Pros and Cons of Teacher Websites Research Paper - 1

Pros and Cons of Teacher Websites - Research Paper Example Classroom websites have been recognized for their simple yet valuable contribution to the educational world, but not without a fair share of negative points. Either way, the users of this tool should evaluate whether these flaws outweigh the contribution that it makes to learning. The main function of a classroom website is to serve as an additional and convenient method for the teachers to share information with their students. From this, spring the many advantages of having a classroom website. The fact that it is a technology-based tool, however, has certain disadvantages. One large advantage of this is that teachers can always leave notes as reminders for the student on this website. The notes can be pertaining to any important matter discussed in class, which the teacher does not want the students to forget. This especially includes things like homework, announcements, and class rules. A student who cannot recall the homework assigned for a subject can simply log on to the website to see the reminder that the teacher left for the students. This however, requires the teacher to update the website after every single lesson (Greenspan, 2002). This can be a time-consuming activity, especially for teachers who have multiple classes to manage. Apart from this, the teacher may also use this website to make announcements and share news. This includes announcements such as informing the class of an upcoming fieldtrip or the cancellation of a class. The need for such announcements usually arises after class stands dismisses. Thus, if the teacher posts such announcements online, this saves the teacher the trouble of having to inform the students through other, lengthier means, and it also ensures that the news is displayed.

Current Preparedness Issue Paper Term Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Current Preparedness Issue - Term Paper Example Thus, it is important to analyze how civilian-military coordination to emergencies in our system occurs. Unfortunately, while great strides have been made, the coordination between US civil and military agencies at the local, state and federal level still have many procedural and practical problems during emergencies. Hurricane Katrina was a fracture point that demonstrated widespread failure in the US disaster response system. There was â€Å"widespread confusion on operations, communications, and protocols† (Meyer and Baca, 2010). Blanco, Nagin and FEMA were unable to coordinate properly with each other at the leadership level, with competing and often redundant mandates. There were many other reasons for failure during Katrina, of course, some of which deserve more analysis later: Racism among local officials that led to people being locked in, FEMA becoming a backseat agency after Homeland Security, etc. But what is illustrative for the general disaster response lesson is that the problem was predictably caused by a lack of state participation in the National Response Plan. â€Å"Further demonstrating the lack of any meaningful role by state and local governments in the adoption of the NRP is the fact that the officials who approved the NRP do not include a single non-federal representative. The Department of Education, an entity with no role whatsoever in domestic incident response, is a signatory to the NRP, while FEMA is not. Not one governor or mayor signed it† (Mayer and Baca, 2010). Things have improved since Katrina, but the government should still be preparing for another debacle on that scale in the interim. Levinson and Granot (2002) make clear why military command only is predictably likely to fail by analyzing the case study of Israel. Their disaster response agency, while nominally civilian, is still staffed by former military career men with little experience in civil-military relations. When disasters happened like the 1990 trai n disaster, â€Å"the scenario went along the lines of military thinking and not according to a course-of-business civilian accident†. The case study indicates a few flaws with a purely military approach. First: Military leaders are not used to working with civilian chains of command or lack thereof. Firefighters, EMTs and police do not have as strong a chain of command as the military do, so more respect for individual autonomy is essential. Second: Military leaders tend to respond to disasters by treating them as full-scale operations. They thus tend to overescalate responses, assign too many resources (as if the situation were a battle that must be overwhelmed), and can lead to panic. Third: The focus on hierarchy not only leads to more alienation of civilian personnel, but it also has additional problems. It prevents the coordination of volunteers who are trying to do what they can but may smart at excessive command and control. It alienates those with management skills, both those people with little disaster experience and those with plenty. It can prevent coordination among multiple groups at different levels, especially pushing away NGOs like the Red Cross and religious associations. And in most emergency response agencies, the ground-level people have the most expertise, yet military planning tends to prioritize consulting people with less experience but more clout. In the military, experience at a core task is the key to promotion: In civilian life, there is

Cost Estimation Plan Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Cost Estimation Plan - Coursework Example According to the agreement, these operations will be transferred to government. Approach road to this tunnel is shared with that of Sydney Harbour Bridge. The SHT is 2.3 kilo meters long with only 1 kilometer of the tunnel being under the Sydney Harbour. There are total 4 sections in the tunnel; two on the North of the Sydney Harbour and the other two on its Southern side. The two land tunnels on the North side have a length of 1 kilometer each and those on the Southern side have a length of half kilometer each. The four units are joined by means of eight solid concrete blocks. There are two carriage ways in SHT, each having two traffic lanes. This tunnel is one of the largest tunnels in Australia and therefore, has much importance. The project for construction of the SHT can be considered as one of its own nature as there are certain outcomes observed which have raised questions about the project. One such important issue is the fact that the project Sydney Harbour Tunnel was a PPP in which the private partner bore higher portion of risk as compared to that of public partner, or to be more precise, in this case government of Australia. In the next section of this essay we will focus on the various assumptions made during the cost estimation of the STH plan. Various approaches towards the cost estimation of mega infrastructural projects and their application to the Sydney Harbour Tunnel Project will follow the assumptions. A cost-benefit analysis of the project is given and conclusion is drawn on the basis of all the discussion. To start the discussion about cot estimation of STH, let us first discuss some of the major assumptions made during the financial planning stages of the project. Given are some of the basic facts and figures about Sydney Harbour Tunnel: 2.0 Looking into The Finances and Economics of Sydney Harbour Tunnel Sydney Harbour Tunnel was built on the principle of 'BOT,' i.e., Build, Operate and Transfer. There were a number of financial advisors involved in economic and financial analysis of the project. A combination of analysis techniques were used by these consultants and a unified statement as a result of the analyses was given by the Auditor General NSW in 1994.It was stated that the project was viable and beneficial on financial, economic and environmental basis. The tunnel was reported to be justified on the basis of factors like travel time, air quality, economics of the project and the quality of travel with special reference to air quality. However, it was mentioned in the later parts of the report that technical deficiencies and constraints may affect some of the outcomes o the project. These assumptions are addressed in the very next section of the essay with their detailed analysis and how it influenced the overall functioning of the tunnel from the start up to the date. The estimated cost for the construction of the tunnel was reported to be 3.8 million Australian Dollars. These funds were generated from three different sources. The first tool used was the issuance of inflation-index bonds of maturity 30 years to raise a capital of AU $ 486. The second

Babylonians and Sumerians Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Babylonians and Sumerians - Essay Example The researcher states that one of the points of commonality between Sumerians and Babylonians is religion. Babylonians and Sumerians were both highly polytheistic. At some points, as neighboring city-states, Babylonians and Sumerians shared the same gods. All these gods were based on the perceptions that people had towards forces of nature. To this extent, both the Sumerians and Babylonians had the god(s) of air, sun, moon, rain and sea. Both civilizations also had towers or ziggurats in the middle of their cities. Sacrifices were offered to the pantheon of gods in Sumeria and Babylon. Nevertheless, in the offering of sacrifice, there is a parting point since the Sumerians offered only crop harvests while the Babylonians sacrificed even their children. Both civilizations were city-states. Again, both civilizations had all-dispensing rulers. In Sumeria, the powerful political ruler, Gilgamesh was also a priest. However, in Babylon, Hammurabi (fl. ca. 1792 – 1750 BC) the ruler w as a king, priest and lawgiver. Both civilizations used the Sumerian language, though the Babylonians limited their use of the Sumerian language to religious purposes. The Babylonians used the Akkadian language for official purposes while the Sumerians had their own language. According to Finkel and Reade, Babylonians is no doubt one of the biggest city-states in Mesopotamia. For one, as touching architecture, Babylonians erected massive buildings and architectural structures such as the Hanging Gardens and the Ishtar Gates. The Babylonians among many other things invested advanced techniques of irrigation along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. This helped the Babylonians grow a lot of crops. Gadotti observes that the Sumerians also had their inventions, even in the field of architecture and art. One of the most remarkable works of Sumerian art is the Erech vase in alabaster.