Defining and Understanding Literacy

Defining and Understanding Literacy Simply put, literacy is the ability to read and write in at least one language. So just about everyone in developed countries is literate in the basic sense. In her book The Literacy Wars,  Ilana Snyder argues that there is no single, correct view of literacy that would be universally accepted. There are a number of competing definitions, and these definitions are continually changing and evolving. The following quotes raise several issues about literacy, its necessity, its power, and its evolution. Observations on Literacy Literacy is a human right, a tool of personal empowerment and a means for social and human development. Educational opportunities depend on literacy. Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all and essential for eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace, and democracy., Why Is Literacy Important? UNESCO, 2010The notion of basic literacy is used for the initial learning of reading and writing, which adults who have never been to school need to go through. The term functional literacy is kept for the level of reading and writing that adults are thought to need in a modern complex society. Use of the term underlines the idea that although people may have basic levels of literacy, they need a different level to operate in their day-to-day lives., David Barton, Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language,  2006To acquire literacy is more than to psychologically and mechanically dominate reading and writing techniques. It is to dominate those techniques in terms of consciousness; to understand what one reads and to write what one understands: It is to communicate graphically. Acquiring literacy does not involve memorizing sentences, words or syllables, lifeless objects unconnected to an existential universe, but rather an attitude of creation and re-creation, a self-transformation producing a stance of intervention in ones context., Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 1974 There is hardly an oral culture or a predominantly oral culture left in the world today that is not somehow aware of the vast complex of powers forever inaccessible without literacy., Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word,  1982 Women and Literacy Joan Acocella, in a New Yorker review of the book The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack, had this to say in 2012: In the history of women, there is probably no matter, apart from contraception, more important than literacy. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, access to the power required knowledge of the world. This could not be gained without reading and writing, skills that were granted to men long before they were to women. Deprived of them, women were condemned to stay home with the livestock or, if they were lucky, with the servants. (Alternatively, they may have been the servants.) Compared with men, they led mediocre lives. In thinking about wisdom, it helps to read about wisdom, about Solomon or Socrates or whomever. Likewise, goodness and happiness and love. To decide whether you have them or want to make the sacrifices necessary to get them, it is useful to read about them. Without such introspection, women seemed stupid; therefore, they were considered unfit for education; therefore, they weren’t given an education; therefore they seemed stupid.   A New Definition? Barry Sanders, in A Is for Ox: Violence, Electronic Media, and the Silencing of the Written Word (1994), makes a case for a changing definition of literacy in the technological age. We need a radical redefinition of literacy, one that includes a recognition of the vital importance that morality plays in shaping literacy. We need a radical redefinition of what it means for society to have all the appearances of literacy and yet to abandon the book as its dominant metaphor. We must understand what happens when the computer replaces the book as the prime metaphor for visualizing the self.It is important to remember that those who celebrate the intensities and discontinuities of postmodern electronic culture in print write from an advanced literacy. That literacy provides them the profound power of choosing their ideational repertoire. No such choice or power is available to the illiterate young person subjected to an endless stream of electronic images.

The Hybrid of 35mm Film and Digital Video Thesis

The Hybrid of 35mm Film and Digital Video - Thesis Example Over time, the video from film cameras evolved from black and white into colour and now looms around extinction in the face of digital video and digital cameras. Attempts are being made in order to revitalize the decaying film camera industry such as with the introduction of the LomoKino camera that supports film video creation using a crank. The current paper will attempt to look at an effort to create a TVR commercial to popularise such cameras using video footage obtained from film cameras as well as digital cameras. Introduction The twentieth century can be seen as a time of revolution for the human race. A number of significant developments took place following the Industrial Revolution that has redefined the manner in which human beings exist and look at things. Communication is one of the key aspects that have changed altogether from the pre Industrial Revolution period to today. The printing press was a key change that introduced more and more people to printed messages and a llowed greater communication between people. In a similar manner, the invention of photography took the world by surprise. First, photography allowed people to transmit simple black and white images to convey messages. In the next step, these images were combined together to produce moving images that stunned audiences across the world. ... On the other hand, photographed images did not require any prerequisites to understand them. Naturally, photography became more and more popular with time when compared to printed texts. This major change was catalysed by the creation of moving images in the form of the earliest films. Placing moving images together allowed for easier and simpler transmission of ideas. Images became an instrument for propaganda from the very start given their effectiveness at delivering their message. Audiences around the globe were mesmerised with moving images although sound had yet not been introduced. It comes as no surprise that by the start of the twentieth century, governments around the world were utilising cinemas and moving pictures for propaganda value. By this point in time, technological advances had allowed photographers to capture images in colour. The century old tradition of photography had developed a number of different industrial standards to allow for more standardised photograph y. One of these developments depended on the use of three different colour filters namely red, green and blue in order to capture and later reproduce images. Another major development dating from this period was the development of the 35mm film that became synonymous with photography around the world. The iconic 35mm film became the symbol of the photography world such that a photographer operating anywhere around the world had access to this film. Early on this size for photographic films was adopted by Thomas Edison in liaison with Blair Camera Company from New York (Dickson, 1933). Both companies agreed to slice photographic film to a standard size of 35mm or 1.375 inches for each frame. Moreover, each frame had

Cross-Cultural Management - Davinci Apps Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Cross-Cultural Management - Davinci Apps - Essay Example Italy is a masculine society that is highly success oriented and competitive. The society believes in winner attitude and children are taught to compete in the world right from school. So, competition among employees of companies is also high, which facilitates organizational development to a great extent. On comparing masculinity factor of Italy and UK, it is observed that the society of UK is less masculine compared to that of Italy. This signifies that there are higher competition and stress upon success within the Italians, which help them to achieve greater success. The manager needs to become more goal-oriented and be confident of successfully providing cultural training in Italy. Her motivation will be able to direct her toward the success of the training program and DaVinci Apps, as a whole. This particular dimension relates to the way in which society deals with uncertain situations in future. This dimension measures whether or not one should control occurrences of the futur e. It is noticed that different cultures have the capability to deal with uncertain situations in own unique ways. Hence, this indicates the degree to which members of a particular society is threatened by unknown situations. Italy scores high in avoiding uncertainty, which implies that the Italians are not at all comfortable in encountering uncertain situations. It is noted that formality is quite necessary. The civil and penal code of Italy is very complicated with a number of clauses and codicil.

LOVE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

LOVE - Essay Example The implementation of Adam Smith’s ideas of a free market economy, where the invisible hand would determine how, what and how much to produce in what quantities was a radical concept, as was his assertion that saving is better than consumption, giving rise to a capitalist economy. It was supported by David Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage as the basis for international trade and exchange. Modern societies depend on elected leaders and thinkers as they try to find solutions to our communal problems and bring a sense of order and belonging to our daily lives. This involves the formulation of policies that are in the public interest. In fact the degree of evolution of society can be traced to the quality of its laws, policies, procedures, ethics and morals that define and perpetuate its existence. A qualifying criticism that can be leveled against policy makers is that they tend to act in their own self interests rather than in the public interest. In other words, power tends to corrupt the best of individuals as they tend to seek what is best for them rather than society at large. F.A. Hayek saw these deficiencies in the mechanism of socialist economies as well as a capitalistic system. He argued that it was liberalism that needed to be included in the system to make it work better (Hayek, 23). Ronald Coase would interject that social costs would also enter into the equation of deciding the price of a good, as few entrepreneurs or capitalists have the capacity or talent to produce goods themselves (Coase, 12). The answer to this quandary would therefore lie in public and private watchdogs, professional and private agencies that make it their duty to point out the good and bad points of evolving laws and policies- much like a Board of Governance in a modern organization. The only caveat is that they should be answerable to no one but society at large. If we truly acted principally in the public interest and not just our own, we would soon realize that

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Essay

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Essay Example As commonly perceived, atomic bombs were intended as a deterrent to the German threat, but ended up as an offensive weapon of mass destruction against Japan in order to force an unconditional surrender and to end WWII (Zuberi 623).This paper explores the horrors of bombings and whether it was justifiable to use atomic bomb against Japan during WWII. The morning of August 6, 1945, U.S. Air Force B-29 bomber dropped bomb on Hiroshima, the primary target, at 8:15 A.M. Aircrafts pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, named it after his mother, Enola Gay (Langley 8-10). United States of America dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, within a short time span to three days. The bombings killed more than 115,000 people (possibly 250,000) and injured 100,000(Bernstein 135). Later, thousands died because of injuries and radiation exposure. The bomb was called Little Boy that exploded about 2,000 feet above the city. Within fraction of a second, the bomb produced enormous fireball and temperature underneath that fireball reached 5,400 0F (2,982 0C). The flash of heat caused instant death of those who where in half a mile. Their skin was parched to carbon and their internal organs boiled away. Flying birds turned into ashes in midair. Even the heat caused severe burns on exposed skin of the people who were at a distance of 2 miles from the centre of the blast. At the same time, blinding flash of light worked like a giant camera. This light was three thousand times more powerful than sunlight which bleached the surface of the whole city. People who looked directly at the flash suffered from permanent damage to their eyes. After extreme heat and light, Hiroshima experienced the shockwaves caused by the explosion. From the centre, these shockwaves shot outward at a speed of 2 miles per second (Langley 12-15). This was the first atomic bomb used in combat. The consequences led Japanese government to announce unconditional

Role of Nursing in Healthcare Delivery Coursework

Role of Nursing in Healthcare Delivery - Coursework Example Therefore we can say that in this modern century the role of nursing managers has somewhat change now. In addition to the direct clinical and medical care, the nurses are involved in many other aspects of the health care industry. The additional duties may also include quality management and improvement, case management, data collection and analysis, insurance review analysis, patient educations and sometimes the regular training programs to train the rest of the medical staff (Cipriano, 2010). All of these additional tasks are included in the roles, duties or we can say responsibilities of a nurse manager. In modern times, the nurses are also named as the health providers and the health researchers. At higher level of nursing managers, the duties and the responsibilities of a nurse may change from others. A nurse manger may have to supervise all the staff and the hospital just to coordinate their activities. The budgeting activity may also fall on the shoulders of a nurse manger so that he or she can manage the allocated budget according to the proper planning. The hospital may get famous by the level of its services and the care, which they give to their patients; therefore, it is the role of the nurse manager to maintain the high quality or the standard of the health care services (Donovan, 2010). Nurses play an important or we must say a central role in the cost containment, quality and safety provision to the patients. Working at any level the role of nurse is to observe the current and emerging trends so that she or he can make innovation in their services and thus improve the quality of their health care provisions. The aim of the nurses and especially the nursing managers is to achieve the shared and mutual goals of efficiency and effectiveness in the practice (Tiffin, 2012). Tiffin, C. (2012), ‘Beyond the Bed Side: The Changing Roles of Nurses Today’, Huffington Post, Retrieved on July 22, 2014 from

Nike Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Nike - Essay Example Nike’s quest to become a global sports leader has fuelled the remarkable move to the more innovative digital marketing. The digital campaigns on the social media such as Facebook have enabled Nike to popularise the FuelBand among the target consumers. The social media has enabled Nike to communicate constantly with the customers. The Nike + FuelBand Community on the Facebook send messages of motivation to the users to acquire the FuelBand (Guarda). In effect, the digital and social marketing has facilitated the collection of information regarding consumer’s preferences, as well as choices. Nike has maintained consistency in its quest to communicate constantly with the customers in the social media, and position the FuelBand in the market. The company engages with the consumers and receives important feedback about the product. In effect, Nike has created a strong relationship with the consumers through the digital and social marketing strategies for long-term engagement (Guarda). The social media is an integral part of the business cycle, and Nike has seized the opportunity as it endeavours to position itself as a global sports leader by understanding the needs of the customers. Guarda, Dinis. Nike Takes Digital Data and Social Media Marketing Seriously. Web. 22nd Nov. 2014