Can This Bookstore Be Saved Essay Example for Free

Can This Bookstore Be Saved Essay The internet has brought an end to most brick and mortar locations of book stores and have changed the ways that book publishers market and sell their books. Publishers had to change the way they allocate printed books as well as beginning to release books as apps in order to change the ways that books are sold and open up to a wider audience. Paper books would create a bigger profit but do not sell as well as e-books. Book stores either had to adapt to the change or ultimately meet their end. Book stores had to reach to selling e-books and e-readers in order to maintain their sales. BN as well as book publishers are changing their business model to deal with the internet and e-book technology by increasing the features which they offer to their clientele. They are constantly upgrading the r-readers they provide and increasing the functionality of their e-books. Also they are looking to cater to the college student for their text book needs. 3. Yes BN’s new strategy will be successful. I feel that their new strategy will be successful because they are not appealing to more people especially college students that will repeatedly need to purchase or rent textbooks. As with new features they allow people to do more things even though some people may never use them the younger demographic would more than likely be drawn to those new features. 4. I feel that BN and publishers should be giving people more of a preview of the books to stimulate more business. With e-books it is harder to just impulse buy one because you cannot hold the book in your hand and read a few pages to see if you have a true feel for the book. The weaknesses   within Facebooks privacy policies and features are the fact they want you to share as much information as possible but they make your information openly readily available to anyone if you do not know how to go through all of Facebooks settings. They do not automatically protect your account and do not easily give you the information to do so. The factors that contribute to those weaknesses is the lack of information given to consumers, they do not tell you how your information will be used, the difficulty involved with updating how your information is shared and the fact they do not ask your permission for images. The way in which Facebook currently conducts business I do not think they can have a successful business model without invading privacy. I feel like they make the most of their business exploiting people’s privacy and their lack of knowledge with how to change their privacy settings. The only way I feel that they can make it successful would be to educating the people that use facebook to take the proper measures to make sure their information is not shared without their approval.

Comprehensive Classroom Technology Plan Essay Example for Free

Comprehensive Classroom Technology Plan Essay Introduction For many schools across the country there have been many studies on what type of communication is best for students, teachers, and parents going into the 21st century. Many school districts have chosen the (CMC) technology which is the Computer mediated communication and it has dramatically changed the ways for students to interact with their professors, especially for communication outside of the classroom (which is better choice pg1). For my future classrooms this along with the phone and paper is my preferred communication method of choice. Class Website From many studies students who are older prefer asynchronous communication such as email can effectively help students in solving problems outside of the classroom. Recently synchronous communication such as a virtual office hours using online chat was also widely used in the class room. (Which is a better choice page 9) For a school website to exist the schools must first follow these four objectives. 1: An introduction to who the school is. 2: An interface of outside resources 3: Publisher of good works 4: A Data resource. (Tech Trends vol 49 num. 6 pages 1.) Most schools already have websites that display this information however what would need to be created is simply a white board that parents and faculty members who are involved with the kindergarten level can access. White board A whiteboard is simply a website that parents and faculty members alike can log onto and check what is happening in the classroom as well as grades. For kindergarten I propose that this whiteboard would have a white page with buttons at the top that will take them to different links. These buttons are laid out in a simple tool bar layout. |Teacher |Student List |Grades |Work for week |School Calendar |Current curriculum |Classroom policies and | |Contact Info. . | | | | | |procedures | Tool Bar Buttons A: Teacher contact info. This will have my contact information and the hours I am available as well as my vision and mission statement. B: This will have the student’s names that are listed in my class as well as their parents Emergency contact information only visible to faculty. C: Will list the current grades for each subject for the quarter or semester that we are currently in. D: This will have any subjects or work that we are working on for the week so that parents can visually see what we are doing in class. E: This will have a classroom calendar will subject time slots as well as break schedules, lunch times, and other time slots as needed F: This will have my classroom curriculum for the semester and will be constantly updated as it changes G: To me it is important for parents to know the behavior system that you as a teacher put into place as well as any school policies regarding anything from parent –teacher conflict ,kids misbehaving, lunch procedures, etc. All of this involves the webmaster for the school simply using basic html web creating code to create. The information that is based on the website is simple text with minimal visualization. Email/phone The other form of communication that I would have my parents use would be email system as well as phones. Most parents who are in the current age of computers and 21st technology are familiar with how to email and use smart phones as well. I would use this system to keep parents informed in any behavior issues as they occur. The phone system would be not only an emergency behavior contact system but also an important communication tool for any parent to contact me. Technology hindered parents Now there are parents out there who may be ESL parents that are not familiar with how to access the whiteboard or email. For these parents I would suggest sending out monthly handouts that explain A: How to use the white board and email. B: my contact information as well as the schools. C: Since I am pretty fluent in computers I would also try an hold a 1hour class free to parents a month to show them not only the benefits of technology but how to access our whiteboard for student and classroom information. Of course C is based on the amount of computers that our school district has provided us because as we all know some rural schools are still not able to provide a computer lab. How would I setup communication for this school? Non Computer lab school. For a school that doesn’t have a computer lab or website I would revert back to the old fashion way of creating a folder for my students to take home every Friday that would encompass all the information that would be normally available on the website. School Website security Since I am a teacher obviously computer security would be the webmasters job. However I would ask parents to join the schools computer website by creating a username and password so that they would have access to the resources available on the classroom whiteboard as well as the schools website. Faculty For the white board I would ask my fellow teachers to setup a development team to keep the specific kindergarten audience in mind. They would submit a design as to what appropriate sites, cultural analysis, content organization for a culturally responsive website, as well as development of the site and constant site evaluation. (Tec trends Vol 49, number 6 pg. 35) Eventually after the site was created and used for a year I would ask the development team to go back and perform an analysis to see how convenient the site use was for parents and faculty. Then I would ask this analysis information to be passed around to other schools as well as school districts in hopes that it would spread across the state as well as country. I would recommend using all of this analysis with the website http://teacher. scholastic. com/homepagebuilder/ to build the whiteboard and website for all schools. Conclusion As you can see my vision for communication for the 21st century framework not only includes technology of old (paper, phones) but a computer mediated  communication website that provides all the details of myself as a teacher plus the classroom information for my class. This type of technology will help not only the student to parent communication about what is going on in class but also the parent to teacher communication about my vision and mission statement as a teacher. I believe a white board is what every classroom should have in education for classroom of the 21st century References. Author A: Lei Li1Author B: Finley, John1Author C: Pitts, Jennifer1Author D: Rong Guo1 (2010). Which is a better choice for student-faculty interaction: synchronous or asynchronous communication? Journal of Technology Research; Sep2010, Vol. 2, p1-12, 11p, 5 Charts Author A: Miller, Susan1Author B: Adsit, Karen I. 2, 3 Author C: Miller, Ted4 (Dec 2005) Evaluating the Importance of Common Components in School-Based Websites: Frequency of Appearance and Stakeholders Judged Value. TechTrends: Linking Research Practice to Improve Learning; Nov/Dec2005, Vol. 49 Issue 6, p34-40, 7p, 5 Charts Author A: Walters, Marlenel Author B: Fehring, Heather2 (2009) An investigation of the incorporation of Information and Communication Technology and thinking skills with Year 1 and 2 students. Australian Journal of Language Literacy; Oct2009, Vol. 32 Issue 3, p258-272, 15p, 1 Black and White Photograph, 6 Diagrams, 1 Chart Website: http://teacher. scholastic. com/homepagebuilder/

Benefits of Parent Involvement in Child Education

Benefits of Parent Involvement in Child Education Family involvement makes a difference in a child development. Family is inside the microsystem and is close setting for a child, so child will get direct influence and experience from the family. For the sake of the healthy and holistic development of children, educator need to understand the importance, benefits, challenges and ways to get family involvement. According to Epstein (1995), there are six types of parent involvement, which are parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making and collaborating with community. Parent involvement not just means that parent only have one way to interact with the school such as collect the report, school need to provide various activities for the parent to be involve in children’s learning process. For the parenting, teacher can help the parent to learn about child development and what is developmentally appropriate practice for children (Epstein, 1988). For example, parent can learn the four types of parenting styles, included authoritarian, authoritative, indulgent and uninvolved parenting style and the impact on children from the aspect of autonomy granting, acceptance and involvement and control. When school provide this type parent involvement, it actually helps school to have a deeper understanding about the environment, practice and culture of that family. Co mmunicating is also important parent involvement, it helps to develop an effective communication between school and home about children’s progress and school activities or policy (Epstein, 1988). Besides that, volunteering provide opportunity for parent to participate in the school activities such as fund-raising, provide car pools service and teach topic related to their professional (Epstein, 1988). Policy of the school and convenient of both side need to be considered to prevent unexpected event to happen such as parent prepare peanut butter cake that are not allow in school food safety policy. Learning at home give chances for parent and children to engage in educational activities at home together (Epstein, 1988) , for instance, complete the collage with the adult guidance, take picture of holiday time for show and tell session and prepare a traditional food to bring for the family night. In addition, parent also can be involved in decision making activities (Epstein, 19 88). Parents are not just the people that pay the fee, they are also valued member to give comment to and develop school policy such as curriculum planning, teacher hiring standard and chose teaching materials. The last type is collaborating with the community, it means that school support parent to provide services to the community (Epstein, 1988). For instance, raise fund for charity organisation, clean the housing area and donate reading materials to the public library. Why the parent involvement is importance for the children’s development? Firstly, most of the children spend more time in home with parent than in school, the attitude of parent has greater influence on children than teacher. For instance, when parent care about the school activities so much, willing to participate as much as they can and show the initiative towards it, their children will indirectly know that because of school is important, that is why parents spend so much time on it. Children will have better attendance and done the homework in time with the adult guidance. Secondly, when parent get involved in school activities, they will have deeper understanding about the way school teach their child, the school policy and they may change their perception or belief about child development. Through this, children can obtain better nourishment from parent that are knowledgeable and responsive toward the children’s learning experience in school and try to link it to the home environment. Thirdly, emotion wellbeing of the children can be enhance if the parent involvement is sustained, not just a few times in one year or limited to greeting each other and pay fee only. Some children do not like to go to school and want to stay at home is because they do not see the relationship between the school and home, they think these two are separated, they feel insecure and anxious when they leave house and parent. So, when parent get participate in the school activities, children will know that relationship of school and parent is well established and feel comfortable and proud when they saw parent show the care for their learning and school is view their parent as valued members to cooperate with. Children gain lots of benefits from the family involvement in early childhood centre. They gain the sense of self-worth in school because they really feel secure and acknowledged that school is the place for them to learn and spread their wings safely, without any negative emotion. Consistent responses between parent and school also help children to develop self-worth, self-confident and positive engagement with adult, classmates and learning process (Carol, 2010). When parent and teacher have effective communication, they will talk about how to enhance children’s development and how to provide enrichment for children, children know adult are care for them, not just dumping then in school alone. Parents also increase the confidence and level of self-esteem on themselves and school provided education through the activities such as child-rearing skills class, field trips and policy making process (Carol, 2010). Besides that, parents also know school is supportive and will not fe el lost when bring up young children, especially young, first time to be a parent. When they acquired the skill to help their child better, they tend to support the learning at home more, in consistent, authoritative and developmentally appropriate way. Furthermore, not only children and parent gain benefit from parent involvement, teacher gain too. When parent are involved in the learning process of children, teacher will gain insight into that family’s culture, background, sensitive issue and practice. Every parent have different expectation for their own child too (Carol, 2010).This will help teacher to plan more suitable, appropriate learning experience and activities for children and their family members. Teacher morale can be improve too (Carol, 2010), when teacher know that parent are willing to collaborate with them, their energy and positive mind set will be increase, thus they will have strong competence in the profession and advancement. Quality of teaching also im proved because obtain the assistance and support from parent such as teaching aids or resources, parent talk about their professional and volunteer as replacement teacher (Carol, 2010). There are some challenges of parental involvement, including time management problem, personal problems, language or culture differences, attitude of teacher and lack of understanding and trust (Carol, 2010). Nowadays, working parents are very common, they are very busy and not always available. If the school did not take this into consideration, the parent involvement will be reducing because parents are not free to attend the activities. This will cause the lacking in direct, face to face interaction between teacher and the ineffective delivery of message. Teacher also have time problem, they are busy all the time and fail to maintain a regular communication with families. Parents will feel fear and reluctant to approach the teacher (Carol, 2010). Every person has different personality, some are introvert, timid and some are out going and open. When the parent or teacher have difficulties and do not dare to tell each other about their needs, both of them will lost the opportunity t o help and this will influences the child. For example, teacher lacking teaching material and parents do not have transportation for the child. For the people with low self-esteem and confidence, they think that they do not have the ability to help each other or they feel shy and shame because of their low socio-economic group. Parent with old, traditional parent involvement concept also cause the challenge for family involvement in school (Carol, 2010), they think that it is unnecessary, waste time and not willing to contribute their effort to the learning activities of their children. Other than time and personal problem, language or culture differences is another factor that build the challenge of involve parent in school (Carol, 2010). Culturally and linguistically diverse parents always have the problem in interaction with school, they have different ethnic background like Malay, Chinese, Indian, different culture, they speak different language such as Bahasa Malaysia, Mandarin , English, Tamil, and even speak in different dialect, for instance, families that speak in Mandarin also use Cantonese or Hakka as their daily language, especially for old people like grandparent. If the school did not care for need of these culturally and linguistically diverse parents, misunderstanding, miscommunication and ineffective message deliver will occur. Parent who do not know English will unable to read the notice written in English, parent are not willing to work with teacher or other parent that with different races because of the stereotype and when children display difficulties in learning, school and parent are unable to discuss the problem and solve it because they speak in different language and do not understand the language that use by each other. Besides that, attitude of teacher is also a challenge for parent involvement (Carol, 2010). Some teachers show excessive professionalism towards parent, parent will not active to involve because they feel fear, unhapp y and difficult to approach the teacher when they want to express the need and contribute their effort (Carol, 2010). There are also pessimist teacher that only report negative information to parent (Carol, 2010). They only focus on bad things and neglect contribution and achievement of children and parent. For instances, teacher always talk about disruptive behaviour of the child in school and often make assumption that parent did not try to manage and improve the behaviour. But sometimes, disruptive behaviour cannot be change within a short period even with lots of effort contribute by parent in home. Parent also will feel stress, annoyed and hopeless because of the pessimism of teacher. Frequently, teacher have the problem of power struggle (Carol, 2010), they feel that they are the only one have power in classroom and do not want to share it with parents. They are not eager to find the ways for parents to feel secure, equality and comfortable (Carol, 2010). So, parent involvemen t need to be rejected from their point of view. Teachers that lack of self-confident are reluctant to admit help (Carol, 2010) because they feel their professional will be disappear and reduced if they ask for help from parents for example if they need cooperation in replacement of teacher, getting the teaching material and planning learning experience about certain area of knowledge which that teacher are not familiar than parents. When the school is not able provide appropriate physical setting, space problem will be arising (Carol, 2010). Parent need facility such as discussion room and car park area to participate in the school activities, if the room or area is not provided, how the parent are going to park the transport vehicles, sit down, and communicate with the teacher? Also, lack of understanding and trust will lead the parent involvement to become limited and powerless (Carol, 2010). Parent and teacher both feel that each other are lack of ability to enhance children†™s learning and development. For example, parent feel that they know best about their child so whatever practice on child is definitely appropriate and correct, teacher will feel that parent are not knowledgeable than them because of the lower education level and different professional area. The suggestions from each party are not accepted. Because of these feelings, miscommunication often occurs, which make the process of parent involvement even problematic. Past negative experiences of parent also the root of lacking trust on teacher, for instances, teacher did not take care of child with special need, caused the child injured in school and teacher did not provide appropriate solution and any suggestion that help to prevent the accident to happen again. For sure, parent of the child will feel disappointed and do not believe the teacher have the competence and skill to improve the development of their child. Who want to work together with the teacher when there is no faith and ho pe? There are different type of activities that can enable parent to assist children development using their abilities, time and energy (Carol, 2010). First type is school-wide activities, it included workshops, family night, parent education class, adult training program and support services such as car pools and babysitting for younger children (Carol, 2010). This is where the all parents and teachers come together and work collaborative to participate in school wide program. They use this chance to interact, share information and discuss the issues related to school. Through this activity, all parent and teacher are capable to develop warm and positive relationship with each other. Second type is communication activities, school can engage parent in activities through the use of phone calls, newsletter and email to give the reminder and notification to parent (Carol, 2010). Technology is very advance nowadays and it is also the tools to enhance communication, school need to use it wis ely and appropriately. Not only through phone call and email, school can organise chat group on social media such as Facebook and Whatapps for discussion with parent to run more efficient. For example, discussion group for family night, parents and teacher can give comment and suggestion like person in charge of beverage, food and performances. Any changes and reminder can be sent to each other faster than compose an email. Educational activities is the third type of activity, parent are encourage to participate in the activities occur in classroom or school and help the class to run more smoothly such as fund raising, volunteer for manage classroom, work as photographer during children’s performance, design webpages if the some parent have the knowledge and skill about it, beautify the environment of classroom by cleaning unwanted stuff and create wall painting (Carol, 2010). This kind of activities enable parent and school work together to set up better learning environment for children and children can see the parent’s contribution, know that parent are really involved in the school when they saw the wall painting and their parent helping in classroom, not just talking through phone and come to school for meeting. For the parent with special need child, they are invited to develop the individualised educational plan for the child too (Carol, 2010). Fourth type is service activities, this included childcare service, parent support group, resources libraries, material centre and exchange of service (Carol, 2010). Parent can obtain the resources and service from the community and school to lighten the burden, reduce the stress and improve the quality of living. Parent can borrow story book and teaching aid to guide children’s learning at home, seek for school’s counsellor when face the problem that will influence the child’s development and welfare and support other parent when they need any help. During this activities, both of the school and parent are the contributor and receiver at the same time, it help both party to realise the importance of provide helping hand to others that need help and give them the opportunity to serve the community. The last type is decision activities (Carol, 2010), it allow parent to make decision about school, not just let the parent to be the fee payer only. Parents are given â€Å"power† to decide what will happening in the school such as the standard of hiring teacher, what is included in the policy, review and design the educational program (Carol, 2010). When parent are involved in the program planning, they will gain the knowledge about the requirement of quality program and authentic developmentally appropriate practice. Only after they know about what the program is about and how it is implementing, they will be support the program (Carol, 2010). Thus, they will not question about teacher’s professionalism and let the teacher have the negative feeli ngs because the effort is not appreciated by parent and fear to communicate with parent. In conclusion, working with parent and families is a continuing process. Even though with the best way and approach to involve the families in the educational activities, this process will not be successful if parent and teacher are not capable to solve the problem and challenges between them. Therefore, teacher need to take the initiative to approaching the parent, help them to overcome the barrier, explain the importance and benefit of parent involvement in school to them and finally develop best way to invite them to the school activities. When teacher showed the enthusiastic, parent need to be responsive too because in order to develop positive relationship between school and families, both party need work cooperative to contribute effort to the process, not just rely on particular one party. References Epstein, J.L., Coates, L., Salinas, K.C., Sanders, M.G., Simon, B.S. (1997). School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Carol, G. (2010). Home, school and community relation. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

A Methodology to Teaching Writing Essay example -- Education Education

A Methodology to Teaching Writing I believe that achieving success in teaching very different aspects of life may still combine similar processes. My life in high school was very similar to the lives of many other students in that it revolved around two things: sports and school. My sport of choice was tennis and my favorite academic area was English. Unexpectedly, I found many similarities led to a successful performance in both areas. My understanding of the need for a good program to follow and a lot of practice with it led to success in both tennis and my academic performance (especially English). Upon becoming a recognized player in my area, I decided to take the skill that I knew better than any other and utilize it as a job; I was a tennis coach. Success in that field, teaching mainly high school students, has led me to believe I can adopt a similar program for success in the classroom. Just as I had to learn an effective way to teach others the tennis skills that I had learned, I will also have to be a ble to adjust my philosophy inside a classroom. My outline for successful teaching of writing combines what I have put into practice working with high school students in a sports forum with what I am learning is the best way to approach a writing classroom. When a high school student first takes a tennis lesson from me, that student is very often an inexperienced freshman just months away from their first tryout. On that first day I must be very clear and very encouraging in my instructions because of the nervousness of the player. By the first lesson I am aware of what level of ability I am working with, and can make adjustments from there. For student writers, the process can be similar. The writer may ... ...o accomplish. A supportive process is more likely to breed success. Students will have different styles, hidden talents, and unique creative processes. Some will love to write and bring these elements out on their own. Others need special prompting. Ultimately I feel that students will always have something to say. Each person has elements of their lives’ that they enjoy, and those are subjects for writing. Each individual has elements that bring them pain, frustration or sadness, and those are subjects for writing too. Getting kids to want to write is not necessarily outlined in my process, and that will be a challenge that I will have to learn even as I teach. I think the key to successful motivation will be to spark the ideas that motivate a student. Maybe even more important is that if that spark is hard to find, not to give up, but to keep seeking it.

Early Marriage Essay -- marriage of children adolescents

Early marriage is the marriage of children and adolescents below the age of 18. Causes: According to UNICEF's Innocenti Research Centre, the "practice of marrying girls at a young age is most common in Sub-Saharan African and South Asia". There are specific parts of West Africa and East Africa and of South Asia where marriages before puberty are not unusual. However, the Centre also notes that marriage shortly after puberty is common among those living traditional lifestyles in the Middle East, North Africa and other parts of Asia. Marriages of female adolescents between sixteen and eighteen are common in parts of Latin America and Eastern Europe. Some are forced into this union, others are simply too young to make an informed decision. Consent is made by somebody else on the child's behalf. The child does not have the opportunity to exercise her right to choose. For this reason, early marriages are also referred to as forced marriages. In its most extreme form, forced marriages are the result of abductions. In Uganda, young girls are abducted and forced to marry senior leaders in the guerrilla movement known as the Lord's Resistance Army. The marriages are used as a reward and incentive for male soldiers. There are a number of reasons why tradition of child marriages continues. Fear of HIV infection has encouraged men in many countries to seek younger 'partners'. Early marriages is one way to ensure that young girls are 'protected'. Families in rural Albania encourage their daughters to marry early to avoid the threat of kidnapping. In conflict torn Somalia, families married their daughters to militia members in exchange for protection for the girl, as well as for themselves. Where poverty is acute, early marriage is also seen as a strategy for economic survival. In Iraq, early marriages are on the increase in response to poverty inflicted by the economic sanctions that have been imposed on the country. In situations such as this, the risk of exploitation is great. A recent study of five poor villages in Egypt, for example, found that young girls were being married off to much older men from the oil rich Middle Eastern countries via brokers. Many girls are forced to marry early suffer from prolonged domestic violence. Furthermore, early marriage is often linked to wife abandonment. This plungers young girls into extreme poverty and increase... ... cases of domestic violence were committed against wives who were under the age of 18. Improvements: Prevention of the practice comes through education of parents and children--married or not--about the dangers of early marriage. UNICEF has launched two programs to tackle the problem in South Asia and Africa, the two regions with the highest rates of child marriage in the world. In South Asia, UNICEF runs the Meena Initiative, which educates people about the danger of preferring male babies and focuses on the unfair treatment girls receive in the family as well as their lack of access to healthcare and education. The initiative also attempts to raise consciousness about harmful traditional practices such as dowry, sexual harassment and early marriage. In Africa, UNICEF has launched a radio program called the Sara Adolescent Girl Communication Initiative in ten eastern and southern African countries. The program implores its listeners to keep girls in school. It also cover topics such as HIV/AIDS, domestic responsibilities for females, Female Genital Mutilation and early marriage. For more information about UNICEF programs focused on early marriage, visit www.unicef.org

A Discussion On Earthquakes :: essays research papers

A Discussion On Earthquakes Perhaps Mother Nature offers no greater force than that of the earthquake. Across the span of time, earthquakes have been recorded for their incredible destructive forces, and their abilities to awe mankind with their unparalleled force. Earthquakes can often strike without any notice, leveling large cities and killing scores of innocent people. Not only can earthquakes bring harm to society through these methods of destruction, but they can also cause millions of dollars worth of damage to the areas they destroy, causing economic chaos. An earthquake is a natural phenomenon, occurring throughout the history of the world. Descriptions as old as recorded history show the significant effects earthquakes have had on people's lives. Long before there were scientific theories for the cause of earthquakes, people around the world created folklore to explain them. Until recent times, science has not had a complete understanding of how earthquakes are caused, and what can be done to predict when they will strike. This essay will discuss how earthquakes are formed and occur, how scientists can more accurately predict the arrival of earthquakes.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Before contemplating how earthquakes might possibly be prevented, it is essential that the process and formation of and earthquake be understood. Earthquakes are caused when the earth's crustal plates move, rub, or push against each other. The earth's crust (the outer layer of the earth) is made up of seven major plates and approximately thirteen smaller ones. The name plate is used to describe these portions of the earth's crust because they are literally â€Å"plates† or sections, composed of dirt and rock. These plates float on molten lava, called magma. Since the plates are floating on magma, they can slowly move. The place where friction occurs between plates is called a fault. A fault is a crack in a plate or a place where two or more plates meet. An example of a fault where two plates meet is the San Andrea's fault in California, where the Pacific and North American plates meet. The plates are about 30 miles thick under land and can be one to five miles thick beneath the ocean. The plates move because of convection currents. Magma has currents like the ocean does, that move in a circular motion beneath the plates. When two plates are pushing against each other, they are constantly building up tension on the fault. When two plates finally slip, they release a great amount of energy in the form of shock waves. These shock waves cause vibrations, which in turn cause the ground around the fault line to move and shake.

Response proposing leadership styles Essay

1. (TCO 3) Prepare a five to seven paragraph response proposing leadership styles you would recommend for the Denver Airport Project. Please choose a combination (two or three) of the eight leadership styles presented in the Thompson textbook (Chapter 11: Leadership: Managing the Paradox). Please note that you are to also use three other sources from the internet or the DeVry online library. All sources must be cited. (Points : 30) Based on the reading it is hard to give a single leadership style or even a combination of leadership styles because there are so many different levels of productions and management for this project. Each level of management will have their own required type of leadership and while some styles may overlap, there will be differences for each level. For a project this large you are more than likely to run in to just about every type of leadership style at some point. When we start at the top you see that there is a Collaborative Leadership between the City, Greiner Engineering, and Morrison-Knudsen Engineering. Collaborative leaderships work well but even with a collaborative leadership there needs to be an organizer that directs the flow of discussions and determines outcomes in the event of a stalemate. This is not discussed in the passage and it is not determined who has the final say. Typically this would be the city since they are the owners but in many cases it also depends on the how contracts are written. While in the long run the city can make the final decision depending on the way the contract is written the city may have to pay to make those decisions. Without more information on the contract with the city and the engineering firms we cannot confirm if it is a true collaborative leadership. But there are other aspects that are brought up that bring up more concerns with the management systems used. While it appears to would be a collaborative leadership it does not seem as if everyone is on board with the same ideas. By separating the design and the functionality we run into issues that were not properly discussed ahead of time. In this case a democratic leader would be helpful to facilitate discussions among the different groups. Furthermore when there is an issue over function verse design the democratic leader can help to facilitate a compromise that works  for everyone. It does not appear as if there is any leadership helping to give direction. As you read through the passage it appears that instead of a collaborative leadership we have a delegating leadership in which the city tells everyone what they are looking for and then leaves it up to them to take care of it from there. Based on the passage it almost seems at times that the city has a laissez-faire style w hich on allows for more problems to arise. These changes and issues only slow the design and in turn would slow construction. This is evident with how the baggage system was handled. First due to the lack of leadership in the planning phase the baggage system was started way too late in the project life cycle. This falls back on the fact there was not enough active leadership in the planning phase. This also falls on the fact the risk management did not seem to pick up on this either. While it falls on the leaders risk management on this project was broken down only slightly and in turn left a wide variety of situations and issues undiscussed. This goes back to active leadership in which there does not appear to be anyone going back an asking question and looking to the future to see what issues may come up. Too many people appeared too tied up with the here and now and nobody had the foresight to look ahead to see what issues were coming. I did find it interesting that risk analysis was only broken down into cost, human resources, and bad weather. While I would agree that these three areas are important and needed to be address, I am surprised the equipment and materials were not on the list. While the three listed are concerns for most projects, I cannot remember the last time I was on a project where equipment and material deliveries were not areas of concern to be addressed. I was even more surprised to see in the November 1994 passage that they went a while without a risk manager especially given all the issues they had already run into. Again I would say that there is a lack of leadership and the city needed to take a more active role but at the same time that leadership needs to be a cooperation with all the major players so that everyone can get on the same page and help each other to identify issues like the baggage before it became an issue. On a side note I would say that I do believe that they did well with their choice in regards their choice of leaders for the movement of equipment between airports as described in the Sept. 1993 section. Using a person with military leadership for this type of move is a wise choice in my opinion. Given the complexity and time restraints of this type of move there is not a lot of room for error. The military is good about training leader that are willing to take recommendations when there is time for it and will to make decisions when there is no time. In this case with the complexity it would have taken a team to come up with the plan but when the plan is over and the move starts you need people that can think quickly and adjust to unknown issues as they come up. There is often no time for discussions because in this case ever second wasted only causes more delays. But as I said in the beginning there are several different types of leadership styles that take place on a project like this. While I have discussed the upper areas a management there are several areas were team building, mentoring, and other leadership requirements are needed more. People often look at the top for how a project is managed but in this case how the contractor and leaders near the bottom manager there people is sometime more important. So while a cooperative group of leaders that were more active would have been ok for the top it would not have worked for many of the lower levels. Reference Thompson, Leigh L.. Making the Team: A Guide for Managers, 4th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions. . Kerzner, Harold. (  © 2004). Advanced project management: best practices on implementation, second edition. [Books24x7 version] Available from http://common.books24x7.com.proxy.devry.edu/toc.aspx?bookid=17176. Nutt, Paul C.. (  © 2002). Why decisions fail: avoiding the blunders and traps that lead to debacles. [Books24x7 version] Available from http://common.books24x7.com.proxy.devry.edu/toc.aspx?bookid=42601. Forster, Nick. (  © 2005). Maximum performance: a practical guide to leading and managing people at work. [Books24x7 version] Available from http://common.books24x7.com.proxy.devry.edu/toc.aspx?bookid=22402. Denver International Airport Baggage H andling System – An illustration of ineffectual decision making . (2008). Calleam Consulting Ltd. from http://calleam.com/WTPF/wp-content/uploads/articles/DIABaggage.pdf