Aspects Of Blended Learning Technology Supports Diverse...

Aspects of Blended Learning: Technology Supports Diverse Classrooms Blended learning has been a popular topic in education over the past decade. With the rapid advancement of technology in recent years and the ever-increasing demands on teaching staff, there is a scramble to find the golden goose – the key to harmonizing technology and education in order to reach more students and ease the burden of teachers. It becomes more than just an issue of getting technology into the classroom because hundreds of thousands of classrooms already have technology capabilities. It becomes an issue of how to train teachers to use instructional technology and truly integrate it into curriculum. It becomes an issue of how to make technology a†¦show more content†¦Blended learning is malleable. It can easily be reformed and adjusted to suit many different learning styles and many different grade levels. For example, second graders may use reader software if they are struggling wi th dyslexia. Adults may use the same software if they are auditory learners to follow along when reading a long article on a computer screen. The hypothesis of this paper is that blended learning is a viable solution to stalling education methods because technology has the flexibility, real-world connection, and active engagement that supports successful learning. In this paper, there are four terms used interchangeably: technology, learning technology, educational technology, and instructional technology. While there is no universal definition for it, instructional technology can be defined as any tool used by an educator to support a lesson. There are two types of instructional technology: audiovisual devices and a systems approach process. (Gagne 1987, p. 11) Audiovisual devices include technical equipment, such as projectors and computers. A systems approach process means careful planning, development, execution, analyzation, and evaluation of instruction with technology. Most people still consider audiovisual devices to be the main component of educational technology, but the systems approach gives a more complete picture of the effort to create systematic instruction with technology. For the purposes

Lucy, The Gem Of Ethiopia - 1279 Words

Nicky Yoong Period 4 Lucy, the Gem of Ethiopia Introduction As humans we strive to learn about our past, present, and future. It doesn’t matter where you live or who you are; you have that urge, that indescribable feeling, to know who you are and where you came from. The best place and probably the most well known place to discover the past is Africa, which harbors one of the biggest archaeology sites in the world the Great Rift Valley. Archaeology in Africa is divided into two groups. One is the study of ancient civilizations like Egypt or the Mali Empire. The other is finding human origins and how we evolved from primitive mammals. We have fossil records of humans that date back millions of years which tell us of ancient humans and our evolution to become homo sapiens. The most famous of these pre-humans is Lucy or Dinkenesh which is the Ethiopian word for â€Å"she is wonderful.† Who is Lucy? Named after the Beatles song, â€Å"Lucy in the Sky without Diamonds,† Lucy is an ancient, fossil of australopithecus afarensis, one of our predecessors. Lucy is 40% of fossilized skeleton of a three foot six, fifty pound female who roamed the Great Rift Valley 3.2 million years ago. Lucy’s male counterparts were 5 feet and around 105 pounds. This difference in size between the males and females is called sexual dimorphism and it happens in a lot of ancient and modern animals. Lucy was found in Hadar (a dig site) 217 miles away from Addis Ababa the capital of Ethiopia. Donald

Aircraft Brake Scandal free essay sample

Vandiveer faced dilemmas throughout the case: to follow his personal value and professional responsibility to refuse unethical action or to follow the managers’ order to keep the job; and to keep loyalty to the company or to be a whistleblower to disclose the fraud. In general, Vandiveer behaved by his personal values. However, some actions by Vandiveer are open to question. Visibility: Vandiveer was admired and supported by the public for his courage to do right thing though losing his job and suffering the possible prosecution. In some sense, Vandiveer betrayed his company as a whistleblower. However, his disclosure prevented a worse consequence of engineering fraud. Generality: Vandiveer set an example to guide others who in the similar situation. When there are conflicts with self-interest and ethics, the one will be expected to behave following the moral principle. However, it does not mean personal interest retreat constantly. Voice will be a better decision in such situation. Legacy: Vandiveer has a positive image when people talk about the aircraft brake scandal. He did not obey his inner sense and would be trusted by others in his future life. Discussion A summary of the Important Facts All stories caused by a contract issued on June, 18, 1967, by LTV Aerospace Corporation with Goodrich Company to order wheels and brakes for the new Air Force plane. For Goodrich, it seemed destined to be an unusual contract. Goodrich won this contract by a competitively low bid and, more importantly, the innovative technical design of relatively small brake which containing four disks and weighing only 106 pounds. During the one year for design and test, Goodrich told LTV that all about the brake program was well. A qualification report was published and submitted to Air Force and LTV to show that the brake passed specified qualifying test. Contrary to what Goodrich guaranteed in the report, the flight test in the last two weeks of June, 1986 failed. Followed the flight test failure, a litigation testified by Kermit Vandiveer, a former employee of Goodrich, Air Force and GAO, regarding falsification of the qualification test report, disclosed what happened in the year before the actual flight test, which now known as â€Å"Aircraft Brake Scandal†. The event, so to speak, implicated widely. From executives to employees, these people more or less involved in the fraud. Searle Lawson, the young design engineer on A7D brake and graduated only one year, was the one who first found and pointed out the design deficiency of the brake after several tests and computations. Later, he prepared the various engineering curves and graphic displays for the qualification report with Kermit Vandiveer, the data analyst and technical writer. In the litigation, Lawson supported Vandiveer’s testimony as a government witness. As a key figure in the event, although Vandiveer offered false graphic presentation after difficult self-struggle, he eventually turned into whistleblower to accuse Goodrich. Ralph Gretzinger, the test lab supervisor, initially opposed a falsified qualification report but knuckle under to the pressure of his supervisor in the Technical Services section, Russell Line. In addition, Russell Van Horn, the manager of the design engineering section, Robert Sink, the A7D project manager, and Bud Sunderman, the chief engineer for Goodrich, all of them ordered someone to write a falsified qualification report. Although all these actors reached an agreement on qualification report, division had existed between two opinion groups. One group was represented by Vandiveer who refused to write a deliberately falsified report. They were integrity and stood on their personal values and beliefs. They were responsibility for their professional standards and for the company’s interest and reputation as employees. Most people in the other group were executives, who were more concerned with their performance and future career path. They tried every way to whitewash the truth despite the serious consequence. A detailed Ethical Analysis Workbook for all people involved provided in Exhibit 1. The Relevant Standards/Principles There are two major standards used to evaluating Vandiveer’s behavior. One is fiduciary principle that required someone act in the best interests of the company and its investors. Diligence, intelligence, candor, loyalty, and many other characters are positive behavior of fiduciary. And unauthorized self-dealing, carelessness, bribery, and some other negative behaviors are prohibited. The other one is transparency principle that required someone conduct business in a truthful and open manner. Accuracy, truthfulness, honesty reflect this standard and fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation oppose it. Under the fiduciary principle, the one under such situation should try his best to protect the interest of company. Obviously, that was a right-versus-wrong situation. As an employee, neither quitting the job to escape from bad situation nor being blind loyalty to do what are told is good solution. Communicating with executives to persuade them giving up the bad decision and offer alternative method will be useful and helpful. Employees have the responsibility to stop the company making wrong decision. What’s more, they should choose reasonable methods which will not hurt the company. Under the transparency principle, the one is required to stand firm to refuse anything that will obey personal values and professional responsibilities. Issuing a report full of falsification and misleading is prohibited. Besides these two principles, reliability principle, fairness principle, and responsiveness principle are also relevant to evaluate author’s action and other stakeholder’s behavior. Was the author’s action consistent with his basic duties? The author’s action was, to a large extent, consistent with his basic duties. Throughout the whole event, Vandiveer made decisions following his personal values and beliefs. However, it is undeniable that some of Vandiveer’s actions were improper. As a data analyst and technical writer, Vandiveer should abide by the professional ethics to respect the raw experimental data and the actual testing results, and to write a report strictly according to the facts without any falsification. So, when he found that the data-recording instrument was deliberately miscalibrated and the test logs were inaccurate, he communicated with senior managers actively to state his stand that he would not issue a false report and tried his best to persuade managers to change the mind of publishing a false qualification report. Furthermore, Vandiveer’s action indicated his loyalty to the company. Actually, Vandiveer indeed should do what a qualified employee do. He was concerned with the reputation of the company and would like to take the responsibility to protect the company. Although Vandiveer once made a compromise to fabricate, falsify, and alter engineering curves and graphic displays that were normally incorporated in a qualification report, he eventually disclosed the fraud. When confronted with a conflict between the interests of himself and the public, Vandiveer gave up his self-interest to do what he thought was right. Just because of this, someone hold another opinion questioned Vandiveer’s loyalty to the company and his professional ethic. As a whistleblower, Vandiveer’s disclosure ran the company into difficulties. However, Vandiveer just putted his loyalty to the highest moral principles. His action actually protected the company from much more serious accusation or huge reparations which probably resulted from freight accident caused by the unqualified brake. Did the author respect the rights and legitimate claims of the affected parties? It depends on who is the affected party. LTV Corporation and Goodrich are two affected parties for Vandiveer. Vandiveer’s action respected the rights and other legitimate claims of LTV such as the right of deal fairly with others. LTV should be informed the facts of the brake program rather than be treated by a false qualification report. And according to the contract, the brake must be safe rather than unqualified to cause an accident when the fright landing. Because of Vandiveer’s disclosure, LTV knew the problem of the brake and Goodrich was forced to change the design of the defective brake. Further damage was avoided. For Goodrich’s rights and legitimate claims, it is a more complicated problem. Goodrich had the right to require its employees be loyalty, but Vandiveer seemingly breached this requirement. From the standpoint of public interest, Vandiveer’s decision was reasonable. However, from the standpoint of Goodrich, Vandiveer should have more appropriate actions in this right-versus-wrong situation. At the beginning, Vandiveer voiced to the managers. He described the situation explicitly, communicated his concerns, and warned the possible bad results. Meanwhile, he objected to do what obeyed the moral principles and tried his best to persuade the managers. After failed to persuade the managers, Vandiveer was forced to be loyalty, and did what he was told although he was still clearly aware that all these orders were unethical, or even illegal. After the failing flight test, Air Force rescinded the approval of the qualification report and demanded to see raw test data. Vandiveer joined the reference about the test data used in the report. He suggested the manager to tell LTV the truth but was rejected. Goodrich did not intend to admit any fault but just interpreted the information. Finally, Vandiveer submitted his resignation. He chose to exit. Evaluating Vandiveer’s performance in this event, he really did great effort to stop and change something. But, he missed some chances which may make the whole story another ending. When his communication with the executives of Goodrich plant but came to nothing, he could report this situation to headquarters of Goodrich. This would more or less draw attention from the headquarters. Thus, he did not have to write a false report, and the company would not involve in the scandal. Being a whistleblower is a last resort unless all efforts failed. Otherwise, he should stand in the same side of the company.