Labour education crisis Essay Example for Free

Labour education crisis Essay The man who promised us, Education, education, education, as the main priority of his government has failed again. Blair along with forever changing line up of education secretaries has again been branded a hazard to our children. The new crisis in hand for our Labour government evolves our youngsters within Primary education. The recent report has revealed that the number of children who can read and write properly has fallen in the last three years, as almost 250,000 seven year olds are not hitting required standards, for the second year running. In English only 75% have reached the required standards, leaving government hopes of 85% English pass rate for 11 year olds by 2002 in tatters. The report has shown three tenths of Primary school children are behind in reading from as young as seven. Four tenths our poor at writing, leading to one quarter of eleven year olds being classed as semi-literate! Chief school inspector Mr David bell has described the situation as disastrous and has said, I dont think we could possibly be happy with what primary schools are achieving. These chilling figures reported by Ofsted are causing concern amongst parents throughout the country. Although Mr Bell is claiming the route of this problem is due to the teachers and Heads of the schools. As it has been suggested that one in ten of our head teachers are weak, thats a figure just over 2,000 that are simply not up to the job. If the leaders of the schools are weak what hope does it hold for our teachers? Although Heads are saying they are being used a scapegoats Mr Bell insists that they are to blame, They lack knowledge and skill. This standard is simply not adequate as the government has admitted. This has left other parties, including the Liberals suggesting an education reform and the Tories claming the situation has reached crisis level. Although PM Tony Blair has barely mentioned the report, and went ahead with a speech on education standards. This new crisis has fallen into the hands of Estelle Morris successor Charles Clarke. The Education Secretary has been told by Ofsted the targets set for 2004 will not be achievable. This will make his job even harder as situations are just being passed on with each new education secretary. Along with Primary education being seen as a shambles Ms Morris has left the problems of AS and A level system with Mr Clarke. After last years mark fixing fiasco new guide lines need to be set to stop this embarrassing situation recurring. That saw up to 4,194 candidates having their A-level grades increased in 2002. As well as the A-level marking situation causing problems it now seems that AS and A-level lecturers are unhappy with the system. They are calling for a return to a system such as the old one qualification of the A-level over two years. Suggesting that its simply too much for students. These measures come just two years after curriculum 2000 was introduced, bringing in the AS and A2 exams. Although now former chief inspector of England schools, Mr Tomlinson, has been asked to make a report suggesting ways of maintaining the A-levels standards and credibility. Universities are unhappy with a possible move to re-secure the A-level as they feel by keeping the name it will cause confusion. The A-level was first introduced in 1951 and has changed dramatically. This in turn effects what people feel constitutes as an A-level in standards they require, which worries the Universities. Who have also been affected by Labours education crisis due to the clearance procedure after the mess-up with A-level marking. The last thing on the agenda for Labour in terms of education is the staffing shortage in Primary and Senior schools. At the start of the academic year many school remained closed due to staffing shortages. And it appears this situation to is getting worse. As a survey for the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teacher suggested that nearly 63% of teachers have considered leaving their jobs within the past 5 years. And in another survey for the National Opinion Poll of 1,007 NASUWT members discovered that 30% felt that no political party had the right education policies. In conclusion it seams that all areas of or education system our in danger and have been effected, all that is left to say is good luck Charles Clarke, who now has the mammoth task of getting things on track. A job that both David Blunkett and Estelle Morris have failed to achieve.

Are tall buildings necessary for London to remain a competitive world c

Are tall buildings necessary for London to remain a competitive world city? On February 10, 2004 mayor of London Ken Livingstone introduced the London Plan, the first proactive strategy in over thirty years to deal specifically with the planning and development of London. Since an increase in London's population by 800,000 is expected by the year 2020 , the mayor has suggested the construction of high-rise buildings as the method most likely to enable London to grow in a controlled and steady manner and maintain its status as a world city. A key part of the plan, the mayor's proposal for high-density towers throughout the city, has heightened the debate between urban planners and heritage groups as to whether the construction of tall office and housing complexes is necessary and/or appropriate for London. Based on recent documents, articles and essays and London's need to remain competitive with New York and Tokyo as a world class city, the construction of tall buildings in London is a necessity, especially due to certain factors such as the need to preserve historic views, the lack of available space and London's poor transport system. The ongoing debate over whether tall buildings would best serve London and sustain and enhance its status as a world-class city has dominated the political and metropolitan structural-design arenas during the last ten years. On one side are heritage groups and conservationists claiming that an increase in the number of tall buildings would block strategic views of London's historically significant landmarks. For example, the organization English Heritage has stated that the tall buildings are a cultural issue and their role is first and foremost of image and aesthetics rather than economic,... ...22, 16 February 2004 Government of London, 'London's skyline, views and high buildings,' Planners and Development Economists http://www.london.gov.uk 16 February 2004 Government of London, 'The London Plan.' Ken Livingstone. http://www.london.gov.uk 17 February 2004 Hamnett, 'The transformation of London's occupational structure and the rise of the new middle class,' Unequal City. (Routledge) pp. 70 Livingstone, Ken. 'The only way is up,' The Independent. 2 November 2002. London School of Economics, 'London should grow up says new report on tall buildings' http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/ archives/2000-2002/Tall_Buildings.htm 13 February 2004 Newman, P, Thornley, A. 'Fragmentation and centralization: Influencing the urban policy agenda in London' Urban Studies 34. The Editors of Urban Studies: 2997. pp 981

Display screen Essay

A monitor can be considered as a window into the computer’s memory. It allows data entry to be checked by echoing input characters on the screen. The disadvantage of monitors is that data on the screen is temporary (called softcopy) and they can hold only limited amount of data. Quality Factor – Resolution Resolution defines sharpness and clarity of an image and is specified as the number of dots per character. Modern packages are using a lot of graphics and therefore require high-resolution monitors. Display Adaptors Adaptors are cards installed in motherboard to control a monitor. The following specifications were evolving over the years:   Hercules – mono   Colour Graphics Adaptor (CGA) – low quality   Enhanced Graphics Adaptor (EGA) – medium quality   Video Graphics Array (VGA and Super VGA) – high quality   Extended Graphics Array (XGA) – successor of SVGA, has the power to handle the video and animation requirements of the modern multimedia packages and games Bit Mapping Technique For monochrome displays, only one bit of memory is required for each pixel. If it is set to 1, the pixel is illuminated. If the corresponding memory location contains 0, the pixel is left dark. A binary representation in RAM The equivalent screen representation Figure 1. Bitmapped representation of letter T coding in RAM and corresponding image on screen For colour monitors, more than one bit is required to keep information about a pixel because apart from illuminated or not setting, colour specification is also required. Monitors that are capable of displaying 16 colours only would require 4 bits of memory per pixel (16 = 24). Figure out how many bits of memory per pixel are required to give a choice of 512 colours? Thus the required size of visual memory depends on the number of pixels on the screen (resolution factor) and on the number of colours available. If you are buying a modern monitor which is bigger than 14†³, it is desirable to have at least 2 M of memory on the video card. Types of Monitors 1). Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Technology: A beam of electrons lights up pixels/dots on the screen Colour is achieved by combining Red/Green/Blue (RGB) of different intensities. Size: Size is measured diagonally (corner to corner). Today monitors are available in sizes 14†³, 15†³, 17†³, 21†³. But the monitor size doesn’t tell anything about the maximum viewable image size. The bezel in front of every monitor’s CRT diminishes the viewable area by approximately an inch. When deciding on which monitor to buy, think of which resolution you’ll be working in most frequently. The higher the resolution, the bigger the monitor is required. Monitors usually display 25 lines 80 characters each in text mode. Standard Resolutions (in pixels) VGA 640 x 480 SVGA 800 x 600 XGA 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 1600 x 1200 Some high-end monitors support these high resolutions. Designed for professional level work,1600 x 1280 e. g. computer-aided design or desktop publishing 1800 x 1440 Supported by at least one: ViewSonic P815 Mega An interlaced monitor draws its screen in two passes. First it draws every second line and then fills in the missing lines. Interlacing is noticeable because of flicking screen and can cause headaches. A non-interlaced monitor draws its screen in one pass. Another reason for a flicking screen is the frequency with which the monitor redraws its screen – called refresh rate or vertical scan rate. The bottom line should be 75Hz so that flickering effect doesn’t show up. Ensure that your monitor and graphics card can be synchronised to the same refresh rate. 2). LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) These displays are known as being used in calculators and watches. They have an advantage of being cheap but a disadvantage is that it is very hard to see what they display in the dark. They are used in laptops because they are flat. LCDs come as monochrome or colour. Monochrome LCD images usually appear as dark gray images on a grayish-white background. Color Liquid Crystal Displays use two basic techniques for producing color: passive matrix and active matrix. Passive matrix is the less expensive of the two technologies. It offers good contrast and viewing angle suitable for graphical user interfaces but its colors are not particularly sharp and it has slow reaction times. This is the most popular display used in notebook computers today. It consists of a grid of horizontal and vertical wires. At the intersection of each grid is an LCD element which constitutes a single pixel, either letting light through or blocking it. Active-matrix technology, also called thin film transistor (TFT), produces color images that are as sharp as traditional CRT displays at 1/8 the space, but the technology is expensive. For multimedia applications with video images the fast response time of TFT active matrix displays is ideal. For color active matrix provides individual color bits for each displays. An active-matrix display uses from one to four transistors to control each pixel. LCDs do not exaggerate actual viewing areas like regular monitors. For example, a 9. 4†³ LCD provides 9. 4†³ diagonal viewing area. This is the equivalent of an 11†³ CRT. Color LCD Comparison Chart Technology Contrast Ratio Response Viewing Angle Price Passive Matrix 20:1 300 ms Medium Medium Active Matrix 60:1 80 ms High High 3). Gas Plasma Gas-plasma display is a type of flat display screen, called a flat-panel display, used in some portable computers. Images on gas-plasma displays generally appear as orange objects on a black background. Although gas-plasma displays produce very sharp monochrome images, they require much more power than the more common LCD displays. Technology: A grid of conductors are sealed between two flat plates of glass; neon and/or argon gas fills the space between the plates. Comparison Of LCDs and Gas-Plasma Displays: Type Readability Battery Life Cost LCD Lowest Longest Lowest Gas plasma High Shortest.

Walking in the City Essay - 4064 Words

WALKING IN THE CITY N TH I S R E M A R K A B LE E S S AY, carefully poised between poetry and semiotics, Michel de Certeau analyses an aspect of daily urban life. He presents a theory of the city, or rather an ideal for the city, against the theories and ideals of urban planners and managers, and to do so he does not look down at the city as if from a high-rise building – he walks in it. Walking in the city turns out to have its own logic – or, as de Certeau puts it, its own â€Å"rhetoric.† The walker individuates and makes ambiguous the â€Å"legible† order given to cities by planners, a little in the way that waking life is displaced and ambiguated by dreaming – to take one of de Certeau’s several analogies. This is a utopian essay: it†¦show more content†¦Must one finally fall back into the dark space where crowds move back and forth, crowds that, though visible from on high, are themselves unable to see down below? An Icarian fall. On the 110th flo or, a poster, sphinx-like, addresses an enigmatic message to the pedestrian who is for an instant transformed into a visionary: It’s hard to be down when you’re up. The desire to see the city preceded the means of satisfying it. Medieval or Renaissance painters represented the city as seen in a perspective that no eye had yet enjoyed. This fiction already made the medieval spectator into a celestial eye. It 128 MICHEL DE CERTEAU created gods. Have things changed since technical procedures have organized an ‘all-seeing power’? The totalizing eye imagined by the painters of earlier times lives on in our achievements. The same scopic drive haunts users of architectural productions by materializing today the utopia that yesterday was only painted. The 1370-foot-high tower that serves as a prow for Manhattan continues to construct the fiction that creates readers, makes the complexity of the city readable and immobilizes its opaque mobility in a transparent text. Is the immense texturology spread out before one’s eyes anything more than a representation, an optical artefact? It is the analogue of the facsimile produced, through a projection that is a wayShow MoreRelatedAnalysis of Michel De Certeaus Walking in the City and The Roaring Girl1505 Words   |  6 Pagesï » ¿Topic: Michel de Certeaus Walking in the City Adopt a theoretical framework for understanding cities, personal interactions, or the act of walking from the article, and use it to analyze The Roaring Girl. Michel de Certeaus play Walking in the City paints a lesson that may be applied to personal interactions. Leaders and influential people craft rules regulating social interactions and social norms that please themselves and create the sort of society that works best for them or correspondsRead MoreCity Run Is A Family Owned, Walking And Running Company1860 Words   |  8 PagesCharm City Run is a family owned, walking and running company that specializes in finding the perfect shoe for every individual. The company opened 12 years ago and currently has 5 locations. The employees pride themselves on providing outstanding customer service and focus on building relationships with their customers. CCR’s business consists of selling shoes and hosting running events. Porter’s Five Forces Model of Industry Competition is â€Å"A tool for examining the industry-level competitiveRead MoreUsing Michel de Certeaus Walking in the City to Analyze The Roaring Girl794 Words   |  3 PagesTopic: Michel de Certeaus Walking in the City Adopt a theoretical framework for understanding cities, personal interactions, or the act of walking from the article, and use it to analyze The Roaring Girl. The play Walking in the City paints a lesson that may be applied to personal interactions. Leaders and influential people craft rules regulating social interactions and social norms that please themselves and create the sort of society that works best for them or corresponds with their idealsRead MoreViewing the Play The Roaring Girl through Michel De Certeaus Walking in the City2567 Words   |  10 Pagesï » ¿Paths and Rules Michel de Certeaus Walking in the City provides a clear and appropriate lens with which to view and re-view the 17th century play, The Roaring Girl. Thesis: Certeaus notion of subversive navigation within cities illuminates a heretofore unexamined dimension of The Roaring Girl, the protagonists appropriation of major London landmarks for uses completely unintended by the citys planners. The protagonists in The Roaring Girl were able to overturn key social conventionsRead MoreSolitary Stroller And The City By Rebecca Solnit901 Words   |  4 PagesStroller and the City,† author Rebecca Solnit explores the complex relationships between the walking individual and living in the city. The title brings together three central ideas; walking, the city, and solitariness as an individual.. These three central ideas are tied together and used to reveal deeper meanings and relationships within the text. When analyzing Solnit’s work, the reader is left to identify a complex relation ship between the central ideas and how the geography of a city influences allRead MoreThe Solitary Stroller And The City By Ian Borden1697 Words   |  7 PagesStroller and the City† Solnit talks about experiencing a lack of community and citizenship while in a large city. She talks about being in a state of solitude in a city full of people. In â€Å"Driving†, Ian Borden writes about how a car is meant for the open road and not to keep in the garage away from others. So, a healthy citizenship is not based on how many people are in the community, rather how many people are active members within the community. In â€Å"The Solitary Stroller in the City† Solnit writesRead MoreThe True Benefits Of Walking1308 Words   |  6 PagesMs. Veiga English 101 7 October 2015 The True Benefits of Walking Americans have developed the most sedentary lifestyle of any other industrialize d nation which has led to the rise in health concerns like obesity and Alzheimer’s, but walking is a very good solution to this problem and needs to be re-implemented into our society. The negative effects of mental diseases like Alzheimer’s can be helped by increasing the amount of walking that is being done by Americans, which when combined with aRead MoreWalking And The Suburbanized Psyche1267 Words   |  6 PagesWalking in this Century Rebecca Solnit’s Walking and the Suburbanized Psyche stresses her concerns about the suburban wave that has plagued the world in recent times. According to her, the mind, the body, and the world have a special bond that is being vanquished by the lack of recreational walking. In the eighteenth century, there was a â€Å"golden era† for walking because recent accommodations made it possible for the general public to enjoy the untamed nature all around them. This era was short-livedRead MoreWhy Do We Crave Trees, Parks And Fresh Air?1220 Words   |  5 Pagesinterest to investigate communities that incorporate both. Your health and well-being could depend on it. What city-dwellers have on urban folk When it comes to healthy and happy residents, city-dwellers win out over smaller communities. While we don’t always equate big-city living with good health, it seems that a poll from Gallup and Healthways found this to be true. People who live in cities, on average, have significantly lower rates of smoking, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterolRead MoreHow Downtown Can Save America One Step At A Time By Jeff Speck1589 Words   |  7 PagesInstructor Course Date Walkable city how downtown can save America one step at a time by Jeff Speck The author Jeff Speck is city planner and an urban designer. He is trying to save Americans lives by trying to make the city more walkable since automobiles have now become a great danger to the Americans. This book is more concerned with cars and buildings in order to achieve the goal of a walkable city. People are the lifeblood of the city and not cars therefore, in order to pull off