Pocahontas – Cultural Anthropology

Writing Assignment #1: The Cultural Construction of the Idea of Progress Film chosen: Pocahontas One of Walt Disney’s most famous films, Pocahontas, takes place in the 1600s, as the British discover parts of the â€Å"New World† that are inhabited by native Americans. In this film, we are able to contrast the primitive lifestyle and culture of the Native Americans to that of the British, and are able to see how the ideas of â€Å"progress† or social evolution play a role in the ethnocentric bias held by the Westerners during this time, causing the primitive stereotypes to be built.Disney uses the structure of the characters themselves- what they wear, how they speak, what they eat, what they believe in, etc. ; and the plot line of the film, to depict the cultural construction of the idea of â€Å"progress†, and evoke the opposing ideas of the â€Å"primitive other† and â€Å"civilized self†. This film opens showing us the life of the British as they board the ship and while they’re sailing at sea. Disney starts off with the British because we as westerners relate to the British, and see their way of life as normal and civilized.We immediately relate to the color of their skin, their westernized clothing, the way they speak, and the technology they have access too. While on the boat, John Smith (the male protagonist) refers to the Native American Indians as â€Å"savages† who should be killed if they get in the way. This gives us a sneak peak into the mindset of the British and how negatively they view the Native Americans. Leaving us with the belief that the Indians are savages, Disney then introduces Pocahontas (the female protagonist) and the Indian tribe that has been living in the New World.Immediately we are exposed to the primitive lifestyle of the Indians. We see that their way of traveling is by wooden canoes, their clothing consist of a brown cloth that covers very little while they also do not ha ve on shoes, they live in tents, and have nothing but nature at it’s purest form surrounding them. We see the women out in the fields gathering corn by hand, while the men are coming home from battle, with only bows and arrows and spears for weapons.The initial reaction to seeing the culture and way of life amongst the Indians is to see them as â€Å"uncivilized† and â€Å"savage†, just as John Smith was saying on the boat. However throughout the film Disney begins to challenge this belief and shows us that the westerner’s way of life may not be the best way of life for everyone. Up until this point, John Smith and the rest of the English men had been discovering new places and finding Native American’s that had been living for many years on these foreign lands.The Europeans always saw these natives as uncivilized, barbaric savages, who needed to be taken over and â€Å"westernized†. John Smith makes a comment to Pocahontas about how they co uld make the Indians life better, and build them roads and tall buildings, and teach them how to â€Å"make the most of their land†. This is a perfect example of the ethnocentric bias mentality of the Europeans. They never once considered that someone else’s way of living and culture could actually be a successful.They thought that their way was the best way, and anything else was just an underdeveloped, barbaric lifestyle that needed to progress into the westernized lifestyle. After John Smith makes this comment about â€Å"bettering the Indian’s life styles† Pocahontas is deeply offended and proceeds to sing the popular song, The Colors of the Wind. In this song Pocahontas calls John Smith out on his ethnocentric stance and shows him her point of view, in singing: â€Å"You think you own whatever land you land on, The earth is just a dead thing you can claim, But I know every rock and tree and creature, Has a life, has a spirit, has a name.You think th e only people who are people, Are the people who look and think like you, But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, You'll learn things you never knew you never knew. † For the first time John Smith begins to listen to Pocahontas and realizes how ignorant him and his crew have been to think they can claim any land they come across, treating the natives like wild beasts.All this time the Europeans have looked down upon the primitive culture of the natives, thinking that they were sub-human, and needed to be nurtured and tamed just like animals; however in this moment John Smith see’s the free spirit in Pocahontas, and he admires her connection to the nature all around her. He begins to see that the Natives are just normal human beings in their natural element, a thriving off of the world around them, with no need of technology, or any of the advancements the westerners were bringing to the New World.Overall, Disney’s film, Pocahontas, does a wonderful job contr asting the cultures of the â€Å"primitive other† and â€Å"civilized self† with Pocahontas and the Indians as the primitive other and John Smith and the Europeans as the civilized self. We are able to see through the Europeans, their ethnocentrism, and their naive attitudes that leads them to believe they own whatever land they land on and can treat the natives however they want. Disney however plays out this film in a way to show us his view on this ethnocentric bias and how he believes it to be wrong and unlawful.He makes the viewer side with the Indians and portrays the Indians as the good guys and the Europeans as the bad guys. Disney was trying to send a message that this whiteness way of thinking is not always correct and can sometimes bring harm to others even when its not intentional. Works Cited: Pocahontas. Walt Disney Feature Animation, 1995. Film. Seriff, Suzanne. â€Å"Cultural Anthropology: ANT 302. † University of Texas. Spring 2013.

African American Culture 5 Essay

Question# 4: African cultures, by and large, bring a similar world view to the relationship between man and the spiritual realm, one that is marked by an extremely personal interaction. In the broader African spiritual world human beings are seen to be under the constant influence of other people, their ancestors, minor deities, the Creator, and various forces of nature. As a result the African spiritual world can be described as interactive since all things are endowed with life-force. How is this idea expressed in ritual approaches to morality, wrongdoing, and spiritual empowerment? African American religion has always been heavily involved and influenced by the notion of morality, wrong doing and spiritual empowerment since the slave days if not earlier, African Americans came to embrace Protestant Christianity and adapted their own version of it which is consistent with evidence in the 19th century and a little bit of the 18th, at the time Christianity had little effect on slave society through the efforts of Anglicans, but it was not because African Americans rejected the gospel but because whites seized Christian brotherhood from blacks. As blacks in the South and in the British Caribbean struggled to develop individual and collective identities from the ideas and ways of African culture and their new conditions of life, the series of efforts by evangelicals to convert slaves eventually gave rise to a distinct African-American form of Christian theology, worship style, and religious community. The importance of religion and having their own take on it is among African Americans, as among all people, rests on fulfilling the human need for an understanding of one’s place in both the spiritual and temporal world. Although it was difficult, African Americans discovered in evangelical conversion requirements an opportunity to reassert personal authority based on their ability to communicate directly with God and to bring others to recognize the need for personal repentance and acceptance of Jesus. A perfect example that supports the connection between religious involvement and a sense of personal identity, is found in a slave woman who, back then it was not common for them to tell missionaries that her people have come from across the sea and lost their father and mother, and therefore want to know the Father. The displacement of Africans, for whom locality was critical to interactions with the spiritual world, did not strip them of their religious identity, but required them to learn the spiritual landscape of their new home and reshape their practices accordingly. â€Å"Come Shouting to Zion† details the many religious rituals that Africans preserved in the new world, especially those surrounding fundamental life events such as the birth and naming of children, marriage, burial ceremonies, and ritual dancing and singing to communicate with ancestors and deities. The influence of Africans with many diverse but fundamentally similar cultures in a strange new land encouraged slaves to form new pan-African cultures, which grew increasingly popular as later generations of slaves were born into bondage in America, establishing a distinct African-American culture. The pidgin African-English is a prime example of Africans in American creating a system of communication that was not traceable to a particular African ethnic origin, nor was it a perfect imitation of American English, but was instead shared by blacks in America. As slaves first encountered a foreign language that whites wished them to learn well enough to be more productive but not well enough to pose a threat to the race-based socioeconomic hierarchy, so they became acquainted with Christianity at the will of whites, but when given the opportunity, appropriated it for their own purposes. In the early encounters between slaves and Christianity it is without question that African, and particularly American-born slaves, sought a spirituality that would explain or show their temporal condition. Some salves looked to a theology of liberation and equality among Christians, which they could glean from 18th century evangelicals, mostly Anglicans, who tried to downplay these aspects of biblical teaching. The early period of evangelism was restricted by the fears of slave-owners that slaves who converted to Christianity would feel empowered to revolt against their bondage. Several conspired rebellions and many smaller incidents of black assertion were linked to blacks who had heard enough preaching to identify themselves with the enslaved nation of Israel. This fed the fears of whites, and Anglicans continued to complain that the planters who prohibited them from educating slaves on religious matters were the largest hindrance to saving African American souls. While racism was strengthened and slaves were unable to improve their social status by conforming to white European-American values, very few blacks found the Christian message Anglicans shared with them appealing . Anglican churches maintained strict separation of rich and poor, white and black, during services and sacraments. The high-church emphasized that learned men alone were authorized to teach and that blacks would listen without questioning and to accept the extension of their temporal message and isolation from whites into the religious sphere. Under these terms, it is I am not surprised that Christianity failed to take root as a meaningful religion, a spiritual world that Africans wanted to live in. But it is essential to recognize the role of whites in shaping the message that Africans were allowed to hear, and the role specifically of slaveholders in excluding blacks from access to Christianity. That blacks expressed their agency in rejecting this early version of Christianity offered to them. . At the same time Anglicans were confused over their lack of success in the Southern mainland, Moravians made a significant impact on blacks in the Caribbean by bringing a different vision of a Christian community. Moravians, Methodists, Separate Baptists, and a few other missionaries in the late 18th and early 19th centuries who sought out African Americans stressed spiritual, if not always worldly, equality. Africans identified with and embraced images of a savior who had suffered like they did, and joined these Christian images with African musical modes of expression to create spirituals that reminded: â€Å"Jesus been down to de mire/ You must bow low to de mire† (Stuckey, 139). However, you must finally accept Christianity as an affirmation of their lowly place in society and a divine exhortation to obedience and docility, as many white slaveholders had hoped they would. Rather, blacks found opportunities at biracial revival meetings which were meetings held at locations most often church, in which slaves and blacks were black would interpret what they heard and to share their divinely inspired interpretations of Christian faith, even from pulpits. During this critical period when a significant portion of blacks in the Caribbean and American South were first offered Christianity, they clearly adopted it and transformed it into something that was their own. After the period of revivals that first sparked wide-scale conversions in the South, many African-Americans focused on building a community in which they could support one another and worship in their own African-influenced style. Local black congregations extended their religious community, most notably with the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in1816. As an institution spanning several states, the A. M. E. Church allowed blacks to take part at different levels in a collective, hierarchical social system as had never before been possible under American slavery. blacks continued to participate as minorities in biracial congregations (still with segregated seating) in most parts of the south and the expanding frontier, but found fewer opportunities to become ordained preachers or lay leaders in mixed parishes, where they were likely only to be allowed to â€Å"exercise the gift, provided they teach sound Doctrine sic† under the approval of whites (Frey & Wood, 166). In the creation of their own religious communities in which no whites were present to criticize â€Å"overemotional† black forms of religious expression and persisting practices, such as polygamy and dancing, African-Americans actively designed a spirituality that fulfilled their needs in the slave societies of the Americas. African-American religiosity was then, as it is now, â€Å"centered on extended and expanding families and households, the importance of self-determination and personal dignity, mutual aid, and shared responsibility for the progress of the race† (Hortons, xi). In my opinion, African agency is most clearly supported by evidence of Africans defining their faith, modes of worship, and religious ties as part of a larger emerging African-American culture. Change was a relentless fact of life for Africans in 18th and 19th century America, most tragically present in enslavement and removal from Africa and domestic trade within the Americas that broke up families as masters bought and sold property. Outside the personal struggles of individual slaves, the changes in ideology and society wrought by the era of the American Revolution exposed Africans and their descendents to evolving external ideas about their place within American society, their rights as humans, and their needs as spiritual beings. Religion was one of the few arenas in which African-Americans could control the changes in their individual lives and their culture as a whole. Evolving religious traditions provided individuals over generations with a source of spiritual renewal and a supportive community and prepared an institution that could serve future generations. The long and turbulent transition from African forms of religiosity to African-influenced forms of Protestantism shows that black Americans created, out of all religious ideas and structures available to them, a faith that was their own. Question#3 The musical selections in this section come from Africa and the Americas. Some are examples of the preservation of traditional musical styles; others are examples of the adaptation of traditional modes of expression to modern styles. Prevalent in each performance is the use of either percussion instruments such as drums or singing in groups or by soloists. How do these musical selections exemplify a common African musical aesthetic, i. e. rhythmic syncopation, call-and-response, melodic constructions, vocal colors, in both traditional and contemporary expressions? African dance has contributed many characteristics to dance in America. We see evidence of this in many aspects of dance today. Being such a diverse nation, America has the blessing of combining original dances from different cultures to create an amazing dance repertoire. American dance as we know would be completely different, if it weren’t for the Africans. African dance began with the different rhythms of the tribes. Its roots in America began with the slave trade. The American slave trade began in 1619, (However, Africans were imported as slaves to the West Indies staring almost a century before that) with the arrival of Dutch trading ships carrying a cargo of Africans to Virginia. They were first brought over by boat to places such as Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti. Eventually different countries end up taking over those nations and slaves fall under their rule. In Brazil, the Portuguese take over, in Cuba the Spanish take over, and in Haiti, the French take over. The retaining of African culture by those in slavery was stronger in the other nations than in America, as the Spanish and French rulers adhered to the more lenient view of dancing taken by the Catholic Church. In America, the Protestant church strongly disapproved of dance. Therefore, dances that occurred in the West Indies, Brazil, Haiti and Cuba retained more of the African dance structure, than those in America did. Those dances can be classified as recreational or sacred. An example of a recreational dance is the Juba, which was a competitive dance where opponents would outdo each other in feats of skill, sometimes while balancing something on their head. Sacred dances were based on the worship of religious gods. The goal of the dance was for the dancer to become â€Å"possessed† by the god so that it would speak through the dancer. Two examples are voodoo and Shango dances. Traces of the African religious practice of possession, or disengaging from reality through the combined effects of music and dance, can be detected in the appeal of some forms of jazz dance. In America, the dance movement of Africa was restrained mainly by two factors: the attitude of the church towards dancing as being immoral and the restricted use of the primary African instrument (the drum). Drumming was banned in 1739 following a slave insurrection. White plantation owners responded by banning all drums and that forced slaves to search for other percussion options. They substituted with banjos, clapping hands, stomping feet, and the fiddle. Dances that occurred on the Plantations were for recreation and religious reasons also. Because of the European influence in America, the movement gave a distinct American appearance, rather than a strictly African one. Many dances imitated animals. There were also circle dances and dances for celebrations. Another category that emerged was competitive dances. The most well known one was the cakewalk. The slaves had witnessed their owners’ dancing festivities and imitated their stiff upper bodies while contrasting it with loose leg movements. The owners enjoyed watching this and gave a cake to the best dancer. The observation of African dancing by the whites led to them stereotyping the dancing slave. They began to blacken their faces and imitate them using such indigenous movements as the ‘shuffle’. The imitation dances by whites started an era of American entertainment based on the stereotype on the dancing ‘Negro’. Before the Civil War, professional dancers were mostly white, with the exception of William Henry Lane. He was also known as â€Å"Master Juba† and was a freeborn slave thought to be the best dancer in the World. He had lived in Manhattan where the Irish immigrants also lived. His dancing was a combination of Irish jig dancing and African rhythm, just like the slaves who were forced to compete with the Irish migrant workers aboard the ships. Both his movements and the Nigerian slaves are said to be the start of tap dance. Minstrelsy was also a popular form of entertainment in America from 1845 –1900. The Minstrel show was a group of male performers that portrayed the Negro as either slow and shuffling or sharply dressed and quick moving. The minstrel show proved prominent in spreading vernacular dances like the cakewalk and jig dancing on a wide scale. The next major change after minstrelsy came with the birth of ragtime music and ballroom dancing after 1910. A bunch of animal dances were seen in white ballrooms. Examples were the Turkey Trot, and Chicken Scratch. The invasion of ballrooms with native inspired dances set the stage for the same process to occur on Broadway. Zeigfield borrowed some of these dances for his Follies. Social dance became introduced on the theatrical stage. The big aspect being borrowed wasn’t the actual dances, but their swinging qualities. In 1921, Shuffle Along featured a jazz inspired dance called the Charleston. It left the audience with a lot of energy and a new respect towards black dancing. Tap was now also brought to white audiences and the musical comedies took on a new, more rhythmic life. In the late 1920s, jazz inspired songs replaced the popular white standards and America accepted Jazz music as its own. Louis Armstrong was a big part of the creation of swing music. It was a style of jazz music that emphasized African influenced rhythm and was played by big bands. Faster and sharper footwork came about and the Lindy was the new dance craze. It incorporated the shuffle and glide and buck and wing movements from early African dances. The Lindy was significant for starting jazz dance styles used in later musicals. It also gave the opportunity for white choreographers to experience African swing. Jazz music and dancing slowed down in popularity after WWII. Technology and music were evolving. The beat became more complex and musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizie Gillespie explored more with improve. The overall result was, jazz music became something more to listen to rather than to dance socially. The advent of Television in the 1950s also kept people at home instead of on the dance floors. African American dance became more of an artistic expression than a social means. Professional companies and dancers restored early African rhythms and the beauty and emotion of their traditional songs, including Catherine Dunham’s â€Å"Shango†, Alvin Ailey’s â€Å"Revelations† and Bill T. Jones’ â€Å"Uncle Tom’s Cabin†. In the past 50 years, African American dance has been rich in innovations as well as connections with the past. The definition of professional dance has broadened beyond ballet, modern, and jazz. Popular and social dances, including the urban black dance forms of break dancing and hip-hop have been recognized for their artistry and expressiveness. Dance created and performed by African Americans has become a permanent part of American dance. Every dancer and almost every person in America, in one way or another has danced steps that resemble early African polyrhythmic movements. Personally, I think the dance World in America could no have flourished as well as it did without it’s African influences. since the slave trade the drum has been used all over the world as a means of communication and self expression. Its broad variety of users includes the early African tribes, using them for ceremonial purposes. The Africans brought drums with them to the Americas and helped to develop their popularity among American musicians. In the mid 1900’s drum sets were brought about. These revolutionary collaborations of percussive pieces started off with a pair of hi-hats, a bass and snare drum, and a couple of tom toms. Later as the music progressed, so did the drum kits, completely eliminating the need for an entire drum section. With the coming of the rock and roll movement the drum kits were changing, they needed to accommodate the new music styles. They became sonically diverse and even electronic drums were brought about; making them infinitely adjustable both ergonomically and musically. With every major drum manufacturer competing to have the best product on the market drums will always be evolving. African American musicians and early slaves choose to use drums as a common form of expression because of the deep bass that was used to duplicate heart beat and thunder. The sound waves for open ended and string instruments is fairly straight forward. However, for a closed end instrument, such as a drum, the sound waves are different. A lot of the energy is dissipated through the shell of the drum, which is the reason for the variance in drum construction these days. Many different kinds of wood are used to generate different sounds, or a different amount of energy absorption. For a warmer, deeper sound maple construction is used while birch is used to get a high, resonant tone full of vibration. The heaviest wood that dissipates the most amount of energy is oak, creating a lower, flat sound. Question#1 I believe that Egypt’s economic progress over the last decade is a great example of showing how They have come a long way and are still vastly improving. Egypt is the third-largest economy in the Middle East and North Africa region (after Saudi Arabia and Israel), as well as one of the strongest, with significant potential for future economic growth and diversification. With a real commitment to economic reform, which favors a large privatization program and the encouragement of private investment and growth. The improvement in Ghana is evident in how their country has such a diverse economy. The Gold Coast was renamed Ghana upon independence in 1957 because of indications that present-day inhabitants descended from migrants who moved south from the ancient kingdom of Ghana. By West African standards, Ghana has a relatively diverse and rich natural resource base Minerals–principally gold, diamonds, manganese ore, and bauxite–are produced and exported. Exploration for oil and gas resources is ongoing. Timber and marine resources are important but declining resources. Agriculture remains a mainstay of the economy, accounting for more than one-third of GDP and about 55% of formal employment. Cash crops consist primarily of cocoa and cocoa products, which typically provide about one-third of export revenue, timber products, coconuts and other palm products, shear nuts , and coffee. Ghana also has established a successful program of nontraditional agricultural products for export including pineapples, cashews, and peppers. Cassava, yams, plantains, corn, rice, peanuts, millet, and sorghum are the basic foodstuffs. Fish, poultry, and meat also are important dietary staples. Ghana’s industrial base is relatively advanced compared to many other African countries. Industries include textiles, apparel, steel (using scrap), tires, oil refining, flour milling, beverages, tobacco, simple consumer goods, and car, truck, and bus assembly. Industry, including mining, manufacturing, construction and electricity, accounts for about 25% of GDP. I strongly believe that since Ghana and Egypt have improved so vastly it is helping African Americans improve in general, the saying â€Å"We come from a long line of kings and queens is such a truthful statement if you look back on history. We have a lot of ancestry that lies within Ghana and Egypt. With the knowledge of the past it will help us to continue realize our past and bring us to terms with the future. We can reverse the process by not letting people hold us back and to not blame others. I also believe that strong knowledge of Ghana and Egypt and Mali, will also further our culture by being educated and not told how our past was. There are a lot of invention by many great African Americans that most people do not know that black inventors were behind the idea, not that is matters that a black or a white person constructed or came up with an idea for a patent, it is essential that we are have contributed just as many things if not more than any other culture. There have been so many contributions to society to western civilization and I feel it is so important that we surround our selves with knowledge of our ancestors because they worked hard to get us to the point today where we are able to vote and the possibility of a black president. The saying that we come from a long line kings and queens is so powerful because it shows you that black really is beautiful and if you retrace our ancestors you will find out that our people were just as important as kings and queens. Lewis Temple was the inventor of a whaling harpoon called the â€Å"Temple’s Toggle† and the â€Å"Temple’s Iron. † He was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1800 and arrived in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1829. He worked as a blacksmith and had lots of friends that were whaler’s who bought harpoons and had lots of conversations with them. Granville T. Wood was known as the black Edison. Woods was born in Columbus, Ohio on April 23,1856. He never finished elementary school and he worked in a machine shop at a very young age. He moved to Missouri in 1872 at the age of sixteen. By 1881 he opened a factory in Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactured telephone, telegraph and electrical equipment. He filed for his first application for a patent in 1884 for an improved steam-boiler furnace. Woods patented the† telographony ,† a combination of the telegraph and the telephone. He produced one of his most important inventions in 1887, it was called the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph. It enabled messages to be sent from moving trains and railways stations. In 1890 he set out to improve the lighting system by creating an efficient safe economical dimmer. It was safer and and resulted in 40% energy savings. Woods also created an overhead conducting system for electrical railways and the electrified third rail. By the time of his death in 1910 he had 150 patents awarded to him all together. Lewis H. L was a pioneer in the development of the electric light bulb. He was also the only black member of the Edison Pioneers, a group of inventors and scientists who worked with Thomas Edison. He was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts in 1848 and was raised in Boston. He enlisted in the Navy and served as a cabin boy on the U. S. S Massaoitta the age of sixteen. Latimer was given the assignment to draw plans for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patent . In 1879 Latimer went to work as a draftsman for Hiram Maxim, who invented the machine gun and headed the electric lighting company. Latimer worked on improving the quality of the carbon filament used in the light bulb. In 1882 he received a patent for an improved process for manufacturing carbon filaments. Gerrett is best remembered for his invention of the gas mask and the three way traffic signal. Mogan was born on March 4,1875 in Paris, Kentucky. He left school after fifth grade at the age of fourteen. He left Kentucky and headed for Cincinnati, Ohio and got a job as a handy man in a sewing shop. Morgan directed his attention to the frequent instances of firemen being overcome by fumes and thick smoke when they went into burning buildings. He perfected breathing device which he patented in 1914. In 1923morgan patented an automatic traffic signal which he sold to the General Electric Company for four thousand dollars. In 1963 Garrett A. Morgan died at ht age of 88 in Cleveland, Ohio after he was ill for two years. Just to name a few ,those were a couple of major contributors to the African American culture and western civilization.

Functions of Management Essay

United Health group is a major insurance company that provides medical and mental health coverage to its consumers. The organization manages Medicaid and Medicare accounts as well as commercial accounts from employers. Providing healthcare insurance is a competitive job, therefore, the management of the organization has to use the four functions of management to remain in the competition. The four function of management are planning, organizing, leading and controlling. In this paper, we will discuss the four functions of management and how it relates to the organization. The four functions of management is planning, organizing, leading and, controlling. Planning is for the goals of the organization, planning sets the stage for action and major achievements. Organizing is assembling and coordinating human, financial resources needed to achieve the goals. This could be organizing activities such as grouping jobs into work units, marshaling and allocating resources and creating conditions so that people and things work together to achieve maximum success. Leading is stimulating people to be high performers. Leading can take place in departments, teams as well as divisions. By encouraging high performers, you are increasing their inner moral, making them feel and believe they can complete their goals rather it is individual goals that coincide with the organization’s goals. Another management function is controlling, managers make sure the organization’s resources are being used as planned and that the organization is meeting its goals for quality and safety. The four functions of management have in common is to achieve the goals for the organization. The four functions all work together. There are three different levels in management; top level managers, middle level managers and, front line managers. Top level managers are typically the CEO, COO or CIO. Middle level managers are under the top level managers and, frontline managers are considered operational managers. The top level manager determines and identifies the goals that are needed for the entire organization. Once the CEO has identified the goals and what steps that are  needed to achieve the goal, the information is conveyed to middle management. Middle management takes those goals and determines what’s needed to achieve the goals such as organizing workloads, teams or units. Then convey to frontline managers. Front line management does most of the leading, their more hands on with employees or teams. Front line managers assist with establishing individual goals that will benefit the company and coincide with the company’s goals. Front line managers also use controlling by making sure the e mployees utilize company resources if needed. Also by making sure the company goals are being met. The organization uses all four of the management functions. There have been many cases of increased health issues within call center environments such as; obesity, high blood pressure, depression and anxiety issues. The organization created incentives to make the idea more appealing to the employees. The organization has decided to inspire and motivate their employees to take better care of their health. By creating the goals of decreasing the health issues within the office setting the organization set their stage for action so they could achieve these goals. Now that the goal has been established the organization needs to assemble humans, physical information to coordinate ways to achieve the goals. The organization started providing bonus incentives such has decrease in insurance if you’re passed a bio metric screening. The organization also begin to partner with Weight Watchers providing employee discounts, LA Fitness (discounted membership), provide stress management classes along, with providing ways to exercise in the office. There are different teams within the company with a goal of losing the most weight. The teams encourage one another and provide support during their weight loss journey. All teams support and encourage with the expectations of dropping the weight and defeating the other team. The teams have weekly check-ins where the members have to weigh in, report their meal plans. By utilizing the four functions of management, the organization has been able to lower their premiums for their employees, and increase better health within the organization. The organization identified the issue of health  concerns within the office setting, set the goals of prevention and reduction. With those plans of prevention and reduction the organization was able to organize employees and coordinate ways to achieve the goals. The staff coordinated and provided information to their employees to educate and prevent. The leaders promoted the resources and encouraged those to be active and participate in all the resources the organization has to offer. Reference Page: Bateman Thomas S., Snell Scott A. 8th edition, 2009 McGraw-Management: Leading and Collaborating in a Competitive World, Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database. Sedentary jobs helping to drive obesity epidemic. (2011). Retrieved from http:// health.usnews.com/health-news/diet-fitness/fitness/articles/2011/05/26/sedentary-jobs-helping-to-drive-obesity-epidemic.

Breaking Down the College Admissions Process: Your 5-Part Guide

Once you enter the fall semester of your senior year, you will officially be in what is commonly known as college applications â€Å"season†, the time in between when college applications are released and the submission deadlines. Most college applications are released around mid-August, and the submission deadlines range anywhere from November (for early decision applicants) to February. Most deadlines, however, happen around January 1st. Thus, your senior year fall semester is crunch time in terms of writing out your college essays, filling out your applications, and securing recommendation letters from your teachers/counselors. Simply put, it’s a big undertaking. College applications have a lot of different components, and even one application can often make a student feel overwhelmed. To help you organize all the different tasks that you need to complete for college admissions, we’ve arranged a 5-part summary of everything you need to do to be considered at your colleges of choice. Most colleges in the US require you to submit either an SAT or ACT score along with your transcript. The SAT and ACT are college readiness exams, and colleges use your score to compare you to other applicants in an unbiased manner. Luckily, we at have extensively covered the SAT and ACT exams in previous posts. If you’re unsure as to what the SAT and ACT exams are, which one you should take, how you should study for them, and much more, look through some   of our previous blog posts on standardized tests. As a general rule, most colleges will accept both an SAT and ACT score, so you can choose the test that best suits you or gives you the highest score. Just note, however, that if you take the SAT, you may be required to complete additional SAT subject tests to supplement your application. What are SAT subject tests? This post will explain. Ideally, you will have taken the SAT or ACT as many times as necessary to get your goal score before the fall semester of your senior year comes around. However, if that is not the case, you can usually take the SAT or ACT until November or December of your senior year so that you’ll get your score back in time for your college applications. Many colleges allow you to submit your test scores a few weeks/months after the application deadline in order to give you that time buffer. Before you start your college applications, you need to decide which colleges you are applying to and narrow down your college list. The best way to decide whether a college seems right for you is to go to the college and do a campus visit. You can take an admissions tour, walk around the campus itself, and even sit in on a lecture to see what a real college class is like! We at are experts on how to make the most out of a campus visit. If you’re looking for some help when planning your college visits, check out these previous blog posts: The reason why campus visits have their own section in the college admissions process is that they’re one of the best ways to help you narrow down your college list. By visiting a college, you’ll be more secure in your decision to apply or not. These decisions will help narrow down your college list. Estimating your chance of getting into a college is not easy in today’s competitive environment. Thankfully, with our state-of-the-art software and data, we can analyze your academic and extracurricular profile and estimate your chances. Our profile analysis tool can also help you identify the improvement you need to make to enter your dream school. Your college essays are a huge part of your college application. Colleges read your essays to get a better idea of who you are as both an applicant and a student. The way you write and the things you write about are huge clues as to whether you would fit in at a particular university. Most colleges require anywhere from 2-4 application essays, and each one needs to be intriguing, intellectual, have perfect grammar and punctuation, and stand out from the thousands of other application essays that the college admissions officers are sure to be reading. That’s a tall order. Most students spend months working on their college application essays, and they go through multiple drafts. If you ever need help crafting or editing your college essays, offers a quick and expert College Essay Editing service to help you make your college essays stand out. To learn more, click here . Surprisingly, filling out the actual college application is one of the easiest parts of this whole process. It’s simply a matter of filling out multiple forms about your academic and extracurricular profile. While that may seem tedious, it is definitely not challenging. Before you start filling out your college applications, make sure that you have gathered all of your academic and extracurricular information. This includes your grades, courses taken, and standardized test scores. You should also have some detailed descriptions about each of your extracurricular activities written out–what they were, what leadership positions you held, and what you accomplished in the club or organization. If you have any work experience or community service experience, you should have a similar description prepared for those as well. Many colleges use the Common App, a college applications platform that standardizes the college application. If the university you’re applying to uses the Common App, you only have to input all of your information once, and multiple colleges will receive it. However, many colleges do not use the Common App, including most Texas state schools and UC colleges. You will need to re-input your information into their application portal. Almost all college application are done online now through application portals, which means that you’re going to have a lot of logins, usernames, and passwords to keep track of. Make sure that you keep a list of all of your logins and application IDs so that you are able to re-login to each application portal and review the status of your application whenever you need to. Nothing is worse than losing your password on decision release day and being unable to see whether you got into a college!   Ã‚   Once you’ve applied to colleges or have your applications well underway, it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to pay for college. There are multiple scholarships and financial aid applications that you can fill out based on your financial circumstances and other qualifications. However, the one financial aid application that every US resident can fill out is the FAFSA. FAFSA stands for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. It is a government-run program that offers students the opportunity to receive loans and grants to fund their college education. For some more detailed and personalized information about how you can get money through FAFSA, check out our previous blog posts: This is just an overview of the main steps you’ll need to take to complete your college applications. In reality, each step requires weeks, maybe months of studying and work. Thus, you need to make sure you start planning for your college applications well before the fall semester of your senior year, and make sure you give yourself months to work on your applications. Need more help navigating the college admissions process? Check out these previous blog posts: Feeling like you need help in navigating the college application process? Check out our   College Application Guidance Program . When you sign up for our program, we carefully   pair you with the perfect college admissions specialist based on your current academic and extracurricular profile and the schools in which you’re interested. Your personal specialist will help you with college applications and provide you with support and guidance in all other aspects of the admissions process.

Trends That Influence the Design of Effective Instruction Research Paper

Trends That Influence the Design of Effective Instruction - Research Paper Example In schools, instructors and learners will always learn from one another in all sorts of manners. Connecting with others or sharing information with others, whether they are known to us personally or not, has proven to be a significant component in education (Morrison, Ross, Kemp & Kalman, 2010). Therefore, social networking will have an impact on the design of effective instruction as both learners and instructors will collaborate with one another using the social media to learn and teach more about particular subjects, test out theories and ideas, learn actualities, and determine each other’s views. Both learners and instructors will be able to find each other on their blogs, Twitter, Facebook, kid-specific networking sites, and school sites. In addition, sites such as Twitter and Facebook will continue to be influential in both K-12 and higher education. Also, social networking will be influential as instructors will be sure of grabbing students’ attention through the various social media sites. Social networking will also play a part in the design of effective instruction as it essentially promotes engagement and collaboration between learners and instructors, learners and learners, and instructors and instructors (Morrison, Ross & Kemp, 2004). This will also be essential to instructors who will be attempting to establish ways of involving every learner in subjects that are personally engaging. Media Both visual and audio media will have an impact on designing effective instruction. Creating media is another technological trend meant to design an efficient instruction. Media saturates our existence, and the better able learners are to create and communicate with media, the more connected they will be to worldwide occurrences (Morrison, Ross, Kemp & Kalman, 2010). Therefore, programs such as Adobe Youth Voices will teach learners how to edit and make films and connect them to makers of documentary films, and Digital Youth Network will teach stud ents how to record music and create videos and podcasts. Pencils, pens, and books are almost becoming outdated, therefore, developing other interactive tools will help grab the attention of the learners and play a part in influencing the design of effective instruction. School programs should be built around teaching how to develop video games o as to influence the design of effective instruction. Instructors will have to use components such as Google maps for teaching literature, LiveMocha and ePals to study international languages with native speakers, Voki to develop avatars of characters in tales, VoiceThread to communicate, and also augmented actuality, connecting learners to virtual characters. The media will influence the design of effective instruction when instructors thread media-making components into the school program with free tools, for example, Microsoft Photo Story 3 for slide shows, comic strip-creation site ToonDo, VoiceThread and Microsoft Movie Maker to string t ogether documents, videos, and images, and SoundSlides for audio slide shows. In addition, learners in college and high school will start using digital portfolios to illustrate the course of their work on websites that connect their work on achievements, and course of study, using web pages, photos, spreadsheets, and graphics (Reiser, & Dempsey, 2007). Online Resources Online resources will also influence the design of effective instruction. Conventionally, in a teacher-centered class room, teachers manage the instruction

State Education Standards (my state is Florida) Essay

State Education Standards (my state is Florida) - Essay Example The standards that have been mentioned in each of the documents are logical, realistic and attainable. For student achievement standards the bureau of student development has provided a thorough analysis of the standard. The best part that makes the state department’s claim commendable is the practicality of the standards it expects of its students. A detail report in the stream of Language Art shows how scientifically and strategically the standards are fixed for each grade. Specific requirements of standard for each grade are mentioned like â€Å"Grades 11-12: Reading----Standards/Benchmark†. As the document is in the form of a table based on class grades one can easily navigate through it. Standards seem to be listed as objectives though it is not mentioned specifically. The performance standard of teachers is mentioned in detail. Florida stresses on recruitment of teachers with the skill and resource of teaching non-English speaking students. The requirements in terms of teaching standard are described distinctly especially for ESOL teachers. The document is presented in point form and the objectives are mentioned in specific terms. As there are no sub-headings and as the analysis is content based navigation becomes a little cumbersome to reach a specific detail. The document of the national standards of education of the state of Florida is comprehensive and inclusive of all the different departments of education. It provides a concise but complete view of the standards fixed for each of the different branches. The document presents the content in a very systematic pattern in bullet points with headings and sub-headings for each point. Adopting this technical approach has not only made the document to the point but has also made it easy for one to navigate through it for related points or links. There are no specifications of the standards being regarded as objectives but it seems so in

Developing Career Prospects Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Developing Career Prospects - Assignment Example Additionally, through the Chapter on management process, roles, behavior and skills has made me to identify the skills that managers should have. These include personal, social, technical and political skills among others. Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) entails the process that people pass through as they perceive the world and make decision. The theory, which indicates the existence of two dichotomous pairs of cognitive functions, was of great assistance to me (Emmons, 1996). In terms of rational function, my thinking and feeling towards life challenges were positively enhanced. I felt that with determination and confidence I was able to handle any challenge that comes on my way. On its part, irrational function aroused my sensation and intuition towards my duties. As a student or an employee, one should be able to identify areas that they are effective as well as areas that they are weak. In this way, one is able to identify the areas that they need assistance. My competence in the area of business was based on the skills that I gained in the course of my school work as well as the assistance I received from the instructors. Through the skills, I was able to receive a positive outcome that included strong positive relationship with my customers (Schneider and Alderfer, 1973). However, my inability to balance intuition with rational judgment was a negative perception that affected my outcome. I address this by thinking strategically and go beyond the obvious, gathers complex data, to get to the heart of the issues One’s values are important since they are source of motivation and they greatly make one to be identified by the values. My main value is working hard. I like to achieve my goals through working hard, remaining confident and be focused at my goals (Ibarra, 2003). Additionally, I value learning how to master new tasks by adopting high self efficacy. In this way, I am in a position to educate others on various issues thus our