues 1).

Cultural environment of United Arab Emirates Essay

Cultural environment of United Arab Emirates - Essay Example This paper will focus on describing the cultural environment of the United Arab Emirates, according to the model described by Hofstede. The Five Dimensions of Culture It is of critical importance to describe the five dimensions that Hofstede described. The first of these dimensions is the power/distance, which denotes the degree of inequality that is evident in the society (Reiser 9). According to this psychologist, the people in the society have usually accepted that inequality exists, and realize their place. In cultures registering high scores of this dimension, uneven distribution of power thrives, with people in the system living within the limits of their place. Societies that have a lower score in this dimension exhibit a level of power sharing and dispersion and the members in the society consider each other as equals. . Societies that register high scores in this dimension have a hierarchical society whereby the gap between each level keeps widening. The second dimension is individualism, which denotes the depth of ties existing between people and their communities. Societies that register a high score in individualism have many people practicing autonomy, and the exhibit a high level of independence. Societies that have low scores in this dimension exhibit complex community networks and value the societal projects (Reiser 11). The people have an indomitable connection with their societies, a factor that makes them focused on pursuing community projects. The third dimension that he used to describe societies was masculinity, which denoted the society’s tendency to adhere to gender roles attached to both men and women. High scores in this dimension illustrates that a society holds onto the gender system that defines masculine and feminine roles, with men associated with the tough responsibilities. On the other hand, low scores reveal that a society has embraced gender equality and that women in that society can take up various careers, including those taken up by men. Low scores do not imply that a certain society exhibits reversed gender roles, but rather describes the changed attitudes towards the stringent gender system that has defines masculine and feminine roles. The fourth dimension that Hofstede defined was the uncertainty or avoidance index, a framework that relates to the society’s tendencies to avoid ambiguity or confusing situations. Societies that score highly in this sector usually avoid any form of ambiguity by setting up multiple rules and regulations that define the necessary action and option under any circumstance (Reiser 13). Low scores in this area indicate that a society lacks laws that define each probable situation, and that novelty is encouraged under different circumstances. The fifth dimension describes a society’s preference for long-term orientation. High scores in this dimension indicate that a society prefers to hold onto traditional values that define the society. Low scores are exhibited by countries that have lost an attachment to traditional values and are willing to adopt dynamic trends. Geert Hofstede Analysis for United Arab Emirates According to Hofstede, the United Arab Emirates exhibits a high score on the power and distance of 80 highlighting that the society is highly hierarchical. There are differential classes that define the

Latino Narrative film Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Latino Narrative film - Essay Example The 2002 movie Frida, directed by Julie Taymor, focuses on this transformational aspect of Kahlo’s personality while it immerses the viewer into the world of Frida’s love, creativity, marriage, passion and hatred. With Salma Hayek as Frida Kahlo in Frida, we step into the life story of the now world famous painter Kahlo. Her life seems to be a sequence of tough choices and a total challenge. Once suffering from polio as a kid, Kahlo managed to recover from this crippling disease only to find herself severely injured in a car accident, which left her physically disabled for the rest of her life. As she starts painting, Kahlo makes herself get together all her willpower to opt for this active life position rather than, bedridden, merely wait for the death coming. She goes through two volcanic yet artistically inspiring marriages to the renowned Mexican artist Diego Rivera (Alfred Molina). The film shows how throughout all her life-changing choices, Frida Kahlo manages to be â€Å"never conventional about anything she does†, to be â€Å"always herself† though it is often not easy (â€Å"Frida Movie†). The opening sequence starts with the protagonist being carried in bedridden out of her home. It then switches to Kahlo’s years at high school and the calamitous accident the heroine suffers just at 18. Frida gets pierced by a metal pole when a streetcar and the bus that she is riding collide. The injuries that Frida receives leave her disabled for the rest of her life, so that she moves on crutches, in wheelchairs, or stays in her bed. While she is confined to her bed with the shattered back, Frida’s father brings her canvas to help her recuperate from the accident. From that time on, Frida paints. Taking up painting is probably one of her most dramatic life-changing choices. My opinion can be explained by the fact that Frida’s works, as it is vividly shown in the film, are always along her life events. Whatever the surrealist artists goes through,

Critically discuss the contribution of positivism to the study of Essay

Critically discuss the contribution of positivism to the study of society - Essay Example This paper would however move forward with narrowing its focus on epistemology, which is concerned about the sources, nature, and limitations of knowledge. Moreover, epistemology also attempts to look at the process of acquiring knowledge, differentiating between reliable and unreliable knowledge, nature of the knowledge and all other factors involved in the process. Epistemologists differ greatly, as they do in all other aspects of philosophy and there are different schools of thought in epistemology as well. Rationalism believes that knowledge comes with reason, thinking, and discovering ideas, knowledge or reality resides in the ideas, and ideas are â€Å"a priori† which come before experience. Empiricism believes that the source of knowledge remains experience and humans only have the access to the ideas of the things and not things. For having the knowledge, we need to use experience. Transcendental idealism is another school of thought, which tries to accommodate both em piricism and rationalism by saying that knowledge is something, which begins with experience and ends at the structural arrangement of knowledge in mind with the use of logic and reasoning. However, there are other schools of thought like intuitionism, authoritarianism, postmodern view and others but we once again narrow down or focus on empiricism since that concerns our rest of the decision. Positivism is one of the most important concepts and developments in the empiricist school of thought, which holds the view that reliable knowledge is only attainable with proper experience and demands verification, very much similar to the scientific way of acquiring knowledge. Famous sociologist and philosopher Auguste Comte deserves all the credit for coming up with a comprehensive framework and layout for this term (Kaines, pp. 16-24, 1880). However, contributions from Hebert Spencer, Emile Durkenheim, and Charles Darwin have also been