Innovation 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6000 words

Innovation 2 - Essay Example In light of all the approaches presented in this literature review pertaining to the usefulness of customer knowledge in defining the Key Performance Indicators for any organization, it can be rightly stated that in contemporary time the reliance upon closed innovation process has become adequate and thus is obsolete, because of the major requirements of this process which can not be fulfilled in the contemporary era of increased globalization. Therefore, incorporation of the open innovation process is not only essential but also necessary in order to succeed and progress. Within this process, customers play a significant role on every step of the product development process, and their immense contribution could not be ignored, since they are the end users thus the utilization of their knowledge could spell success for the firm if it is handled appropriately. This paper makes a conclusion that with this the KPIs of the organization have to be restructured into more qualitative tools in order to account for different intricate and complex sources of knowledge base. When these are properly restructured and evaluated it leaves the organization with the dilemma of solving the issue of lost intellectual property, thus proposing that the outside-in method of open innovation should be used and external sources should be used for commercialization once the idea has been licensed, in order to ensure protection of Intellectual Property and also effectiveness in marketing.

Intelligence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Intelligence - Essay Example (Wechsler, 1944, p.4) Intelligence is considered to be global as it characterises the individual's behaviour as a whole; it is a combination of those elements or abilities, which, though not entirely independent, are qualitatively differentiable. "By measurement of these abilities, we ultimately evaluate intelligence. But intelligence is not identical with the mere sum of these abilities, however inclusive". (Wechsler, 1944, p. 6) Wechsler suggests that there are three important reasons, which justify this statement: (1) The ultimate products of intelligent behaviour are not only a function of the number of abilities or their quality but also of the way in which they are combined, that is, upon their configuration. (3) Finally, while different orders of intelligent behaviour may require varying degrees of intellectual ability, an excess of any given ability may add relatively little to the effectiveness of the behaviour as a whole. It would seem that, so far as general intelligence is concerned, intellectual ability as such merely enters as a necessary minimum. "Thus, to act intelligently, one must be able to recall numerous items i.e., have a retentive memory. But beyond a certain point and age in developmental life span, this ability does not help much in coping with life situations successfully". (Wechsler, 1944, p. ... However the extent to which decline is confronted can be evaluated through various measurement tests and techniques. "Although intelligence is no mere sum of intellectual abilities, the only way we can evaluate it quantitatively is by the measurement of the various aspects of these abilities. There is no contradiction here unless we insist upon the identity of general intelligence and intellectual ability". (Wechsler, 1944, p. 8) Researchers have always related intelligence to different mental processes. More recently psychologists have began to emphasize not only the processes but the content as well. They speak of memory but of auditory memory; not only of reasoning but of abstract, verbal or arithmetical reasoning. In a like manner some psychologists have begun to distinguish various kinds of intelligence. Thorndike, has suggested subdividing intelligence into three main types: (1) Abstract or verbal intelligence, involving facility in the use of symbols; (2) Practical intelligence, involving facility in manipulating objects; (3) Social intelligence, involving facility in dealing with human beings. The significant thing about this classification is that it emphasises upon the age criteria, accomplishments a person can achieve and how he can do it. This distinction between function and content is fully justified by experimental evidence. The rating, which an individual attains on an intelligence examination, depends to a considerable degree on the type of test used. His score on a test made up largely of verbal items may differ significantly from that obtained on a test involving questions of social comprehension and still more from another test made up of items involving predominantly psychomotor reactions and the perception of spatial relationships.

Examples Of Organization Activities Groupware Support Information Technology Essay

Examples Of Organization Activities Groupware Support Information Technology Essay With the changes of society and technologies, collaboration is becoming an increasingly integral part of the workplace environment. Three primary influencing factors have revolutionized the common workplace, of which perhaps the most prevalent being technology which has become imperative for being at the forefront of any market. As advancements have occurred in information and communication technologies the business environment has become more flexible, changing the way in which organizations operate. With the enhancements of technology it has become increasingly feasible for organizations to easily span across a global market, resulting in dispersion of organizational assets across a large geographical area. Social transformations such as an increase in the academic achievements of individuals have changed the depth of knowledge between peers allowing them to collaborate to achieve common goals within a working environment. The term Organization is broad and incorporates a collection of institutions ranging from government sectors through to universities. The way in which people operate within organizations has changed throughout recent decades due to the work that is required of them. With the advancements in technology, many tasks are easily achievable using computers and software packages, much of the trivial and time consuming tasks have been removed from the user workload and instead carried out via a machine. Workers within organizations have continued to change with the change in work with many people becoming knowledge workers, who supply their specialist know-how to contribute towards organizational goals. People within organizations are now often required to complete large activities with very specific goals. A growing trend of positions within these environments requires people to operate as a member within a team, to distribute complicated organizational goals. Working in these situations provides an increase in efficiency and productivity in carrying out organizational activities. There are many advantages to working within a team, one of these being teams have a collective knowledge much greater than that of an individual, allowing them to understand a problem by sharing knowledge. Team members will often have their own ideas they want to be included into a solution and so forth will be more so committed to the work. Whilst one individual may find it hard to see flaws within their own work, teams can often identify errors much faster, with a more objective standpoint. Creative solutions can be derived from a group with multiple viewpoints, often providing an abstract view of a problem. Within the business world, companies have been targeting growing markets, this has caused a dispersion in company assets. Activities require interactions from a range of assets including personal situated in different locations this is why technology has become fundamental to team collaborations within a business environment. Collaboration between workers has become more vital in completing organizational goals, technology and software developments have advanced supporting collaboration between individuals whom are not co-located. A type of software which has grown due to the requirement of organizations is groupware. Groupware, collaborative software or group support systems are all a type of software with the main objective to make the interaction between people that work together easier and helping them to become more effective and efficient.( Sarmento, Lousa, Machado,1999) The software is used to support groups of people engaged in a common task that provides an interface to a shared environment. (Borko Furht,2008) Groupware can take place between people whom are co-located or remotely segregated. It can either be synchronous where people are collaborating in real-time or asynchronous with communication at different times (not real-time). Many early groupware systems were brought to live to eliminate the need to be co-located. Groupware has now grown to a state where it is an industry of its own, with so many organizations using various types of collaborative software. Groupware has been around for many years, incorporating technologies such as email. More recently groupware is becoming associated with technologies that support collaboration and communication, with many software solutions providing support for communication, collaboration and cooperative work, for example LMS systems employed by many universities, to support student collaboration. Many factors have lead to the need of software solutions that promote collaboration between individuals. Group work is a regular experience for many people within an organization, in most organizations most complex decisions are made by a team. As this become more frequent the necessity to share documents and work together is central to success. As media becomes more available through IP (internet protocol) through factors such as faster networking connections, the range and quantity of data we can send has improved allowing for better groupware systems (such as video conferencing). Additional the rise of groupware has been influenced by the global spread of employees with 87 percent of employees around the world work[ing] in remote offices.(Turban, Leindner, Mclean, Wetherbe,2008) Individuals daily routines have become more dependent on electronic devices, keeping them in constant connection to e-mail collaborative calendars and other groupware system. Exposing individual to this te chnology makes it easier to introduce such software into their work life. The benefits of groupware have lead to huge numbers of organizations up taking e-collaboration, the telecommunication Industry (TIA)(Tiaonline.org) indicates that global revenues from collaboration will show a 66.5 percent compound annual growth reaching $11.4 billion in 2007 (Turban, Leindner, Mclean, Wetherbe,2008). One of the issues slowing the uptake of groupware is the range of requirements from the different users of collaborative software. Because cooperative work is carried out through such a huge number of industries the number of different activities is massive, often general solutions cannot provide the functionality needed so bespoke software is required. This factor has slowed the uptake of groupware in smaller organizations. Another issue with groupware is the integrity of data being operated upon. When cooperative working it is often the case that the users will be working on an artifact, with multiple users accessing and modifying the artifact it can often cause multiple different copies. Groupware systems tend to employ a centralized data store to attempt to reduce this occurring, including other techniques (e.g. locking the data until the modifications have been finalized). Authentication has also been an issue related with groupware systems as often organizational documents are sensitive. Classification and types of groupware Groupware is a term which incorporates a large quantity of different technologies involved with communication, collaboration and cooperative work. Because the term is so hard to define it has lead to many people being unsure of what constitutes as groupware. The best way to view them is to group them in a logical way, numerous different classification frameworks have been produced to describe characteristics of groupware. In this section I will try and describe some classification techniques to outline the various types of groupware which are available. The time/space matrix classification framework used to group types of groupware. This technique uses the location and the times in groupware to describe it. On the x-axis is the location, which describes if users are co-located or geographically divided. The y-axis on the other hand describes if the users interactions are synchronous (real-time) or asynchronous (not in real-time). Tools used which are synchronous and co-located tend not to be computerized, for instance a classroom. Although this framework does group collaborative tools it does have examples which can cause confusion, such as e-mail. Though it is classified as an asynchronous technology it can be used to send messages back and forth between users.   Network delays might not make it real-time interaction, but it is used for synchronous communication.(Brusic  ,2004) Other examples are present. The ambiguity present in this framework has caused others to be formed. The second framework this essay will introduce is the people/artefact framework. It is heavily based upon cooperative work. Cooperative work involves two or more participants using a shared artefact. (Brusic  ,2004) This framework identifies 3 main operations groupware can offer; Computer meditated communication, meeting and decision support systems and shared applications and artefacts. The first category computer-meditated communication describes technologies which support direct communication between users, allowing cooperate about their work. An example of this are e-mail, bulletin boards and video conferencing. To collaborate workers need to be able to gain an understanding of the task and generate ideas, this is the concept encapsulated by the second category meeting and decision support systems. Examples of meeting and decision support systems are; argumentation tools, services that offer shared drawing tools and brainstorming activities. The final category is shared applica tions and artefacts, this classification includes systems for sharing; computers, applications and documents. This classification often requires special collaborative aware software to be used, an example of these systems are shared editors, allowing multiple users to edit a document. The two classification frameworks discussed are not the only two available, another example is Esther Dysons model that focuses on the benefiting party of the groupware. Describing these frameworks makes it apparent that there are many various collaborative tools, the ideal solution would be one which includes all tools although we are still quite far from developing the grand groupware system that encompasses every type of communication, and we will probably never get there since the possibilities are constantly evolving with changes in both our patterns of social interaction and the technology we have available.(Anonymous,2010) Examples of organization activities groupware support Organisations are more than often using electronic systems to carry out a large magnitude of their internal and external processes. The adoption of e-enterprise has brought forward the need for collaboration between organisations to meet their goals and flourish in the current market. The increasing need for collaboration between non co-located organisations and individuals has caused the groupware market to expand and become a fundamental tool. Groupware has influenced the expansion of enterprises by improving the effectiveness of a range of tools such as the ability to communicate over long distances. I will now discuss the use of groupware and how it can be used to support organisations and their processes. Since the introduction of computers the ability to collect, analyse and share data has greatly increased in efficiency. Today many business and other organisations thrive upon the data they utilize. A key aspect of any organisation is the way in which data is managed and shared between different organisational resources, for example different tiers of staff. Groupware is enabling organisations to work effectively with the quantity of data they currently possess. The sharing of information internally and to external stakeholders has been benefitted by a variety of tools. Many industries rely on sharing information to external organisations and example where this can be seen is with supply and demand. Companies with a required demand need to communicate their requirements to the suppliers in order to meet the demands. An example industry where this is present is within supermarket chains. Asda a leading supermarket uses electronic data interchange systems to communicate to its supplier s with great effect, send[ing] real time data in multiple formats securely over the internet (Turban, Leindner, Mclean, Wetherbe,2008). Using its current stock levels to request necessary products. This software supports the collaboration between organisations improving efficiency. This groupware system offers many benefits over its manual equivalent (such as telephone ordering). Most of the system is automated removing the need for human resources, but it also often much more effective with a decrease in the time required, error rates (human error removed) and often cost. Information sharing has become a large section of groupware due to the increasing use of e-enterprise and need for multiple stakeholders to share information. It can often be seen internally in organisations with one example being the sharing of documents through systems such as email attachments and drop box systems. Knowledge creation tools are a collection of groupware tools that can be used to support the learning and sharing of knowledge throughout an organisation. Knowledge can be classified as tacit (Knowledge that is difficult to transfer by verbalising it or writing it down) or as explicit. Groupware systems support both through collaboration using a variety of structured and non-structured methods. Tools which offer this include; white-boarding, chat, discussion groups and other tools. Knowledge creation and sharing is important throughout organisations. The need of cooperation between geographically dispersed workgroups is a critical issue to global organizations: the best specialists to solve a problem do not usually work on the same floor. (Carvalho, Rodrigo Baroni de Ferreira, Marta Araujo Tavares, 2001). As this statement suggest groupware to help creation of knowledge is now fundamental because of the needs of organisations to span a much larger (often global) market. Closely coupled to knowledge creation tools are the groupware tool classified as knowledge management systems. The systems main objective is to manage the creation, capture, storage and dissemination of information.(Maier,2007) Because of the diversity of organizations many varying systems are currently available. Learning management systems such as Blackboard are ideal examples of groupware facilitating learning. Blackboard is a well known product used in over 2200 educational institutions, its primary goal is manage course content but also provides tools for learning and collaboration between users. Through my own experience of blackboard it vastly improves the ability to find relevant information to apply towards projects and examinations, using the online discussion boards it is possible to carry out peer to peer knowledge sharing to aid my personal development. Assessment and interactive learning content is another feature present helping to increase individuals knowledge throug hout universities. There are many other organizations using a variety of software packages. Lotus notes (IBM) is an example of collaborative software which incorporates knowledge management, this system is typically used throughout businesses and offers a range of collaborative tools such as email and calendaring. A collaborative project management tool is an application that facilitates a project throughout its lifecycle. Many groupware tools can be used to support a range of projects. Projects have a much higher rate of success if they are managed effectively. The ability for multiple team members to carry out work on a project from different geographical locations is greatly improved with the use of collaborative project management tools. As the internet has become a more powerful resource it has lead to the growth of tools such as sub-versioning. Throughout the software industry it is often feasible for programmers to operate from different locations all carrying out modifications on a globally stored project. Collaborative project management tools do bring issue. When projects are carried out by non co-located groups they often work on the same data this can lead to data inconsistency throughout a project. Data inconsistency can often lead to inaccuracy and loss of integrity through information. Groupware commonly uses the approach of having a central single data store. This can still lead to loss of integrity with multiple people modifying the same information. Techniques such as locking can be applied and is used in packages such as repository programming where files are locked until they are updated by the person modifying them. This does remove the issue of data inconsistency but reduces productivity, communication is vital to avoid such issues. The future of Groupware All disciplines of technology continue to advance at incredible rates, I believe that groupware will become critical to large organisations. Enterprises are continuing to become more and more popular fulfilling a huge magnitude of services. As the rates of communication through computer continue to increase (i.e. internet speeds) the ability to collaborate with organisations in multiple countries using more personal media will become available. Furthermore the collaboration achievable will improve, bringing down the limitations of geographical dispersion and providing media much more similar to a face to face conversation. Large organisations such as Microsoft and IBM are continuing to focus development towards overall groupware solutions such as Lotus notes. As these organisations continue to develop reliable secure systems I believe the use of collaborative systems will grow throughout small to large work environments. The term groupware is hard to quantify, including small systems such as e-mail through to large software packages, I believe solutions that incorporate a framework and many tools will become more readily available. These sophisticated solutions will offer flexibility so that the processes they operate and projects they manage can change and still be supported, in the same way which humans are flexible to change. With flexibility will need to come scalability of a system, organisations are constantly changing to stay relevant with in their market, groupware will need to be able to support the need for growth. Organisations often consist of technically skilled IT employees capable of managing the internal and external systems but workers do not always have strong technical abilities. If groupware is to become a necessity for all organisations, the technical skills needed to work with the software will need to be basic, this is something I believe will become more present within current tools. Todays world is becoming heavily encircled around mobile devices with millions of people using smart phones and other hand held devices to access the Internet and carry out many daily activities. With the movement away from desk workers to people whom travel in their daily work life the demand for groupware systems that can be supported through a mobile platform to allow communication and collaboration whilst on the move. Groupware tools such as email can already be accessed via mobile device but I believe more multifunctional solutions such as lotus notes will become more available via mobile devices. As with the move to mobile platforms cross platform will also be needed. I believe that this will be accomplished with an increase in web-based solutions running on hosted systems similar to groupware such as Google groups. The inevitable move towards cloud computing will continue to bring an increase in web-based tools with less need for local storage and an increase in hosted data wa rehouses. Groupware will continue to grow but this brings the cost needed to secure systems. Large organisations with top-secret information or organisation secret information will no doubt like the rest of the Internet become a victim to cyber-crime. If security is not kept at the forefront of developers minds when producing groupware tools it could become an easy target for cyber criminals exploiting the software for their own benefit. Tools like Sms and E-mail have already fallen victim with numerous scandals, the increase of overall groupware systems which incorporate the majority of business processes will become a target, an example being the attack of a payroll system. Conclusion Groupware as discussed within this essay is hard to describe with a broad range of technologies being incorporated under the term. Although groupware is hard to define the software tend to have common goals such as improved communication. The majority of collaborative tools can be described as one of the following four; Knowledge management tools, Knowledge creation tools, Information sharing tools and collaborative project management tools. Throughout the essay I have identified some techniques used to classify different groupware tools, in my opinion I believe for an organisation to take full advantage of computer systems a range of tools should be used. In an environment where learning is expected a range of tools would be beneficial because of the way in which people learn differently. The goal for all types of groupware is to improve collaboration and increase organisational efficiency. The growth of e-enterprises has increased the need for groupware systems. I believe that with the continued need for collaboration internally and externally for organisations to prosper, the use of groupware systems will follow such growth. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/freesrchabstract.jsp?tp=arnumber=807823queryText%3Dwith+the+main+objective+to+make+the+interaction+between+people+that+work+together+easier+and+helping+them+to+become+more+effective+and+efficient.%E2%80%9D%26openedRefinements%3D*%26searchField%3DSearch+All http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Ipk5x-c_xNICdq=support+groups+of+people+engaged+in+a+common+task+that+provides+an+interface+to+a+shared+environment.source=gbs_navlinks_s http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~zives/03s/cis650/groupware.pdf http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_fall/projects/abowd_team/ivan/final.html http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/nist-icv/documents/node6.html http://www.skyrme.com/insights/7gw.htm http://www.hcibook.com/e3-docs/slides/notes-pdf/e3-chap-19-6up.pdf http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_fall/projects/spin/groupware/index.html#classify http://www.usabilityfirst.com/about-usability/web-application-design/collaborative-software-groupware/typical-collaborative-software-applications/ http://computernetworksit.com.au/blog/business-groupware-%E2%80%93-software-for-complete-office-collaboration/ http://www.bynari.net/blog/bynari-collaboration-suite/bynari-collaboration-and-groupware-technology-enhances-workflow-and-business-operations/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gray/WICS_99_TP/21_domino_Mohan.pdf http://www.helium.com/items/1647396-business-collaboration-tools-groupware-knowledge-management?page=2 http://informationr.net/ir/7-1/paper118.html http://en.enage.com/prod/prod05.asp?menu=6 http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~i385tkms/blog/archives/patrick/groupwarepaper.html#4 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_n11_v42/ai_20161847/pg_3/?tag=content;col (Carvalho, Rodrigo Baroni de Ferreira, Marta Araujo Tavares, 2001) Carvalho, Rodrigo Baroni de Ferreira, Marta Araà ºjo Tavares   (2001) Using information technology to support knowledge conversion processes   Ã‚  Information Research,  7(1) [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/7-1/paper118.html]   Maier, R (2007): Knowledge Management Systems: Information And Communication Technologies for Knowledge Management. 3rd edition, Berlin: Springer.

My Great-grandmother Was Not A Person :: essays research papers

My Great-Grandmother was not a Person My Great-Grandmother was not a person. Neither was yours. Up until about 67 years ago no females were. We were supposed to be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen. At least that's the perception that the laws enforced. (For ex: The Election Act of the Dominion of Canada and The Common Law of England) As part of the British Commonwealth many of our laws were the same as England's and enforced by British parliament. One such law from the Common Law of England stated that "A woman is not a person in matters of rights and privileges, but she is a person in matters of pains and penalties." This gave women second class citizenship. Women were not recognized as equals to men, even though the expectations of women were such that the work load was equal if not greater. As pioneer women we built homes, raised families, maintained the homestead, hunted food, fought natives, made clothes, cooked, cleaned, as well as the many manual labour jobs that men held. For example, women worked in coal mines, armories, and aided the war effort via the manufacturing industry, such as factorys. If this is what is determeined as equality then women were getting the short end of the stick and men were receiving all of the benifit. This perception still holds strong today, although not as strongly. Men said that women were to fragile to vote. Yet no man has ever experienced labor pains. Furthermore no man has fought any battle that was as hard as the one the famous five women have fought. The Election Act of the Dominion of Canada states that "No woman, idiot, lunatic, or criminal shall vote." So women are equal to criminals? It's not a crime to be a woman. We should not be judged by our sex. On April 19, 1916 women in Alberta were granted the right to vote. A small battle was won. Five Canadian women have conquered countries and nations for their rights. When questionning the wording of "qualified persons to the senate" the Supreme Court of Canada rejected that the word "persons" included women. This battle was lost but the war was won when the Privy Council of England (the highest court in the land) ruled that the word "persons" included women. That was the 18th of October, 1929. The famous five women are: Irene Perlby, Nellie McClung, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise McKinney, and Emily Murphy. These women have fought a battle of sexism that is of historic importance. Millions of women in Canada have these

Analysis of Sojourner Truth

â€Å"In some cases, campuswide averages have crept up from a C just 10 years to B-plus today† (411). In Brent Staples essay â€Å"Why Colleges Shower Their Students with A’s† he makes many issues and arguments on the subject. Many college level institutions are faced with demanding consumers and competition from other universities over grade issues. The colleges have simply started just handing out more and more A’s to their students to better their satisfaction. This action taken by the colleges is having many repercussions on grade inflation and making the value of degrees meaningless worldwide. With this alarming statistic about the campus wide averages and the universities resorting to giving the consumers what they want is creating a terrible storm about to bring in serious problems. In Staple’s essay, he points out many valid reasons why several college level intuitions are just handing out A’s to their students left and right. Although he makes good arguments for his reasons, I have to question that not all his reasons are truly valid. I believe that colleges are giving into the demanding students and parents because they want to save their reputation and status in society. Colleges are more willing to give out better grades to students when their jobs are on the line. Staples explains that â€Å"professors at every level inflate to escape negative evaluations by students whose opinions now figure in tenure and promotion decisions† (411). Professors have to remember that every grade they give to a student may be questioned and have serious consequences concerning better job opportunities. Students want to get the grade they think they deserve and they will go as far as to complain and place the blame on a certain professor. I think that it is ridiculous those students figure in part in a professor’s promotion decisions. I also strongly believe that whatever grade a student receives on any paper is their final grade and they should have no room to question the professor’s reasons. Staples also suggested that â€Å"some departments shower students with A’s to fill poorly attended courses that might be canceled† (411). Colleges have to give out the grades the students are begging for so they can keep their classes from getting canceled thus saving their own jobs. Again, he is emphasizing that if teachers want to keep their steady jobs they have to motivate the students in some way to stay enrolled in the classes. This strategy seems like just a form of bribery the teachers have to offer to the deceptive students to keep their jobs afloat. Colleges these days have to grade carefully and be aware of the consequences that students do in some form determine their career movements. The consumers, the students and also the parents believe they should get out as much as they put into their college educational life by exercising their right to question and inquire about their grades. Today, colleges of every stature permit [students] to appeal low grades through deans or permanent boards of inquiry† (411). Unlike high school where you had to accept the grade you received on a paper, on the other hand colleges permit students to present their graded work to a higher power if they believe it was wrongly evaluated. I believe this rule is giving students and parents too much power over the professors who have been through many years of extensive education and know what elements make up a whole hearted A paper. Enforcing this assumption again â€Å"the evidence suggests that students and parents are demanding– and getting– what they think of as their money’s worth† (411). Students and parents are getting more and more demanding as the years go by. The way they perceive things is that either the student is paying their own way through college or the parents are putting their money into their child’s education and they expect to get every dime out of it. If they are going to use their own money they are expecting to get the best grades possible—no exceptions. These blood sucking animals will not back down without a fight. They will stand, they will protest, they will argue. The students and parents have a right to question grades, but to an extent. Their arguments should not be so demanding and they should be happy they are getting a voice to express their side of the story. Students and parents are becoming very demanding concerning grades and will go as far as they can to get what they think they deserve. Some universities wanted to use the Johnson plan of calculating grade point average differently than before, but this plan would make student’s academic careers much more complicated. Staples exclaims â€Å"Valen Johnson, a Duke University statistics professor, came under heavy fire when he proposed recalculating the grade point average to give rigorously graded courses greater weight† (412). Johnson proposed this plan thinking that it would help students be more successful, but all it would do was make everything very worse. Under this plan all courses would be given the same equal weight, but this plan would have many drawbacks. Depending on what major a student had, that student would be required to take certain courses that pertained to their desired degree. By making all courses equal weight, students would have to do very well even in the classes not associated with their major causing many academic problems. I strongly believe this proposed plan of recalculating grade point average is a very horrible idea. Johnson certainly did not put into perspective that making every course the same weight, would make the lives of the students much more difficult. He simply made the students have to do well in every class they took on no matter if it the class seemed easy or hard. The student government beat back the plan with the help of teachers in humanities, who worried that students might abandon them for other courses that they currently avoided† (412). Again, most college professors and members of education boards objected to adopting the Johnson plan because of the major repercussions it would bestow on students. I believe students would get overwhelmed with having to make sure they did exceptionally good in all their classes even tho se not required for their major. These students would have to make sure not let their grades slip because no matter the course the grade point average would be worth the same. To some people this plan may seem in genius; however the Johnson plan is not an ideal plan to better educational movements. Adopting the Johnson plan to colleges would be disastrous and also very stressful to the college students, so keeping the grade point average as it is calculated is the most logical choice to make.

Christopher Nolan

No one has had as impressive of a career as Christopher Jonathan James Nolan. His films have earned $3. 3 billion at the global box office, and the total is still growing. This British/American screenwriter, director and producer’s most popular films include The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Remarkably, many critics have lined up as well, embracing both Nolan’s more offbeat productions, like Memento (2000) and The Prestige (2006), and his blockbusters (Price and Dawson, 2009). Nolan is now routinely considered one of the most accomplished living filmmakers.This essay will analyze the types of techniques he has used to create heart-stopping films, and will more specifically look at his methods used in creating Insomnia (2002), his first studio film. I will also be analyzing the defaults in some of him major productions, and how his films can be improved. Despite his blockbuster hits, many critics fiercely dislike his work. They re gard it as intellectually shallow, dramatically clumsy, and technically unskilled (Price and Dawson, 2009). As far as I can tell, no popular filmmaker’s work of recent years has received such harsh criticism as Nolan has.People seem to disapprove of his continuity errors and patchy plots, but this severe attack on his films are probably due to his elevated reputation. Personally, I admire some of Nolan’s films and see him as an innovative filmmaker although critics sometimes believe his techniques are weak. His film history gives us an occasion to look at some issues about creativity and innovation in popular motion pictures. There are four main ways that a filmmaker can be innovative; by subject matter, themes, formal strategies and level of style (WordPress, 2011).Out of all four innovation techniques, Nolan seems to be lacking a level of style the most. This evidence can be found in Insomnia (2002), his first studio film; A Los Angeles detective and his partner come to an Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. While chasing a suspect in the fog, Dormer shoots his partner Hap and then lies about it, trying to pin the killing on the suspect. But the suspect who is a famous author who did kill the girl, knows what really happened. He pressures Dormer to cover for both of them by framing the girl’s boyfriend.Meanwhile, Dormer is undergoing scrutiny by Ellie, a young officer who idolizes him but who must investigate Hap’s death. And throughout it all, Dormer becomes bleary and disoriented because, the twenty-four-hour daylight won’t let him sleep. Nolan said at the time that what interested him in the script was the prospect of character subjectivity, â€Å"A big part of my interest in filmmaking is an interest in showing the audience a story through a character’s point of view. It’s interesting to try and do that and maintain a relatively natural look. This is because he wanted to keep the aud ience in Dormer’s head. Having already done that to an extent in Memento, he saw it as a logical way of presenting Dormer’s slow breakdown. But Nolan wanted to keep his work subjective and as a result chose to break up scenes with fragmentary flashes of the crime and of clues—painted nails, a necklace. Early in the film, Dormer is studying Kay Connell’s corpse, and we get flashes of the murder and its aftermath, the killer sprucing up the corpse. At first it seems that Dormer feels what happened by noticing clues on Kay’s body.But the film’s credits started with similar glimpses of the killing, as if from the killer’s point of view, and there’s an ambiguity about whether the images later are Dormer’s imaginative reconstruction, or reminders of the killer’s vision—establishing that uneasy link of cop and crook. Similarly, sudden cutting is used to introduce images that get clarified in the course of the film . At the start, we see blood seeping through threads, and then shots of hands carefully depositing blood on a fabric. Then we see shots of Dormer flying in to the crime scene.We learn in the course of the film that these are flashbacks to Dormer’s framing of another suspect back in Los Angeles. Once again, these images are more or less subjective, and they echo the killer’s patient tidying up. Nolan’s style seems to tie into rapid cutting passages. For example, Insomnia has over 3400 shots in its 111 minutes, making the average shot just under two seconds long (WordPress). This type of fast editing can suit bursts of mental imagery, but makes the dialogue hard to understand.In the scene in which Dormer and Hap arrive at the Alaskan police station as an example of the over-busy tempo that can come along with a style based in â€Å"intensified continuity. † In a seventy-second scene, there are 39 shots, so the average is about 1. 8 seconds—a pace typ ical of the film and of the intensified approach generally (Ressner, 2012). Apart from one exterior long-shot of the police station and four inserts of hands, the characters’ interplay is captured almost entirely in singles—that is, shots of only one actor.Out of the 34 shots of actors’ faces and upper bodies, 24 are singles (Ressner, 2012). Most of these serve to pick up individual lines of dialogue or characters’ reactions to other lines. Fast cutting scenes like this are not supposed to break up spatial orientation. In many of this movie’s scenes there are a couple of bumps in the eyeline-matching, but all in all the shot is continuous. As I watched the DVD commentary, Nolan explains that he tried to anchor the axis of action, around Dormer/Pacino, so the eyelines were consistent with his position.The scene’s development and the actors’ line readings are emphasized by the cutting. In contrast, the lighting and framing remain almost unchanged. The editing-driven approach to staging and shooting is clearly Nolan’s preference for many projects; he storyboards only the big action sequences. We can find this loose shooting and abrupt editing in most of Nolan’s films therefor they don’t seem to display innovative, or skilful visual style. I believe his chief areas of innovation are in theme and form. The thematic dimension is easy to see in his films.There’s the issue of uncertain identity, which becomes obvious in Memento and the Batman films. The lost-woman motif, from Leonard’s wife in Memento to Rachel in the two late Batman movies, gives Nolan’s films the recurring theme of vengeance. There is also the theme of the man doomed to solitude and unhappiness, always grieving. This obsessive circling around personal identity and the loss of a lover carries emotional conviction in most of Nolan’s current films and the success of these films owe a good deal to the perfo rmances of the actors such as Guy Pearce, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, and Leonardo DiCaprio.It can be argued that these psychological themes aren’t very original, especially in mystery-based plots, but the Batman films offer something fresher. The Dark Knight trilogy has attracted attention for its search to find real world significance in comic-book material. Many have objected that Superman, who has the power to redirect rivers, prevent asteroid collisions, and expose political corruption, devotes too much of his time to thwarting bank robbers (Price and Dawson, 2009).Nolan and his colleagues have sought to reply to this cliche by adding in plots of heists, fights, chases, explosions, kidnappings, ticking bombs, and pistols with sociopolitical problems. The Dark Knight mainly raises ideas about terrorism, torture, surveillance, and the need to keep the public in the dark about its heroes. It is easy to see that Nolan and his colleagues are undoubtedly giving the superhero genre a new importance in the film industry. Nolan’s innovations seem strongest in the area of narrative form. He’s fascinated by unusual storytelling strategies.Those aren’t developed at full stretch in Insomnia or the Dark Knight trilogy, but other films put them on display. In the Batman trilogy, subjectivity is put on hold. Nolan’s first two films reconcile subjectivity in more unusual ways; instead of expanding our range of knowledge to many characters, nearly the whole film is confined to what happens to one protagonist. Likewise, Memento confines us to a single protagonist and skips between his memories and immediate experiences; one series of incidents is presented as moving chronologically while another is presented in reverse order.While ambitious filmmakers are competing to create cliche narratives and complex films, Nolan raises the stakes by bringing breath-taking cinematic storytelling to life. His movies, unlike any other living filmmaker, are motivated through dreams and modernized with a blend of science fiction, fantasy and action pictures. Above all, the dream motivation allowed him to create unforgettable stories that are now embedded in the minds of millions of viewers.

Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson OVERVIEW/PROBLEM STATEMENTThe following are the problems of Harley Davidson1. Declining market2. Poor economic climate3. Competition from Japanese manufacturers4. Poor quality of products5. Young Generation not buying the productCOMPANY PROFILEThe Davidson brothers, William D., William S., Walter and Arthur founded Harley Davidson, Inc. in 1903. In the first year, only three motor cycles were produced. In 1904 production increased to eight motorcycles. Company present office is located at Juneau Avenue in Milwaukee, USA. In 1907 the company was incorporated.In 1965, Harley-Davidson ended family ownership with a public stock offering and then in 1969, merged with American Machine and Foundry Company (AMF). In 1981, 13 members of the Harley-Davidson management team purchased the company from AMF through a leveraged buy-out. In the early 1980s, Japanese competitors ¡Ã‚ ¦ heavyweight motorcycles created a real threat for the Harley-Davidson organization. The heavy Japanese imports to t he U.S.The 1490cc HD engine. Rubber mounted.These four men were the founders of the best motorbike company ever, Harley-Davidson.The first couple of years of the business were some of the hardest. The four men completed their first motorbike in about 1903(McDiarmid, 13). In their 1904 season, they produced somewhere between one and eight bikes. The first motorbike ever produced went for a total of 134,000 kilometers (McDiarmid, 13). This gave the Harley-Davidson Company a reputation of being dependable. In 1906, Harley was making at least 50 motorbikes a year. The Harley-Davidson Company became an official company in 1907 and by then was making 150 motorbikes a year. By 1908, the Harley-Davidson Company was producing 450 machines a year with a staff of 18 (McDiarmid, 17).As the Harley Davidson Company grew, they became too big for the factory they were in. In 1910, they invested in a...